Today's post is brought to you by Fiona Apple's song "Criminal"

How to conduct your own Craigslist Experiment

Warnings

1. I can only speak for Washington State. Laws in your state may differ. For example, an ideal location to try this is Alabama since most laws there excuse actions when they're between family members. I'm pretty sure it's legal to solicit sex from your half brother, as long as you're doing it to the half that isn't your brother.
2. It is specifically against the Craigslist Terms of Use to screw around. Craigslist is serious business. Violate their TOU, and they'll *gasp* terminate your account! If this gives you pause, this experiment may not be for you. Try something a little less stressful. Like sleep.
3. But, it is specifically stated in the Craigslist TOU, "you understand that ... by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise objectionable." So, all your victims have been forewarned. Woe is he who believes in the Craigslist Illusion of Trust!
4. If you're going to be a brave soul and make your identity publicly known, be prepared for things like lots and lots and lots of phone calls, some prank pizzas, a few death threats, pictures of you drunk up on national and international news, and so forth and so on. It's the peace corps of attention whoring: the toughest spotlight you'll ever love.
5. Don't worry about lawsuits. They won't happen. Don't worry about getting stalked or beaten. Not gonna happen. You're waiting for idiots on Craigslist. If they had money and intelligence, they wouldn't be replying to shitty fake ads on Craigslist with their entire life story. For bonus points, post under the name "lonelygirl15" and see how many people still reply.
6. If you have your own business, don't worry about that either. Your clients won't care about your personal life, except for those that thought your experiment was goddamned funny. In fact, you may just pick up one new client who found out about you through your stunt and admired your professional work. LOL!

Your Target

You need to decide what your target audience will be. Generic horny men? Polygays? Catholic School Girls? Generic Catholic polygay horny men dressed as school girls? Chances are, no matter what you pick, you'll just attract someone like this:

Zaarra zaarra@pobox.com Ok, this is a reality check. If you are real, then we're good to go, because I am too. I'll give you exactly what you need. I'm an experienced smart creative Dominant and will take you down just the way you like it. Z

Which is pretty much what you want. Next, you'll want to select the appropriate city for your experiment. I selected Seattle because I just know the town. We're insane. We're also pussies. It's considered rude to honk at someone who cuts you off in this town. That's how lame we are. No matter what you select, you'll find a goldmine of sexual perversion. Humans are just freaky. And why shouldn't we be? Freaky sex is the best kind of sex. Seriously, you haven't lived until you've had sex with a midget. Tucker Max taught me that. Anyway. Just make sure you select a city with a decent CL population. If you haven't seen a personals ad posted in at least three days, you're looking at a ghost town. Move along, li'l doggie.

Your ad must be tailored around a particular fetish that all men have: a woman who openly wants sex. If you can capture this fetish in your ad post, then the world will be your oyster. It will be a sticky oyster that has no concept of foreplay or identity verification. But it will be yours, nonetheless. Keep it stored in a cool, dry place.

The easiest thing to do is just lift someone else's ad. If you lift the ad we used, and you can get more than 178 replies, I will formally call you a God and send you a certification of Deityhood that you can hang on your wall. However, most of you will want to go the extra mile and write something fresh and inspiring. Here are some ideas off the top of my head:

• baby girl is looking for a dildo king to stuff all her holes
• furry dom kitty wants to put a sub pup with a huge cock in his place
• cross dresser curious wants to explore his catholic school girl fantasy
• twink seeks bear couple for play time
• rape survivor seeks eunich
• recently divorced woman from the only man she ever had sex with seeks education with young studs

And it goes on and on. It really depends on just how sick, twisted, and brave you are. Bonus points if you can select a slice of the population that is thoroughly misunderestimated or just plain stupid.

Decide whether you want to use a thrillingly hot photo of a woman as the shiny shiny lure on your internet fishing pole of doom, or if you want something a little more homely in an attempt to attract those who like to aim below the bar in order to esuage all fears of rejection. I'm pretty sure as long as it's female, it will work.

Note for those going after the gay community: I know the first thought coming to your head is to use a photo of me. But, that's just not fair. I'm wayyyyyy too pretty for the gay community. Believe me, they try and they try and they try. In fact, several of them purchased a lot of my LiveJournal paid time. And I said to myself, "so this is how blonde women feel in the workplace! That's so neat!"

Also make sure you exclude some subgroup. It can be black people, white people, Star Trek fans, whatever. This will be important when differentiating between horny men who know what they want versus idiots who just reply to every personal ad hoping to find something that bites. We call those people smelt fishers. Smelt fishers deserve to be laughed at for being total losers.

The Launch

Okay, so you have your ad, your pic, and your intended audience and city. Now it's time to go Enola Gay on their asses. Make sure you use a clean e-mail address that won't get mixed up with your own. There's nothing like accidentally hitting reply to a message talking about hot freaky bear sex and replying thinking it's your mom. I recommend using gmail, since the text ads that show up next to the responses are frequently more hysterical than the responses themselves.

Keep the ad up for at least 24 hours. That way you get the nighttime freaky deakies, and you get all the dumbasses replying from work addresses during the day. Yes, yes, yes, Craigslist forbids reposting ads that get taken down by the abuse community. But, seriously, what's the lawsuit going to look like? "OMG U POSTED 8 TIMEZ THAT IZ NOT NYYYYCE YOU GIVE US MUNNNEY!"

Once you have collected a decent number of replies, you'll need to build a wiki page so that your experiment and all the replies are well documented and easily browsed. If you want to buy hosting space to do this, then buy something in Russia or Sweden, or find a "safe harbor" ISP. If you don't mind having your broadband internet slowed to a crawl, you can build your own webserver and host it from home! It's economical, and you suddenly become your own web host, which means you make the rules! Yippie, hooray!

Also make sure you post CPM ads on your site. Yes, ppc ads are nice too, but when it comes to sudden, massive traffic, CPM is where its at. If you end up having longevity, look into affiliate marketing. In fact, you should check out this complete, up-to-date ebook on getting started in affiliate marketing!

Sit Back And Watch The Lulz Grow!

Okay, now comes the big event: seeing what happens when everyone finds out about what you've done. I have a few more helpful tips.

Seriously, if you're brave enough to identify yourself in all of this, make sure you throw out a few false bread crumbs to keep people guessing and arguing amongst themselves. Many many idiots will congratulate themselves for being WHOIS sleuths, and others will try to freak you out with archive.org. That's okay. Messing with them later by having multiple addresses and blocking your archive later will achieve maximum lulz.

Show up and disappear sporadically. People will try to track you! Your sightings will be reported and cross referenced. Be sure to throw out misinformation. This is also for finding information leaks in your friendship web. It will also help you identify who knows you best by who is able to say "he probably disappeared on purpose just to create more drama."

Be prepared for a LOT of online attention. Dozens of news sites, thousands of blogs, all powered by self-righteous morons. Seriously, if you didn't believe it before, you will come to understand that America is full of imbeciles who take everything way too seriously. And, it won't be like there's a lot of discussion, either. It will be one big loud chorus of angry, whiny bitches who can't think 5 minutes into the future to save their lives. It's enough to make you wonder if the whole world is Lutheran, or something.

You'll find out who your sane and insane friends are. But, generally, your friends will continue to be your friends. Be honest with them, and let them determine things for themselves. If some of your friends are hot, try to have sex with them. Especially if they approve of what you've done. You may now refer to these friends as "groupies." If the news comes calling, you may choose to give interviews. I would recommend it. My big mistake was not giving more interviews. The guy from waxy tried contacting me. I totally should have taken his IM. But, being the n00b I was to international notoriety, I didn't quite know which way to go. Trust me, folks, just do it. There's no such thing as bad press here. And, if you can get some obsessed blogger to write a complete history of your recent life as documented in your public LiveJournal that you meant to be public, then so much the better. Cult of personality and all that.

Okay, this next section is so important, I've decided to give it its own section:

Toying With Responders Who Decide To Contact You

Now, this is a little more intangible than what I've written above. So, I'll do my best to talk about this nebulous area. Some call it trolling, some call it griefing. I call it walking idiots through their irrational decision making processes and laughing at them when they realize what fools they are. Or when they fail to realize and flail about ceaselessly like a fish that can't understand that you got it to hop out of its tank and you won't put it back in. So vicious!

On second thought, trolling is much easier to say.

So, yes. The art of trolling. I've been doing it for so long, and I've changed so many minds through it I almost can't describe it in a short sentence here. (Except that I already did above.) There are many flavors and styles. I've tried them all. Some work better than others. Getting idiots to come to you is by far the best. You can use my trolling as an example to get you started. Or, just ask anyone on LiveJournal to clue you in about me. I'm sure there are dozens of people who are still bitter.

There are the three important rules for any good troll:

1. Don't actually get mad. It's important to stay light hearted and Tom Greenishly playful to pull off a good troll.
2. Don't engage in name calling unless you have a Hannibal Lecter level of skill in making people feel 3 inches tall.
3. Don't defend yourself. If someone accuses you of something, you must always turn it around on them. Don't actually address their accusations because you'll just get off on a CNN Crossfire sized tangent about the details, and the lulz will then die.

That about takes care of that. I know a ton of trolls are now bemoaning me for handing out all our best tricks. For them, I quoth from Wargames: "Mister Potato Head! Mister Potato Head! ... They're not tricks."

For You Poor Bastards Who Replied To One Of These Experiments

Okay, your life isn't over. Not by a long shot.

• If you were stupid enough to cheat on your wife or reply from a work address, then I have no sympathy for you. Pls go die.
• If you just gave out a phone number or used an easily recognizable photo or name, then yeah, you're going to get some attention. Sorry. Try not to freak out. Take deep breaths. Recognize that your friends will laugh at you for a little bit, and you'll get some prank phone calls. Maybe a feminist will write you a nastygram. If this is making you cry then grow the fuck up. Be the real man you claimed you were on your response, faggot. You should be able to take a hit in the solar plexus without flinching.
• If you did not use any personally identifiable information and you used a safe, anonymous e-mail address, then good for you! Gold star.

If you're a wife or a boyfriend or a whatever of one of these Chachis, then oh well. Life's a bitch and you're involved with one. You can either deal with it or flame about aimlessly and be totally unproductive. It's your call, Joanie.

If you're a 10 year old and wondering why you're looking at a photo of Uncle Joey's cock, then all I can say is your mommy is evil and wrong for letting you use the internets unsupervised. You should draw a 666 on her forehead while she's sleeping and then go play in the street. That'll teach her.

If you're nothing but a concerned citizen, save your breath. Seriously. In all the blog posts and responses I've seen, there hasn't been a single comment that has moved me or made me reconsider. I know you think you're taking a moral high ground by denouncing this shit, but you just come off as yet another idiotic, baseless, unthinking American trashbag whose flexgrips are starting to look a little stretched. Time to send yourself to the dumpster and get rid of all that shit you're carrying around.

The Wrapup

So there you have it. Everything you need to pull off a successful Craigslist Experiment, including all the stuff that I failed to do. Now, realistically, you probably won't get the press that I did. I don't even know why I got the press I did. This was just a thing. My friend and I got curious about what kind of replies an ad would get, and when I saw all the people who willingly surrendered personal information, I decided to post it and talk about it and have a good chuckle with my LJ friends. Normally, when we do this sort of social hacking stuff, it lasts about three days, gets a little attention and we all move on. But this just kept getting bigger and bigger. Sure, I tested the waters with a couple interviews and some guidance from internet pros. But never did I have any idea it would get as big as it did until it was all over. This, along with me learning the Macarena, will be one of the big mysteries of my life. So, I guess if your experiment gets really big, we'll know about it soon enough.

Until then, take care of yourselves. And each other.