Missed Connections
Craigslist, platonic love letters, and screaming out into the void and hoping its not actually a void.
Listen to the voiceover to read along with me :)
I was going through my saved Ebooks on my library’s website and was reintroduced to this book: “Why does he do that? Why does she do that? : two relationship experts reveal the naked truth about dating in the 21st century”
The book details dating advice, written as a conversation between Dr.Paula and Dr.Reef, published in 2012. It’s only when I directly interact with something from the early 2010s and all of its mustache-hipster wanna-be progressiveness, that I remember that it was over 10 years ago and not just 5 or so years ago.
Anyways, the book has a section on missed connections (see excerpt at the end). Not the connections you might miss because your flight was delayed for hours and hours because Boeing was too busy killing whistle-blowers to ensure your plane works, but instead a metaphor for the missed opportune moments of romantic intrigue. When newspapers were still ubiquitous, people could pay for a posting in the personal ads section. In the mid 1990s, the online version of personal ads was nascent at Craigslist.com Craigslist, developed by Craig Newmark in 1996, is a community-based online marketplace a kin to a local newspaper.
Craigslist developed a “Missed Connections” section after the personal ads section was inundated with “I saw you” posts from people hoping the person they saw, were attracted to, and maybe had a romantic spark with but didn’t exchange contact information with, would see the post and reach out.
Posts go a little something like this:
In 2005 Craig Newmark talked all about Craigslist’s Missed Connections (MC) in an interview by Jennifer Lee at the New York Times. Newmark told Lee that the Craigslist team’s motivation for developing the MC section in 2000 was simply that “this is something that happened to all of us”. In 2005 the local San Francisco MC had 8,000 posts a month, only second to NYC, 10 years later Craigslist would report hosting 60 million users a month on the entire site. “Pessimists see the [MC] bulletin board...as an online repository for regret. Optimists see it as an opportunity for second chances and serendipity”, says Lee.
In some light research I’ve found that in the almost 25 years since the development of MC, there has been an attempt to understand the psychology (or sociology?) of MC. There have also been ultra-local adaptations of the Craigslist version, servicing college towns & university students. I found a Vox article from 2016 with some really fun interactive Craigslist MC data that made me go “ooo” when I clicked on the animated chart. There’s the website missedyounyc.com and its counterpart Missed You LA (Instagrams of the same name), these sites are essentially the Craigslist MC without all the other community ads and classic archaic layout. The Missed You site is great because it lets users search the posts archive by title or post body, thoroughly allowing people to find their MC moment. But, eventually, we leave college, and being a part of a MC college group at 32 just seems creepy…. and the Mised You NYC/LA sites’ posts-per-month (PPM) numbers don’t hold a candle to Craigists PPM in its heyday.
Today, Craigslist MC PPM has dropped significantly. New York City’s MC (within a 7.8-mile radius of the East River) has only 223 postings, the 223rd post dated 2/20/24, San Fran currently has 241 posts, and Chicago has only 99.
So what’s the deal with Missed Connections? Why didn’t the author of the MC reach out in the moment? What’s the point of a post? & What would you do if you saw a post written about you?
I’m on the fence about MC posts & their authors in general. Do MC give the air of a main character in a ‘90s rom-com, hoping that meet-cute with an unnamed stranger can turn into a real relationship (yes) or are MC genuinely a “repository for regret”?
And then there are third-party people on the website, like me, with no stake in the game —just reading posts almost voyeuristically. I like to read MC because I am fascinated by human behavior & interpersonal connections. A few years ago I was obsessed, I was reading the entire MC page once a week, but this past week was the first time I had been back on in years. It was nice; I sometimes tear up at the anonymous vulnerable public declaration of romance or just at the fact that someone was so moved —so influenced by their feelings that they decided to write about it. A MC may seem insignificant to the unaligned —making repeated eye contact with someone, brushing up against them on the subway, helping someone with their groceries, etc —might seem like nothing. But posting a MC indicates an optimistic trust in the universe —hoping that insignificance will, one day, turn into significance. During the height of my obsession, I would read MC for all of the reasons I just laid out, but frankly, I was secretly hoping there would be a post about me. That feeling of hopefulness and quasi-people-watching-online is what turned many casual readers of MC into regular readers, as outlined in Lee’s article.
Ilia Blinderman analyzed over 10,000 Craigslist MC from nearly 10 major U.S. cities, in that fun data-driven 2016 Vox article I was talking about. I learned that the gender ratio of authors skewed male (big surprise), for example, “Los Angeles men post 5.3 missed connections for every post made by a woman”. Posting times were mostly between 6 and 10 pm, Blinderman finds “[t]hroughout the US, the most lovelorn days seem to be Mondays, from early to late evening.” Maybe that’s because the MC happened over the weekend, they had the Sunday-scaries (am I using that right?) and by Monday they found the courage to post. Blinderman also tracks the most commonly used phrases in posts, divided by men and women, then subdivided: man seeking man (m4m), man seeking woman (m4w), woman seeking man (w4m), and woman seeking woman (w4w). The most common phrase in m4m, m4w, and w4m was “eye contact” followed by “long shot”. The most common phrases for w4w were “not know” and “*crosses fingers*”.
And it is a “long shot” to post a MC; what if the person doesn’t even know that Craigslist MC exists? What if they think the original poster (OP) is a creep? The what-ifs could go on and on. But I think if you’re the type of person to post a MC and the other person is the type of person to think to check MC, you’re a match made in heaven. But, of course, that isn’t always the case, Cayenn Landau’s article about MC gives an example from a NYT Modern Love essay of a MC meet-up that didn’t result in a rom-com-style happy ending. The essay’s author recognized herself in a post, met up with the OP, and found he was married.
Failed meet-cute aside, what I loved from Landau’s article is the opening: a 2002 MC her mom printed and hung in their bathroom.
To me, and I guess to Landau’s mom, this is a beautiful piece. A MC doesn't have to be directed towards romantic love, or sex, it can be a way to drop a platonic love letter into the ocean without the carbon footprint. We all have so much love & outlets for that love can take different forms.
Hope, admiration, yearning, unrequited romance, desire (and horniness) live in between the lines of each MC. As Lauren Berlant says in her book Desire/Love (which I’ve written about on here before and think about daily): “Desire is memorable only when it reaches toward something to which it can attach itself”. I think posting on missed connections is a way of attaching our desires to something more than just a fleeting interaction —because with the beauty of the internet, we can attach our desires to a posting on Craigslist.
I wonder if this is what the romantics are left with now —missed connection posts that equate to screaming into the void & hoping that it’s not actually a void —hoping that someone is actually there listing. The MC bulletin highlights the ever-present influence that the internet plays in our lives, as the posts exhibit the intersection between relationships, interpersonal connections, physical place, and online communication. Dating apps were supposed to do something similar I feel, but instead have pushed the people looking for true romance to the margins, the noncommittal people just looking to fuck have taken up all the space. And although there are a lot of MC authors that are probably just looking to fuck —just see the current Craigslist MC out of San Fran, a lot of the posts are “looking for a third”-coded... (not really sure what’s going on in SF...), and the amount of New York MC on the lookout for the “spicy Latina” they passed was....staggering... But the current dating climate amongst 20 and 30-year-olds seems to be nonconfrontational, drenched in fear and withholding, and scared of rejection. So maybe MC is the best thing to weather the storm. Maybe saying “we met on missed connections” is a better meet-cute than “he sent me a like on hinge and I was bored, so I accepted”.
Although Missed You NYC hasn’t posted on their Instagram since April, the website is still going strong. May 2024 had around 55 postings (I counted), closing out May with a long love letter/prose poem. Many of the Missed You NYC posts are from moments on the train, at the park, or the bar...some are a bit too nondescript: “You had brown hair, a beard, and tattoos on the G train”....OP is gonna have to get a bit more specific if you want to find that person. I have been on a single G train car with at least 25 men of that same description.
Maybe it’s better to “let Jesus take the wheel” & throw your hopes and wishes out into the universe and trust it will boomerang back, instead of putting in concrete effort. But a boomerang’s return is dependent on how you throw it; throw it arbitrarily and it won’t return, throw it intentionally, in line with the physics of its design, and the boomerang moves forward and spins at the same time and will, eventually, make its way back. So I guess what I’m saying is, like anything, you have to seize connection with intention, and if your intention is to go on a date with the cute girl across from you on the train, well maybe push beyond the fear, timidness, and headphones (a lot of MC are like “you had headphones on and I didn’t want to interrupt”); push past all that shit and ask her out then and there.
But again, it’s all very complex and I’m on the fence about it all; I kinda love that MC are a thing but I also kinda hate the crutch the bulletin provides, especially now that single people who are looking to date hardly ever approach anyone they’re attracted to IRL. (COOL* single people, I might add. I get approached by weirdos all the time, but at least they have courage.) But who knows, I could see missed connections Fort Green-Brooklyn being the next Tinder.
I’ll have to split this post into two parts, I had to get all the context and stats out of the way.
Next week I want to get more into the mind of a MC author, ask “What do you have to lose?”, discuss fear & taking chances, some current-day MC post highlights, and the story of when a missed connection was written about me.
Excerpt from the 2012 book “Why does he do that? Why does she do that? : two relationship experts reveal the naked truth about dating in the 21st century”
Dr. Paula and Dr. Reef give a discussion on what to do in order to avoid “the one that got away” syndrome.
Dr. Paula
It’s natural to feel a certain hesitancy when you see a stranger you’re interested in. You’re drawn to that other person, but you worry about putting yourself on the line and risking rejection by starting a conversation or asking for his or her phone number or e-mail address. There’s a reason why the missed connections section of craigslist is so popular. Many people have to make a split-second decision — do I go for it? Or not?
Dr. Reef
Men don’t have the same safety issues as women, so they are more apt to take risks. Asking a woman for her number, in this scenario, means being willing to be vulnerable and being willing to be rejected. That’s not easy for some men.
Dr. Paula
What do you have to lose if you ask for her e-mail address?
Dr. Reef
Just your pride, ego, and your good mood if she says no. It depends how confident you are at that time.
Dr. Paula
So, what about the flip side? If she does the asking, will she be perceived as too forward? Also, women tend to be more risk averse than men. It’s not just about emotional risk taking. If a woman has just met a guy, he may be cute and appealing, but how does she know what she’s getting herself into? Can she trust her instinct? Her physical safety’s at stake as well. But if she doesn’t act in the moment and give him her number, will she live to regret it? Basically, it’s not high risk to exchange e-mail addresses, especially those that don’t reveal information about your name or where you work.
Note to self: Create an extra e-mail account just for dating — it’s a great way to keep track of who’s contacting you.