Does Craigslist personals actually work?

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Dox47
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29 Jun 2010, 4:36 pm

I met my current girlfriend of 11 months on CL, and have met plenty of other great people there as well. There is a trick to it, I'll try to lay it out briefly since I've posted about this here before.

Post an ad yourself rather than replying to ads, many are fake and will just add your email to their spam database. Make them come to you so you don't put your email out there.

Post a pic! Very important, no one will take a chance on a pic-less ad.

Use a codeword! I can't emphasize this one enough! This is how you filter out the bots, and will change your entire CL experience. It's really simple, in your ad just conclude with "serious replies put X in the subject line" where "X" is your codeword. Make sure it's not something from your post title or really ubiquitous, the best are things like "put your favorite movie in the subject line" that require some thinking and can't be automated. Any replies without the codeword in the subject line go straight to the spam box.

Don't post thinking you're going to get laid the same night, that seldom works (I won't say never because it has...), but it usually comes off as desperate and/or sleazy. If you want a date for Friday night post on Wednesday afternoon, this gives you time to chat with any promising replies and further check them out. You also can run any email address or name you get past a few social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, etc), this can also help weed out any fakes.

On a related note, use a separate email from the one that you use to register for forums and social networking sites, it's way too easy for someone to run down all your personal information otherwise.

Everything else is pretty general to dating sites, don't put out too much information (they don't need to know your AS status until/unless things get serious), be honest about yourself and what you're looking for, and try not to be creepy. :wink:

Good luck!


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n4mwd
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30 Jun 2010, 10:04 pm

nick007 wrote:
Those types of questions are a measure of intelligence. I've encountered quite a few of them and they absolutely are relevant too some people.

Some people could be very smart & know the correct answers but give a wrong one because it is funny. It would be so much simpler to ask more direct questions about what you want/don't want & how you are ect instead of all that


A lot of girls are attracted to smart guys. So those kinds of questions are helpful in that respect. However, you don't need to answer any questions, but about 100 seems to be about minimal. A good photo is important. If you are good looking, the photo will get you email contacts. Nobody reads the profile if they don't like your picture. The questions are important because if they match the girl, it will show up in her list. The games aren't that important.



JazzofLife
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16 Jul 2010, 10:06 pm

Ergo_Proxy wrote:
Does anyone here use, or have used, Craigslist for finding a date or relationship? And if so, does it actually work? I've made a couple of "test" postings not too long ago to see what kind of responses, if any, I would get. And it seems that the vast majority of the replies are from bots (out of 34 total replies, I only know of one actual real reply).

I'm thinking of just replying to ads on the "women seeking men" section instead, but I'm not sure which ones are genuine :?


I kept getting a lot of sexually related emails from women on Craigslist. For me, didn't work. For others, might be a possibility.


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SodBreaker
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17 Jul 2010, 1:56 am

nick007 wrote:
eHarmony will NOT let me in after I took their profile questionnaire & they did not even send me the results after; said I'd have to sign up to see em but they wouldn't let me sign up because they reject 1in4 people. Freaking waist of my time :x


Same here. I thought it was just me.

I tried the Craigslist personals No success Alot of bots and one girl from the czech republic that something didn't seem right about turned out to be one of these scams where the send you a check and your Supposed to mail it back or something. Emailed back and forth for abnout 2 months though before she tried to swing her trap.

Sodbreaker



ALguy1957
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10 Nov 2013, 6:31 am

I read somewhere CL personal replies were about 84% spam. I use it too in addition to dating sites, but my replies are more like 99.8% spam.... Maybe 1 out of 500 replies is real. I've tried looking in the women seeking men section too but very few women post in there --- about one ad far every ten male ads. They did improve it using an anonymous reply system so you can exchange messages without a scammer getting your real email address. Now 99% of the replies are from bots sending messages asking you to text out of state phone numbers. ( or use free email addresses )



MadeUnderground
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10 Nov 2013, 6:19 pm

Well I tried and got two real responses (live in a town of 100,000), but I only kept it up for a week.

1. Wanted to hook up for teh sekz and I was too scared to keep talking to her. She freaked me out and I'm not into casual sex.

2. Second wound up being a college student in a neighboring town ('bout a 20 minute drive away), we talked on the phone and e-mail for a couple of weeks then hung out in person a couple of times, hooked up a couple of times, then I got busy (I think I got deeper into my alcoholism and sort of cut the world out) so I just stopped talking to her.



AdamAutistic
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10 Nov 2013, 8:47 pm

yes i have met a few people off there in the past. they were mean to me.


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aspiemike
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11 Nov 2013, 12:08 pm

I guess it works if you enjoy being scammed or hooking up with a guy who was posing as a girl.


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11 Nov 2013, 1:29 pm

CL can work you just gotta use different sense. Require them to put something in the subject line. Don't reply to ads asking you for a photo first. If they display a number in their first email, don't text them. When you meet, meet at a public place and tell others where you're going. Yes there are scams on CL but they are avoidable. My first relationship was a woman from CL. It's a harsh environment though. And if you are on there you might want to lower some of your standards. It is CL after all. :P


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TheGoggles
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11 Nov 2013, 2:02 pm

If you have to use Craigslist for anything, I'd definitely meet in a very crowded public place. One of the biggest scams around here is meeting someone off of Craigslist, and that person then calls in a group of accomplices to rob the person. Another guy was selling his truck. When the guys showed up, they killed him and took his truck to a party.

This is more of an issue when it comes to selling items because thieves know you're bringing valuable items with you to meet them, but you should still be very careful.



Mindslave
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11 Nov 2013, 3:22 pm

Occasionally the platonic section has a few good people, but every other section is BS. I met someone who wanted a relationship on there, but I decided I didn't like her enough. Another girl was already in a relationship and wanted to be friends, but I moved to Virginia before I could meet her. Generally, there's nothing Craigslist can do that Ok Cupid can't do, besides, of course, getting right down to messaging. Because Craigslist is anonymous, it can be easier to talk to people, but just in the sense of making things up as you go without having fake "standards" to get in the way. Standards on a dating site is proportional to that person's ego. If someone is too good to have a regular conversation, that person is not ready for a friendship or a relationship.



Stargazer43
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11 Nov 2013, 5:46 pm

Craigslist scares me



thewhitrbbit
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12 Nov 2013, 12:11 am

My friend met her husband on it so it can work but yeah, you have to do a lot to protect yourself.



diablo77
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14 Nov 2013, 3:58 pm

I met my girlfriend who I hope I will spend my life with on CL, as well as my former long-term relationship. One of my best friends met her husband there. Maybe we're the exceptions, but it does happen. Plus I have a lesbian friend who met her long-term girlfriend there - that doesn't disprove the "only if you're gay" claim, I guess, but it does show that you can find real relationships there. I will tell you what my now-married friend told me: if you're going to use CL to try to find someone, be very specific about who you are and what you want, be patient and willing to sift through a lot of debris (spammers, scammers, people who send one-sentence misspelled invitations to hook up and/or pictures of their body parts, etc.) in order to find the maybe one quality person in the mix. All you need is one, after all.



Ladywoofwoof
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14 Nov 2013, 7:23 pm

Stargazer43 wrote:
Craigslist scares me


8O Me too...



ALguy1957
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08 Aug 2014, 5:51 am

I started using CL more lately since most of the women I try to contact on regular dating sites are never online, don't reply, or have too narrow an age preference set. I got bold and tried posting ads for an aspie or a woman on physical or mental disability. Or putting catchy titles like "seeking child free woman" It can work - - I get a few legitimate replies every week or two. Made a few facebook friends off of there and even got one date. It's easy to spot the fakes and I started flagging all the spam/scam replies. That seems to be working. I didn't get hardly any the past few days. The advantage of CL is that it is all current and posting an ad makes the woman contact you first. Also no worries about age ranges and other restrictions a lot of people set on dating sites. Any one can reply. I almost hit it off with a woman a few months ago, but she turned out to be too far away. (Like two CL cities away)