Timothy Luke Hopkins

Craigslist Ain’t Just For Creepers

Whenever I tell people that I’m searching for a new roommate using Craigslist, they all seem to cringe (or, if online, they use the weird disappointed/half-frowney-face :/ emoticon) and ask, “Aren’t you afraid of the Craigslist killer?”

As if the definition of “killer” didn’t register in my brain, they paint a more vivid picture: “What if they move in and chop you up into little pieces while you sleep? What then?”

“I guess they’d have a hard time getting their security deposit back,” I say. Or, “I’m not too worried. The place ain’t cheap – I doubt they could cover both halves of the rent.”

There are creepers out there on Craigslist, for sure. But from my own experience and that of many of the people I talk to, they’re the exception, not the rule.

In my six years of using the site, I’ve been fortunate enough to find one like-new ping pong table for free, dozens of beer and wine glasses for cheap; several reliable buyers for random items I wanted to unload and, notably, three fantastic, trustworthy, non-murderous roommates.

I don’t blame people for having those lingering fears. Worst case scenarios are the only ones the news seems to give attention; it’s not like my finding a ping pong table for free is going to make the nighttime local news, in spite of how great the deal was, and how I managed to not get kidnapped and violated in the process. Success stories are great to hear, in theory, but they don’t tune viewers in as much as scary stories.

Another part of the blame goes to Craigslist’s plain and slightly sketchy design. I mean, with as many visitors they manage to land on their site, you’d think they could spring for a designer to make their site a little more aesthetically pleasing. Hell, they could post an ad on Craigslist to redesign Craigslist. They’d get several suitable suitors. I know it from experience. They know it from site statistics.

I’m currently undergoing the process of replacing an outgoing roommate. We’ve lived together for two years and were friends for several years before that. That was the ideal roommate situation — finding a friend whom you know and trust to be respectful, clean and relatively non-psychotic — but having had multiple great situations where I found reliable, trustworthy people on Craigslist, I’m confident in the process Craigslist provides: Several people apply. You interview a fraction of those and choose the best-of-the-best, to the best of your ability and powers of predictive lucky-guessing. Could someone randomly come in and go berserk? Sure. Is it likely? Not really.*

One of the new trends on the web seems to be websites that involve placing trust in strangers for renting rooms (AirBnb), finding dates (OkCupid, Match, Blendr) and meeting strangers to hang out with (MeetUp, FourSquare, Facebook Places). These sites seem to have enormous success, with only a few bad scenarios on record. Even celebrities are getting on the stranger-ain’t-danger web bandwagon. In some cases, safeguards get placed to prevent future terrible scenarios. Or, you do your own planning and bring a friend to your next stranger meetup/exchange for the extra layer of safety. Either way, improvements can be made.

There’s a whole world out there full of good-natured human beings. You could spend your life afraid of every stranger out there, assuming they’re out to pull one over on you, or you can take a chance at landing a great deal, or meeting someone new who you would’ve never encountered before this current internet age, who could be your next best roommate, friend, mate or owner of that widget you always wanted to own without breaking the bank.

Disclaimer: Kids, do not take this advice until you’re a full-blown grown-up. Now that I think about it, by the time you’re grown the internet will have changed and you’ll be able to teleport away from danger with the flick of a wrist or blink of the eye. In fact, wait until that technology emerges before moving forward into the interweb’s wide-open marketplace.

*If my new roommate turns out to be Craigslist Killer #2, I permit all readers of this to show up to my funeral – whenever I turn up from the woods or wherever my bits and pieces are hidden – and say, “I told him this’d happen. Dumb arse.”