What, is Coinbase closed tonight or something?
Nobody is going to vouch for you from reddit, because there's no way to prove who you are. And nobody here is going to trust a complete noob with a PayPal deal. Nobody sane, that is.
Nah, I didn't have the funds in my BOA account so I went to my local branch to deposit and the ATM tells me it's not accepting cash deposits at this time. It being 7pm where I am, the bank is closed so looks like I have to wait until tomorrow unless able to find someone to do a swap online. I have references on reddit in a thread of buying and selling non-bitcoin related stuff so I figured that might help. But yeah you're absolutely right, after posting this thread I looked at a few other threads and the overall vibe I got was that it's probably not going to happen as a newbie.
For future reference though, how does a newbie get the first few refs then? If no one will deal with them from the get-go? I figured $80 is small enough someone might be willing to deal with me through an escrow or if I F&F'd the payment.