Internet dating is, at best, a bit of a gamble. You could find a soulmate, a person who you want to spend the rest of your life with, or, you could meet a total creep or psychopath. Craigslist, especially, is a gamble. There are, however, great advantages to using this method.
Why Craigslist?
Craigslist Personal’s greatest asset is also it’s greatest weakness: it’s openendedness. Other, more formatted dating sites ask you specific questions, they have specific boxes to fill out and multiple choice questions to answer, Craigslist just gives you a white box. It can be scary. It is actually really hard to just sit down and write about yourself and who you are looking for without a prompt. But if you know exactly what you are looking for and can actually put those things into words, the open style of Craigslist can be a huge advantage to you.
For example: the number one trait I appreciate in a woman is intelligence: a woman uses a word like ‘ostentatious’ and my heart goes pitter-patter. Many dating sites do not contain a space that will adequately allow me to convey that this is important to me and the extent to which it is important. Or the fact that, above all else, I want a smart woman just gets lost in the other details of the dating profile. He has brown hair, brown eyes, 6’0”, likes smart women, doesn’t like dogs, pisces, etc, etc, etc. With Craigslist, I can put the fact that I really like women with brains as the first line in my ad, so anyone reading it knows that this is very important to me.
This is the problem I have with more structured dating sites: they don’t have a space to put in what’s really important to you. Or, they make you put in details that don’t matter at all to you. They might ask you, for example: what hair colour do you prefer in a mate? I don’t care. Or what your star sign is. I aggressively don’t care. With Craigslist, you can pick only the traits that are most important to you and write about them.
Craigslist also allows you to put your best foot forward and highlight only the best things about yourself. For example: my career, at the moment, is not my best selling point. The fact that I have ambition, I am writing a novel and intend to run a marathon, on the other hand, is much more important. Other dating sites’ drop boxes for ‘career’ do not adequately highlight my best selling features.
Another great thing about Craigslist is that the ads are anonymous, free and there is no way to tell if one ad is written by the same person as another. You can post multiple different ads and no one will be the wiser. With other dating sites you only get one profile to tell everything there is to tell. With Craigslist, you can post multiple ads that highlight different aspects of who you are and who you are looking for. I like intelligent women, but I also like it when women share my taste in music. Furthermore, I also like women who are a bit on the geeky side. So, one week, I could post an ad focussing on the intelligence aspect. If that doesn’t work, I might shift tactics and look for someone who shares my taste in music. If that results, say, in a date that fails miserably, I might go back and try looking for a geeky lady. You can always change tactics on Craigslist. Highlight different aspects of your personality and get different results.
This is part of the fun of Craigslist: finding out what kind of people are attracted to different ads. I posted an ad based on the lyrics to Cake’s song ‘Short Skirt, Long Jacket’ and got a response from a total music junkie. If you want a movie nut, quote a favourite movie. The more detail you put in the ad, the more likely you are to find someone serious-minded. If you are just looking for someone to have fun with, tell them what you like to do for fun.
You have to believe that there is someone out there for you. They are looking for you. Craigslist is simply a way for you to find one another. The trick is in posting an ad that will allow him or her to recognize you as a person they want to get to know better.
Now that you know the advantages of Craigslist, take a look at this article for tips on how to use Craigslist.
