Try it yourself: Craigslist Personals

"My Craigslist hookup dumped me for a nude cleaner." This was the title of the article in a recent issue of JANE magazine that inspired me to set off on my own little Craigslist endeavor.

First off, before reading the story, I wasn't even aware that Craigslist had a personals section, much less having nine distinct categories not to be confused for one another, ranging from "casual encounters" to "missed connections."

In the past, I had been very successful selling various things such as textbooks and furniture using the Web site, but selling myself in an ad [HTML_REMOVED] well, I had extremely mixed feelings about that.

Initially after reading the article that told the story of a 20-something New Yorker who had been passed over by one of her ad-repliers for a "sexy" cleaner he had "accidentally" hired, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is sad."

But at the same time, I couldn't help but think about what would happen if I tried this out myself, and if anything, it'd be a great story to tell.

My original intentions for this piece were to expose the type of people who try and meet other people on a Web site that the general population uses for selling things. I had no idea how involved I would really get and how I ended up in the state that I'm in today.

I didn't hesitate to get on this mission for a few reasons: One, I figured my deadline might be a bit difficult to meet especially with my inexperience in the area and believing that I would get zero responses. Two, I was curious as hell.

After finishing up with yet another tedious Friday during summer quarter, I headed on home and got on the Craigslist Web site to see the type of postings in the personals section trying to entice eager singles for a reply. I found an overwhelming array of posts from "Looking for my other half" to "You're never too old to be nasty and bold" (sidenote: I stayed as far away as I could from that one).

Once I read about a dozen, I felt ready to draft my own post. Since there were so many categories, I thought it was best to try my luck with two. The first was "miscellaneous romance." My post was titled "Summer Love" (inspired by the shamefully addictive Justin Timberlake song) and ended with the phrase "up for almost anything." For the second category, I'd be lying if I didn't say that clicking on "casual encounters" wasn't completely out of my comfort zone, but I did it anyway. Feeling like a completely different person, the post in this category read something like "It's summer, it's hot and I'm looking for something to do on a Friday night." I then turned off my computer and went to get ready for dinner plans I had with a friend.

Once I got back from dinner, I decided to check my e-mail, not at all expecting what I was about to see. In what could not have been more than a three-hour window, I received a whopping 87 responses to my postings. In fact, most were within 10 minutes of the post [HTML_REMOVED] I didn't even know where to start. I decided to just start scanning the e-mails. The first read "I have a few ideas of what we can do on a Friday night," and had a grainy black and white picture attached. Classy, I said to myself with sarcasm.

I knew there was no way I was going to get to all of the e-mails, so still with the mentality that I was on an assignment, I decided to respond randomly to a few with questions to uncover the motives for using this particular method for hookups, dating or whatever they were looking for.

Much to my surprise, all the people I had given the questions to with somewhat of an interrogative tone responded in fewer than 24 hours, although at that point I should really not have been surprised by prompt responses given the timeliness of the original replies.

The first question I asked was if they look for this sort of thing on Craigslist often. Virtually all of the respondents said they were told about the site from "a friend" and that this had been their first time using it. I found it pretty humorous when one e-mailed back admitting that it was not his first time and that he checks the site from his cell phone.

The main reason respondents said they use the Craigslist personals section is that they are "just looking for someone to have a good time with." At least this was fairly candid I thought.

The next morning, I found I had received multiple e-mails from a single person by the name of Al*. In his e-mails he had a sense of urgency, detailing his available hours for the rest of the weekend as well as noting a possibility of rearranging his work schedule. After reading this, as well as skimming through far too many images of things I really didn't need to see from strangers, I decided I was done with this story.

But in the mix of responses, I decided to get back to the one person who responded to my "Summer Love" post who, to be honest, seemed the least creepy. His message only read "Hey, I'm Jim*, how are you? Yeah, that song is incredibly addicting. It is one of those catchy songs that gets stuck in your head and you feel almost like you almost don't deserve to listen to good music at all :P anyway, how's your summer going?"

The emoticon made this one seem especially not threatening, so I decided to respond as truthfully as I could without giving myself away. Before I knew it, I began to find myself actually laughing out loud at his e-mails and had become increasingly looking forward to them. It escalated to a point where there would be back and forth responses up to three times a day.

I stopped myself right there and decided I couldn't get any more involved than I already had and didn't respond to his most recent message until two days later. He then reciprocated by waiting to respond to that one a week later. We continued playing this game for more than a month and things went downhill from there.

But was there a point in this little exchange where I thought, could I be attracted to this guy? Yes. Was I constantly weighed down by the fact that I was only using this entire experience for a story? Yes. Do I think things would have gone differently had I told him the truth? I really don't know, but I earnestly hope this person accepts my public apology.

So after a two-week long vacation in which I left the country, and had no internet access, I came home to find that I never heard back from him; well, I guess I learned my lesson.

See, that's the thing about games. You're having a blast right up until you lose.

*Names have been changed

[Reach reporter Sheena Nguyen at features@thedaily.washington.edu.]