c/o Akhil Joondeph, Opinion Editor

If you’ve never visited Craigslist before, you should know that it’s a place you need to go to with a mission. It’s an online marketplace, similar to eBay or Facebook marketplace, but without the polished commercialism. Founded in 1995, it is one of the earliest hosts of Internet communities. The creator, Craig Newmark, a self-proclaimed nerd, initially wished to enhance his social life, creating an email list to send out reminders of events around San Francisco to his friends. The idea quickly took off and was dubbed Craigslist in honor of Newmark himself, becoming a website in 1996. It has expanded to include job listings, items for sale, and forums for discussion, offering a wide variety of options to match the needs of all users. It’s a little cluttered nowadays, with its prehistoric appearance and an overwhelming amount of scams, but experienced Internet users should have no issues navigating the website. If you can avoid the infamous ‘Craigslist Killer’ (he’s dead; it’s not really a concern anymore), the site has a lot of potential as an e-commerce platform.

However, I have learned that you can treat Craigslist like a strange, mundane, sometimes heartwarming art gallery. I peruse the online marketplace for the worst and best displays of human nature, next to forty dollars worth of cheese molds.

To write this article, I set my location and examined every Craigslist post from Middletown and the surrounding areas. It was a profoundly enlightening experience. I don’t think it’s possible to understand the amount of things humankind has created, things that have no fathomable explanation for their existence. Why have we produced such large tennis balls? And does anyone out there truly want to see Jojo Siwa’s smiling face on their electric toothbrush? And who is buying an electric toothbrush off Craigslist?

I find some hope in the uselessness of these objects. Maybe we’ve fallen so far into consumerism that it’s become anarchy. Maybe not everything needs to be explainable or reasonable. When placed in this Craigslist society, one with no defined rules or logic, interpretation is left up to the observer. I draw connections between listings, and create a life for the anonymous users behind the screen. 

c/o Akhil Joondeph, Opinion Editor

In the case of this extensive collection of aviation books, I imagine a grandchild inheriting their grandfather’s library. The grandfather was a pilot, or maybe he just dreamed of being one someday. In between the black borders of the posts is a story waiting to be imagined.

The idea that someone would want to purchase 22,000 lbs of fish feed from an online stranger is unimaginable to me, but on Craigslist, it’s suddenly imaginable. What does one do if they end up with this much fish feed? I suppose Craigslist is the place to turn.

This concept of users searching for hope on Craigslist echoes throughout every poorly designed page. The website also hosts a variety of forums where people can discuss a plethora of topics. Mostly, it is full of old men looking for back massages, but there is also a concrete sense of digital community that can be felt. Craigslist hosts L.G.B.T.Q. forums where middle-aged people discuss their struggles with identity and sexuality and are offered genuine advice and support from anonymous posters. These online communities provide safety and community to queer people who may live in more conservative areas of the country. It allows the people who feel the most alone, with marginalized identities or an inexplicable urge to pretend to be Selena Gomez, to find a home.

Of course, there’s a fair share of the weird, just as the internet promises. It’s not all love and support; there’s a fair share of hate speech, but most of the time, the strangeness is the kind you might expect. Someone complains about their friend Jake (sorry, Jake), generously offers up a field of horse manure, or sells a Justin Bieber doll (we should let Selena Gomez from the forums know about this absolute steal of a deal).

Craigslist can be a helpful marketplace—I once sold a sailboat to an Australian man with a mullet with relative ease—but it can also be an experience. I urge everyone to set aside an hour and peruse the wonders of Craigslist. Find something you’ve always wanted to own and buy it. Participate in the weekly haiku contest on the haiku forum. Get a complete understanding of humankind as a whole, in all of its awkward glory. Where else would I see a literal representation of Hemmingway’s famous six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” alongside the salesperson of our generation?

Newmark, the website’s founder, said in an interview about his reasoning for creating the museum of oddities that is Craigslist, “We crave a greater sense of connection to people around us, the neighborhood, community, family or whatever because we kind of lost that. When you see these little stories that people tell, you do get some sense of connection that there are real people out there who may have bumped into you, people you might even know.” People want to feel like they’re not alone under the protection of anonymity. In this era of individuality, our society is hungry for connection, and maybe Craigslist is a part of the solution.

Claire Kaltsas is a member of the class of 2027 and can be reached at ckaltsas01@wesleyan.edu.