Tao Lin (Wikipedia)

If you were wondering what kind of people fork over money for a class taught by the guy who live-blogged Hurricane Sandy for Thought Catalog while on Ecstasy, well, they’re pretty much what you’d expect.

“Suck it, Paul Dano!” crowed one young Williamsburg resident, referring to a play in which the actor had recently appeared. “I say ‘James Franco’ whenever something bad happens,” said another.

Finally, Mr. Lin arrived in his signature hoodie and plaid shirt. He kept his eyes cast to the floor and mumbled questions so softly that his students looked at each other, confused, until someone had the courage to ask him to repeat himself.

The topic of the night was George Saunders’s short story, “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline.”

“I’m surprised that so many of you got the thing with the ghosts,” Mr. Lin said. “I didn’t get that part at all. I also felt like the language was too idiomatic.”

Later in the two-hour session, the author of Shoplifting From American Apparel explained that Mr. Saunders operated with the premise that art has a moral function, and questioned the effectiveness of stories written by a man who once claimed in an interview to “know nothing.”

“Saunders reinforces what I already feel. Curtis Sittenfeld [whose work was also read in the class] forces you to relate to someone else’s point of view,” Mr. Lin said. Additional words of wisdom included “selling out is very moral,” and “I think you are making the world a worse place,” in reference to something the Transom said about art, reality or some such.

Nevertheless, the dozen and a half students attending the class—who ranged in age from slightly younger than Mr. Lin’s own 29 years to a woman who talked about working at a bank “before you were born”—seemed satisfied. Later, on the train, Mr. Lin told the Transom that we should have come a week earlier, when he had taken “a lot more drugs” before his lecture. Then he tried to sell us some sunglasses he said he had stolen from LensCrafters before kneeling on the floor and scooping up the dust of an Adderall tablet, which he had accidentally stomped with his boot.

Tao Lin, selling his shit. (Megan Boyle)

The life of a successful writer isn't as lucrative as Franco or Franzen would have you believe. Just ask Tao Lin: Saturday evening, the micro-messaging wunderkind sent out a tweet asking if anyone wanted to buy his stuff. All of it. Like, all of it. (The tweet has since been taken down.)

Some sort of viral marketing stunt? Maybe, but he's done this kind of house cleaning before. Since we were in need of a good microwave, we took the bait and emailed him. Within five minutes, we received a reply:

"i don't have a microwave, i do have a used but good juicer for $50 + $5 shipping (bought for $99)

and a metal bed-frame with wheels for any-size-up-to-queen bed that i packaged to return to amazon but never mailed to them (too late to send back now) for $40 +5 shipping (bought for ~$120)"

What about non-antibiotic medication? He could do that, too.

Was Mr. Lin eschewing all earthly possessions to obtain a higher level of consciousness (one in which all thought would be communicated via Gchat acronyms)? Doubtful, since he also emphasized that he needed the money NOW, sent via PayPal. Did he have a huge gambling debt? Owe money to the powerHouse Arena mafia? Need some capital to invest in a pop-up store with Moby that only sold vegan milkshakes?

Sadly no, he explained in a follow-up message:

I'm selling anything people want, I'm about to put my previous MacBook & stuff from college & high school on eBay. What prompted it: I don't have any money and am waiting on the 2nd installment of my advance & 1st payment from teaching at Sarah Lawrence, but those aren't coming in for at least ~10-20 days.

We didn't need a juicer, and the bed frame seemed just ... weird, but how often do opportunities like this come along? We bought a collection of books (his choice) for $50, which he promised would come with a nice handwritten note. But think of the possibilities! Tao Lin's T-shirts, possibly stolen from American Apparel! Tao Lin's high school diary! His vinyl collection! The idea for that milkshake pop-up!

For the right price, you can probably have him show up to your reading at Housing Works and clap really loudly while shaking his head as if to say, "Wow, that guy is good."

The possibilities are endless. Take advantage of them before he gets his Sarah Lawrence paycheck.