For sale: Night stand, one
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What I worry about are the definitions, and how much power this seems to give the government in terms of censorship. What happens to tinder, FetLife, and the rest, but also match.com, eharmony, the Christian dating sites and the like? Could this interpretation be stretched to other forms of online speech?
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Okay dude. I mean, no one here didn’t realize that, but okay. Good job you.
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yeah, that makes sense
Yeah, sounds about right. If closing down all online personals would absolutely eliminate sex trafficking, i mean eliminate it, I’d be ready to give up a little of my free-speech stance and say, OK, it’s worth it, pull the plug.
But to reduce it by 0.05 percent? No. Absolutely god damn no. I am unwilling to accept millions of responsible people losing freedoms because it “will save one life”.
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You mean there are parts of Craigslist that aren’t about exorbitantly priced vermin-ridden mattresses and free buckets of dried-up paint?
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Oh hey, yer back! You missed a great back and forth… I just assumed it was that special time of the ---- (begins with a ‘T’ and ends with an ‘M’ and somewhere in the middle is an ‘E’ and and ‘R’ but I’ll not say more!)
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Speaking as a shy nerd who’s not that good looking-
I liked the fact that Craigslist had personals. It was one of the few places where it didn’t matter what you look like, you could post an ad and make your case with your writing rather than your face.
I actually recently met two incredible women on there and one was the real life kinky librarian and documents conservation nerd into metal I had always looked for. It didn’t work out, but Craigslist at least gave me a place to make my weird case and find people no matter how strange or freaky without disclosing what I look like until I wanted to.
I’m not here to whine and beg for sympathy- i’m happy with who I am actually. And as horrible as most Craigslist ads were, and as overwhelming the 99% of them being scammers were, it gave people like me who weren’t psychopaths but not the best-looking a chance to actually meet people before they swipe left. Our society and every dating site is so superficial, unless you’re better than average looking and not overweight you really don’t get a second look from most people. And yes I have tried dating sites over the years and found the same thing over and over.
I am a liberal millennial with a lot of education and can’t stand the typical chauvinistic jackass American man who degrades women, fights against their right to choose, and openly harasses them. That being said I am human and I get horny like everyone else. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just saying you want to get laid sometimes. As long as you are honest about it and your approach without misleading people I see nothing wrong with casual hookups. To be honest Craigslist was actually horrible for that purpose but at least the potential existed for that there. Yes there were a lot of prostitutes on there and none of which I am okay with.
Maybe I am not as savvy as other people at how one goes about finding casual hookups, but the bar scene just never worked for me. I don’t like mixing alcohol and trying to get laid. It can lead to misrepresentation and miscommunication. Tinder is pretty much based off of what you look like and so is every other dating site. The only thing on the horizon that gives me hope is something called Taffy which does not fully exist yet for Android. It’s a concept for dating geared for people like me who have more beautiful minds than faces. And I suppose at times I don’t have the most beautiful mind so perhaps I don’t even fit in that regard, but damn it there should be a place for people of any gender to be able to hook up by getting to know someone before seeing what they look like.
Yes it was a steaming nuclear shitpile in the overwhelming majority of it, but it was egalitarian in that regard, and if you were willing to wade through the enormous and daily stacks of bullshit, you might occasionally find someone you couldn’t find anywhere else.
We lost that in Craigslist.
I understand in deeply sympathize with the idea of getting rid of sex trafficking if that was the idea behind this. I can’t personally attest to how it was affected by any of that if it was at all, but this kind of feels like Congress outlawed personal ads in the newspaper for the digital age.
I feel like my freedom has been infringed upon to some degree and that I cannot even make the case of getting laid or just meeting someone for a relationship of more than that because Congress doesn’t like the venue that I choose.
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Does this mean should all move to Tor ?
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It doesn’t reduce it at all. The ads aren’t the crime. And the crime doesn’t go away just because you’re not seeing it.
And as several people have pointed out shoving the whole shebang into the dark very much makes reducing the harm here even harder. So while there’s 0 impact on the quantity of the sex trade. It does have a very big effect on the safety of routine sex work. Even the stuff that’s technically legal. Meanwhile it becomes much much harder to detect and effect the really nasty shit it’s purported to focus on.
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Bingo. The problem isn’t that Congress is trying to reduce trafficking through regulation, it’s that it’s trying to do it through bad legislation. Craig isn’t the kind of anti-statist who rolls out the Nirvana fallacy. He would probably support and contribute to good and effective targetted legislation, but instead we get this blanket piece of garbage written by panic-mongers who are apparently ignorant about or scared of technology, communications, and human sexuality.
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It’s a lot like the way older conservative people have told me “this shit never used to happen” when talking about Child, domestic abuse and hate crimes.
Yeah it did. You just never heard about it. And because you didn’t hear about it noone could do anything about it.
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While I don’t know any sex traffickers, I do know of someone who purchased marijuana via CL ad while visiting a big city. If congress found a way to magically ban CL ads for weed, I don’t doubt dealers’ reactions would amount to a big “Okay, whatever.”
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Weed, ironically is easy to find. I usually have no problem finding that if I want it. Craigslist isn’t even needed for that.
I have often wondered if other people turn to drugs because they can’t find anonymous sex to mellow out. I know I did. Being alive and happy is harder than most people would care to admit I’m just blunt about it. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think the world would be a happier place if we made hooking up easier as a society and stopped stigmatizing it. All of that goes for many things including weed.
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Buying weed off Craigslist sounds like a terrible idea for several reasons.
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In honor of this sad day, I posted an old video of a project of mine that would read a Craigslist Casual Encounters ad over slides of old ladies, one per slide.
RIP casual encounters!
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God yes, agreed. When you buy something that you are going to put in your body you had absolutely better be sure you know the person you are getting it from. Craigslist is the opposite of a trusted friend in that regard. But, if you are daring and stupid, I suppose. Either way, the fact that its easier to find weed in the US than sex, at least in my case, is just funny and depressing at the same time. Any serious nerd that’s socially awkward and not great looking knows what Im talking about. It’s easier to get high and create than procreate, ain’t that great? 
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…And I just realized the irony of my first sentence in regards to anonymous sex it’s pretty much the same thing, except unpaid and not prostitution, the concept still holds true
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I take a rather dim view of paid intimacy, but that doesn’t reduce my advocacy for the rights of sex workers or my understanding that laws such as this are harmful to them. In my experience most humans (though not all) desire sex, far more than appreciate cannabis. Which is a bummer for those of us who want cannabis legalized in our states.
Well, there are socially awkward nerds of all genders and orientations with active sex drives, so it really should be no problem to find people provided one is a decent and empathetic human.
There’s also drug stings, careless dealers, dealers with poor quality product or product cut with unknown additives.
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