[Editor's Note: Arielle Stevenson (left) is on the hunt for the perfect apartment, or at least something she can afford without having to live with someone weird. Follow her hunt on The Daily Loaf.]
I am not one to bash Craigslist. Sure, it may have vastly ruined the print industry's main source of income — classifieds — but it is a working model of what the Internet is supposed to be, free community communication.
Craigslist has enabled Internet romantics to post missed connections, brief moments like:
"You are from Poland, 31 yo. I can't get you out of my thoughts. Please don't take this wrong...but you have one of the nicest shaped ass I've ever seen. Looking at you drove me crazy!! If all I ever get to do is look, it's worth the stare LOL. Looking forward to see you again!"
Ahh... Democracy at work.
While endearing, this little online engine that could has also created a vehicle for numerous crazies - who are normal by day - to go a little buck wild online. Your bank teller, electrician, doctor, realtor, lawyer and young male college student who momma still thinks is a good boy, that we know hormones have already gotten the better of.
I found lots of these guys in my Craigslist search for a roommate. Let's take the token "30 something guy, single and sane" posting, which would seem fine enough except for the photograph, obviously copied and pasted, of a 4-month-old puppy, who was apparently lonely for a woman, though I doubt the puppy was the lonely one.
Surprisingly, I do not find it endearing that a man, who was definitely not a 30-something, would try to lure young women with furry woodland creatures and cheap rent.
The guys who had listed a very small room on the other side of 4th St. were especially convincing. Two hundred dollars a month, if you also do housework, like cleaning and laundry.
I thought this could work. The problem was that the room was actually a closet, and when they saw my reaction to the "room for rent," they offered sleeping with one of them as a solution.
