Craigslist = Magic Ads

It took me a while, but I finally cracked it. I solved the mystery of “Who the hell are these people on Craigslist?”.

This has puzzled me for a while. The people on Craigslist aren’t like you and me. They have email and know how to surf the web, but that tends to be where the similarity ends. For the most part these people aren’t particularly geeky and are as likely to work in a coffee shop or own a tire store as to work in technology.

One thing sets the typical Craigslist user apart from me: Insistence on using the phone and apparent distaste for email. I suspect that this group thinks of email being like regular mail… Something you check once a day at most, and only when you’re expecting something. Sometimes the reluctance to email borders on rude. And sometimes the literary skill reflected in those reluctant emails borders on… fourth-grade.

So where the hell do these people come from, these folks who can manage to read and post ads on a website, but can’t manage to handle the social graces of email?

Magic Ads. That’s right, Magic Ads. In case you don’t know what the hell Magic Ads are, I’ll briefly fill you in. Magic Ads are (or were, I haven’t seen them in many years) this crappy little free newspaper that you could pick up on your way out of the grocery store. “Newspaper” isn’t really the correct term though, because there was no news. As the name implies, the paper contained ads. As for the “magic” part? I can only conclude the magic was from the dreadfully magical yellow color which the paper was printed on. Otherwise not a lot of magic was involved.

Magic Ads ran ads for all sorts of things. Some of the ads were for accident attorneys or car repair shops. But the great majority of ads were small classified ads like you might find in any newspaper. These ads were just very, very cheap to run.

Magic Ads kind of existed on the periphery of the culture, but everyone knew about them. And often they were the first stop when someone had something to buy or sell or some other “need” to fill. As a result a small culture evolved around them. Sound familiar?

So the answer is Magic Ads. Everyone that used Magic Ads or any of the other shitty little papers like it around the country have all ended up on Craigslist. I’m sure you’re as glad as I am that the mystery has finally been solved.