Common Pitfalls To Avoid On Craigslist Personals

Updated 13 years ago, March 2, 2012

Some of us are here looking for love. Some of us are here looking for sex. Some of us are here looking for a simple date, a way to pass the time in this swamp full of transients. Many would take any one of the three, depending on the difficulty of the day and the phase of the moon. Judging by the responses my previous ad garnered, many people are “new to this” and were “looking for a couch when [they] accidentally clicked on personals and found [my] ad intriguing”. Those of you who have “never done anything like this before,” welcome! This list of common pitfalls to avoid is my gift to you. Those of you who post a version of the same ad every 72 hours, or a slightly different one every two weeks — and we ladies know who you are — maybe this list will help you find what you seek. Bonne chance to us all!

1. It’s PIQUE not PEAK or PEEK. Do you pique my interest with your bad spelling? No, you certainly do not.

2. It’s DISCREET not DISCRETE. Do I want a DISCRETE relationship, meaning one where we are separate entities and individually distinct? Perhaps; I’m a modern woman. But you, you married pervert, mean to say DISCREET.

3. You kinky fool, you’re trying to say that you are DOMINANT not DOMINATE. DOMINANT men DOMINATE people for sexy funtime. See the difference? I’m no sub myself, but what kind of woman respects a master who can’t even correctly identify himself?

4. Please, don’t send me links to your website. I will not join! Good for you, Mr. Indignant Internet Smart Guy, but the bots that are sending you those links aren’t reading your post. They’re spamming everyone, so don’t feel singled out. I won’t go so far as to say our robot overlords can’t read, but I will say that they are not reading your horny CL rantings. No offense.

5. All of you $poilers and ski bunny seekers and rose offerers are beyond my help and I wash my hands of you… actually, I Purell my hands of you, because there is simply no way you’re not crawling with STDs.

6. Are you so awesome that you can write a list of what you require in a date and list no identifying characteristics about yourself — whether it’s that you’re a FIFA fanatic or a beer snob or a hottie or a geeky hipster — and get good responses? No, you are not. I speak for all vagina-havers when I say this. Tell us a little something about yourselves to PIQUE our interest, please. Make it worth our while to hit reply.

7. ALL CAPS MAKE YOU SEEM INSANE. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man who cannot find the caps lock key will never find the clitoris.

8. Oh, one more spelling error: in all your life, have you really not had the SENSE to learn that it isn’t spelled SENCE? No, not even in British English so don’t try it. Be gone with you.

9. No pic, no reply. This one is tempting, I know, and the ladies make this mistake as well. But a lot of you are perverts who collect our pictures so you can look at them and risk blindness, and you may be edging yourself out of some good replies if you take this route.

10. Text speak is for teenagers and the illiterate. If u r 2 lazy 2 type whole wrds then u r 2 lazy 2 b good in bed.

Bonus: If you have moved on to the interminable email exchange portion of the ordeal that is online dating, good for you! Maybe you are a catch after all. Let me give you a tip on how to improve communications, if improvement and an eventual date is what you’re after. Reply to her questions and ask some of your own. I know boys hate talking, and would prefer to whittle or whatever, but when you don’t know jack about someone it’s a bit difficult to keep the old email romance alive when men only respond to questions and never ask any. If you’re trying to shut things down for some reason, just disappear, or make a transparent excuse (My wi–uh, mother is calling me!) We’re used to it and it’s not as time-wasting as a lazy response.