The Craigslist Experiment: The Setup
For those unfamiliar with craigslist, it’s basically a catch all for useful things and the scum of the planet. It’s a site that can go from SFW to NSFW with one click. You can adopt a pet, find a job, hire a hooker, sell your car, find an apartment, and rant about your hatred of the traffic in your hometown - all in one place!
Craigslist personals are a special combination of sad and hilarious, with a pinch of normal and a BIG dash of creepy. I won’t totally discount their personal ads - my brother met his fiancee through craigslist! - but 99.9% of the time, unless you’re looking for a hookup, it’s best to only read it for a laugh, not a date.
To give you an idea of what girls get in response to ads, I posted the following fake ad, complete with random pictures courtesy of Google. Local info and identifying info from emails will be blurred to protect the not-so-innocent.

Optimized for Maximum Vagueness & Perv-a-bility
- 18 - the “optimal age” for a girl if you’re a less-than-honorable guy
- Vague photo - can’t see much of eyes, face, body
- Poorly written, list-of-stuff-I-like personal ad text
Let the Emails Begin!



Hey, I’d bite. I’m 21, though - does that make me the “less-than-honorable” guy?
Nah, 18/21 is fine.
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:10 am
[...] the 10 minutes after the ad went live, I received 8 emails. (e’s comments in [...]