The author and comic Megan Koester obtained her first writing job, reviewing web pornography, from a Craigslist advert she responded to greater than 15 years in the past. A number of years after that, she used the listings web site to discover the rent-controlled residence the place she nonetheless lives at the moment. When she needed to purchase property, she scrolled by way of Craigslist and located a parcel of land in the Mojave Desert. She constructed a dwelling on it (by no means thoughts that she’d later uncover it was unpermitted) and furnished it solely with finds from Craigslist’s free part, proper down to the laminate flooring, which had beforehand been utilized by a manufacturing firm.
“There’s so many components of my life that are suffused with Craigslist,” says Koester, 42, whose Instagram account is devoted, at the least partly, to cataloging screenshots of what she has dubbed “harrowing pictures” from the website’s free part; on the day we communicate, she’s sporting a cashmere sweater that price her nothing, in addition to the religion it took to reply to an advert with no photos. “I’m trip or die.”
Koester is one among untold numbers of Craigslist aficionados, lots of them of their thirties and forties, who not solely nonetheless use the old-school classifieds website but in addition contemplate it an important, if anachronistic, a part of their on a regular basis lives. It’s a spot the place anonymity is nonetheless doable, the place cash doesn’t have to be exchanged, and the place strangers could make significant connections—for romantic pursuits, easy transactions, and even to solid uncommon inventive tasks, together with experimental TV exhibits like The Rehearsal on HBO and Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty. Not like flashier on-line marketplaces comparable to DePop and its mum or dad firm, Etsy, or Fb Market, Craigslist doesn’t use algorithms to observe customers’ strikes and predict what they need to see subsequent. It doesn’t provide public profiles, score techniques, or “likes” and “shares” to dole out like social foreign money; consequently, Craigslist successfully disincentivizes clout-chasing and virality-seeking—behaviors that are usually rewarded on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X. It’s a utopian imaginative and prescient of a a lot earlier, much more earnest web.
“The true freaks come out on Craigslist,” says Koester. “There is a purity to it.” Even nonetheless, the website is just a little tamer than it used to be: Craigslist shut down its “informal encounters” advertisements and took its personals part offline in 2018, after Congress handed laws that will’ve put the firm on the hook for listings from potential intercourse traffickers. The “missed connections” part, nevertheless, stays lively.
The location is what Jessa Lingel, an affiliate professor of communication at the College of Pennsylvania, has known as the “ungentrified” web. If that’s the case, then on-line gentrification has solely accelerated lately, thanks partly to the proliferation of AI. Even Wikipedia and Reddit, visually fundamental websites created in the early aughts and with an emphasis comparable to Craigslist’s on fostering communities, have each included their very own variations of AI tools.
Some may argue that Craigslist, against this, is outdated; an article revealed on this journal greater than 15 years in the past known as it “underdeveloped” and “unpredictable.” However to the website’s most devoted adherents, that’s exactly its attraction.
“ I believe Craigslist is having a revival,” says Kat Toledo, an actor and comic who often makes use of the website to rent cohosts for her LA-based stand-up present, Besitos. “When one thing is structured so merely and actually does serve the group, and it does not ask for a lot? That’s what survives.”
Toledo began utilizing Craigslist in the 2000s and by no means stopped. Over the years, she has turned to the website to discover romance, housing, and even her present job as an assistant to a forensic psychologist. She’s labored there full-time for almost two years, defying Craigslist’s fame as a provider of probably sketchy one-off gigs. The stigma of the web site, generally synonymous with scammers and, in a couple of occasion, murderers, could be arduous to shake. “If I am not doing a superb job,” Toledo says she jokes to her employer, “simply keep in mind you discovered me on Craigslist.”
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