Craigslist Files #60: Florida

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.

Right off the bat it's easy to tell that craigslist south Florida is a creature of its habitat. The Activities page looks more or less like a TV channel dedicated to nothing but Florida stuff. And not just any Florida stuff, but the stuff that people who have never been to Florida imagine is ubiquitous in the state. It's all volleyball, bingo tournaments and strongman competitions. If one were to envision south Florida based solely on what's in its Activities page one would think it was cobbled together from every "Florida Vacation" episode of the sitcoms of the late 80's.

I guess that craigslist functions best as a window into the mundane fantasies of the people who post there. Floridians really want their state to be nothing but muscle beaches and self-quarantined old people, if only because those are both things that Florida does really well. So, the south Florida craigslist page avoids featuring things that the state isn't very good at, like education and clean drinking water.

Oh, but one thing Florida just can't stop doing even though it sucks at it is politics. The south Florida craigslist Politics section is as active as any other, except it is somehow less informed and coherent than normal. Amid the ranting and stupidity is a bunch of stuff that couldn't be construed as political by even the most acrobatic of minds. Take the following image:

This is indeed some Dadaist attempt to skewer our president, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it's trying to say. I mean, neither the recent reimagining of Curious George nor the Kool-Aid man are particularly offensive or otherwise satirical. Yet the south Florida Politics page is full of nonsensical stuff like this. When I see images like these I finally understand how Florida has managed to be such a politically destructive state.

For all its unique absurdity, the south Florida craigslist page is inspiring. It makes me wonder just how descriptive other region-specific Lists are of their geography and its culture. I'll certainly be diving into other regional craigslist pages in the future. Until that day comes, remember: Curious/Kool in 2012!