Missed Connections: An Incomprehensible Fantasy

With the rapidly changing landscape of the internet, it seems like we are using a new app or website every week. They aim to improve our lives and build upon the tools before them. With this, there are a lot of websites slowly decaying and rotting right before our eyes, no longer updated and on the verge of obscurity. Today, when consumers think about purchasing something, they may go to websites specific to that item, but for the people who don't have a lot of disposal income (like me), they go to second hand websites. Places like eBay or the increasingly popular Facebook Marketplace. The latter has slowly phased out Craigslist, a website that has been on its deathbed for a while now.

Founded by a soy tech dude named Craig, the website acts in a similar fashion to the classified section of the newspaper, another thing becoming irrelevant to most people nowadays, where you could post an advertisement or message for people in your area to respond to. I am sure everybody on here knows what Craigslist is, it's not an obscure site whatsoever, but there is a section on Craigslist that is often overlooked: Missed Connections. The feature is not unknown, but it is not the first thing one would think of when the website is mentioned. The intended purpose of Missed Connections is to connect people who interacted in real life, but failed to get contact information. This is not how it functions in practice. Instead, Missed Connections acts as a breeding ground for the most freaky and horny people you would never want to connect with. And just a reminder, these are people in your area. Everybody posting on there is delusional. The posts typically involve a man making eye contact with a woman from across the store, with the man mistaking it as something far, far deeper. It's sad, but I have little sympathy for these pathetic coomers. There is no hope for these people.

 

It is not the fact that these people are so desperate, it is that people hardly use Craigslist, especially not missed connections. The desires of these individuals are so far removed from anything remotely normal, which makes it so bizarre read. At first it is entertaining to browse Missed Connections, but it quickly becomes depressing if you start scrolling for just a little bit. I am so intrigued by the users on the Craigslist section, but I know that these people are beyond saving, too far gone to achieve a state of normalcy, or even just being slightly weird. The false sense of anonymity combined with being totally shameless breeds the cesspool known as Missed Connections.

Maybe it's a good thing that Craigslist is dying out. Maybe this website should become consumed by the sea of the internet, lost and eventually dead. But also, where will these horndogs go? This I would rather not know.