Out of the cave

(Upstart) It was last New Year’s when the freshly christened DotComGuy climbed into his compound, cutting himself off from the world to prove that e-commerce could work. It was the year of Web-based buying, and everywhere you turned there was dog food, books, porn, beer and food being sold online.

DotComGuy was going to be a branded Benedictine monk, complete with corporate sponsors and a few credit cards. And for the first month or so, it was interesting. It was sort of like watching Robinson Crusoe those first few months, wondering if he’d make it… Well, maybe it was closer to watching the Home Shopping Network’s version of “The Real World,” with a less hip cast.

One guy, living alone, filling his house with stuff from corporate sponsors. He wasn’t going to come to some great conclusions about the world while he was sequestered in that house. He was going to sit on his couch, surf the net, occasionally chat with faceless girls on IRC, maybe cook a pizza or two and watch T.V.

Essentially, it was exactly what my upstairs neighbor did, except for the fact that my neighbor had a more interesting life story and was allowed to sit on the front stoop and drink a beer. (If he went more than twenty feet away from his house, that thing on his leg would set off an alarm and the cops would show up.)

The entire idea was about as entertaining—and as sound—as the business plans that so many dot-coms first conned investors with. So, people stopped watching at about the same time that investors stopped dumping cash into the thousands of start-ups that he was backing. Companies started folding, and it had to be getting harder to find Alpo for poor little DotComDog.

If the experiment took place this year, it would have made for good entertainment: The struggle of one man to continue to survive after the dot-com shakeout. People would have watched on a daily basis as he retyped his credit card numbers into the last few surviving pet food stores, or as he waited for the groceries to come, starving, only to find out that they didn’t deliver to Dallas anymore.

DotComGuy would have staged a breakout, been caught and thrown back into the compound, over and over. The world would have rooted for this poor stranger. Protests would have been staged, animal rights groups called in.

But instead, he cut out just when things were about to get interesting. The dreams are falling apart, and DotComGuy is rumored to be out at least part of his payment for exile. If this was a litmus test for whether or not online commerce can work, the answer is: Sure, for about a year—then people get bored, and your investors cut out.

Staff Writer David Schober tuned out DotComGuy the minute Lifetime started airing back-to-back episodes of “The Golden Girls” every night. Write him at david_schober@intertec.com.