Three Wolf Moon is an ugly T-shirt. Yet somehow it became Amazon's top-selling item of apparel for months. It all started with a single fictional review on the site, attributing magical powers of feminine attraction to the shirt. Hundreds of similarly bogus reviews soon poured in, along with the orders. Ultimately, the Three Wolf Moon factory had to work overtime to fill the orders, and New Hampshire designated it the official T-shirt of the state's economic development.
  It's an idea that writers adore: the notion that a good story can impart value to an insignificant object. Already desirable or at least useful objects—booze, coffee, everything ever written up in the J. Peterman catalog—can obviously have their value increased through a robust back story. (It's called advertising.) But what about objects that are undesirable? That are poorly made, useless or ugly? Can they ever become valuable or sellable? To those who don't believe in the transcendent power of a good story to elevate even a T-shirt with three wolves on it, behold: the Significant Objects project.
  Joshua Glenn, author of Taking Things Seriously, and Rob Walker, author of Buying In, as well as the "Consumed" column in The New York Times, created the Significant Objects project with a simple hypothesis that "narrative is a key x-factor influencing an object's exchange value." To prove their theory, they bought insignificant objects from thrift stores and garage sales, each costing no more than a few bucks, and had writers like William Gibson, Charles Baxter and Jennifer Weiner create fictional short stories about them. Then they posted the items and the stories on eBay, with a disclaimer emphasizing that the tales were fiction, and waited for the bids. They sold the first round of 100 objects, originally bought for $128.74, for $3,612.51. Not too shabby.
  Now, they're into the third round of their experiment, and all the first-round data numbers have been crunched. Rob Walker recently took a moment to answer my questions over e-mail about the experiment and the takeaway for advertisers. Check out our conversation after the jump.

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

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