The author and comic Megan Koester received 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 search out the rent-controlled house the place she nonetheless lives in the present day. When she wished to purchase property, she scrolled by Craigslist and located a parcel of land within the Mojave Desert. She constructed a dwelling on it (by no means thoughts that she’d later uncover it was unpermitted) and furnished it completely with finds from Craigslist’s free part, proper all the way down to the laminate flooring, which had beforehand been utilized by a manufacturing firm.
“There’s so many parts of my life which are suffused with Craigslist,” says Koester, 42, whose Instagram account is devoted, not less than partially, to cataloging screenshots of what she has dubbed “harrowing photographs” from the location’s free part; on the day we converse, she’s carrying a cashmere sweater that price her nothing, moreover the religion it took to answer an advert with no footage. “I’m trip or die.”
Koester is one in all 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 a necessary, if anachronistic, a part of their on a regular basis lives. It’s a spot the place anonymity continues to be potential, the place cash doesn’t should be exchanged, and the place strangers could make significant connections—for romantic pursuits, simple transactions, and even to forged uncommon inventive initiatives, together with experimental TV exhibits like The Rehearsal on HBO and Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty. In contrast to flashier on-line marketplaces reminiscent of DePop and its father or mother firm, Etsy, or Fb Market, Craigslist doesn’t use algorithms to trace customers’ strikes and predict what they wish to see subsequent. It doesn’t provide public profiles, score methods, or “likes” and “shares” to dole out like social forex; because of this, Craigslist successfully disincentivizes clout-chasing and virality-seeking—behaviors which 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 location is just a little tamer than it was once: Craigslist shut down its “informal encounters” adverts and took its personals part offline in 2018, after Congress handed laws that will’ve put the corporate on the hook for listings from potential intercourse traffickers. The “missed connections” part, nonetheless, stays energetic.
The positioning is what Jessa Lingel, an affiliate professor of communication on the College of Pennsylvania, has known as the “ungentrified” web. If that’s the case, then on-line gentrification has solely accelerated in recent times, thanks partially to the proliferation of AI. Even Wikipedia and Reddit, visually primary websites created within the early aughts and with an emphasis much like Craigslist’s on fostering communities, have each integrated their very own variations of AI tools.
Some would possibly argue that Craigslist, in contrast, is outdated; an article printed on this journal greater than 15 years in the past known as it “underdeveloped” and “unpredictable.” However to the location’s most devoted adherents, that’s exactly its attraction.
“ I feel Craigslist is having a revival,” says Kat Toledo, an actor and comic who recurrently makes use of the location 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 within the 2000s and by no means stopped. Through the years, she has turned to the location to search out 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 doubtless sketchy one-off gigs. The stigma of the web site, generally synonymous with scammers and, in multiple occasion, murderers, may be onerous to shake. “If I am not doing job,” Toledo says she jokes to her employer, “simply keep in mind you discovered me on Craigslist.”
