Is Craigslist the Last Real Place on the Internet?
The writer and Comedian Megan Koester got her first writing job, in Internet pornography, through a Craigslist ad she responded to more than 15 years ago. Several years later, she used the classifieds site to find the rent-controlled apartment where she still lives today. When she wanted to buy property, she looked through Craigslist and found a plot of land in the Mojave Desert. She built a home there (not to mention she would later find out it wasn’t allowed) and furnished it entirely with finds from the free section of Craigslist, right down to the laminate flooring, which had previously been used by a production company.
“There are so many elements of my life that are steeped in Craigslist,” says Koester, 42, whose Instagram account is dedicated, at least in part, to cataloging screenshots of what she has dubbed “heartbreaking images” from the site’s free section; on the day we speak, she’s wearing a cashmere sweater that cost her nothing, other than the faith it took to respond to an ad without a photo. “I ride or die.”
Koester is one of countless Craigslist aficionados, many in their 30s and 40s, who not only still use the old-fashioned classifieds site but also consider it an essential, if anachronistic, part of their daily lives. It’s a place where anonymity is still possible, where money doesn’t need to be exchanged, and where strangers can form meaningful connections – for romantic pursuits, simple transactions, and even launching unusual creative projects, including experimental TV shows like The repetition on HBO and Amazon Freevee Jury duty. Unlike flashier online marketplaces such as DePop and its parent company, Etsy, or Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist doesn’t use algorithms to track users’ movements and predict what they want to see next. It doesn’t offer public profiles, rating systems, or “likes” and “shares” to distribute like social currency; As a result, Craigslist effectively discourages influence hunting and virality-seeking, behaviors that are often rewarded on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X. It’s a utopian vision of a much older, much more serious Internet.
“The real monsters come out on Craigslist,” Koester says. “There’s a purity to that.” Still, the site is a little tamer than before: Craigslist shut down its “casual encounters” ads and took its personals section offline in 2018, after Congress passed a law that would have put the company at the mercy of lists of potential sex traffickers. However, the “missed connections” section remains active.
The site is what Jessa Lingel, an associate professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, called the “ungentrified” Internet. If so, online gentrification has only accelerated in recent years, thanks in part to the proliferation of AI. Even Wikipedia and Reddit, visually basic sites created early on and with a Craigslist-like emphasis on fostering communities, have both incorporated their own versions of AI tools.
Some might argue that Craigslist, on the other hand, is obsolete; an article published in this magazine more than 15 years ago called it “underdeveloped” and “unpredictable.” But for the site’s most dedicated followers, that’s precisely its appeal.
“I think Craigslist is having a revival,” says Kat Toledo, an actress and comedian who regularly uses the site to hire co-hosts for her Los Angeles-based stand-up show, Besitos. “When something is structured so simply and really serves the community, and it doesn’t require much? That’s what survives.”
Toledo started using Craigslist in the 2000s and never stopped. Over the years, she has turned to the site to find romance, housing and even her current job as an assistant to a forensic psychologist. She’s worked there full time for nearly two years, defying Craigslist’s reputation as a provider of potentially sketchy one-off gigs. The stigma of the website sometimes being synonymous with scammers and, in more than one case, murderers, can be difficult to shake. “If I don’t do a good job,” Toledo jokes to his employer, “remember you found me on Craigslist.”
