Net insanity: craigslist files

Back in the heady days of Internet idealism (aka the mid to late 1990's) there was this misconception that the Net would destroy all the fleshy borders of the world, leaving only a single, global community of individuals who finally realized that they have more in common with others than they once assumed. This all sounds nice on virtual paper, but the truth is that we're all still products of our environments. Just because some guy in Hong Kong is playing the same Flash game as me doesn't mean we don't still have substantively different lives. Really only the basics of life are the same wherever you go. Take craigslist, for instance. Every page regardless of location is still choked with human ugliness and woeful misconceptions of how reality works, but each iteration of the List is still a reflection of its corresponding location in meatspace. Having just come back from a stay in southern Florida, I thought I'd pop over to its craigslist page to find its unique flavor amid the samey stuff of CL.

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if I superimposed a ninja star on top of the Nike swoosh, does that make it different enough to not get me sued?

I just got back from a visit with a medieval-style sadist who calls himself a medical professional, which means two things. First, I got a new toothbrush. Second, my life is currently a combination of primal pain and blood loss fatigue. As unpleasant as that experience can be, I keep myself from assaulting my dentist with his own diabolical tools because I understand that the pain is for my own good. Hell, I even pay the guy to torture me and I'm not usually into those kinds of extracurriculars. This is why it baffles me when people pay others to do awful things to them for no actual benefit. As illogical as this is, there's a big enough market for pay-for-pain that even the entrepreneurs on craigslist make a play for their slice.

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I honestly believe that craigslist will be the subject of an in-depth future study of Internet trends and human social behavior. By then the site will be defunct, as I frequently insist that we are indeed living in the age of craigslist's slow but inevitable decline. See, there's a difference between living and thriving. Craigslist is active, it's alive, but it's no more thriving than a potted plant in a college dorm room. The site's bad habits and unhealthy developments are slowly killing it, or at least setting the stage for whatever does eventually kill it. It's like your old uncle who drinks too much, smokes cigars and lives on fast food, and not mainstream fast food, but the cut-rate local burger stands with depressingly ramshackle facades. The booze, tobacco and Bubba Burgers aren't exactly killing Uncle Jake, but they're slowly fostering a wide variety of nasty conditions that will one day claim his life. On craigslist, the Bubba Burger is prostitution.

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One of the Internet's greatest contributions to society is its ability to connect people from all over the world who otherwise never would have come in contact with one another. Even more remarkable is how readily Internet users from around the globe accept each other. For previous generations, just getting a rock record from England was a big deal, an exotic rarity that had all the allure of a 19th century trip to India. Today it's commonplace to watch a video from Croatia, listen to a pop song from Japan and, thanks to the likes of Ebay and craigslist, buy a used DVD player off some guy in Canada, all from the deep-fried economic shambles of the good old US of A. In fact, posts from foreign people may just be my favorite part of craigslist. They provide all the bad spelling and horrible grammar of a crappy American post minus the exasperation and disappointment of realizing my nation's public education system is a mess, and they frequently contain nuggets of delicious insanity that you just can't get from a domestic.

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