HEY CRAIG, WHY ALL THE RANTING AND RAVING?
BY LEN SOUSA
The other day, I was doing what most out-of-work, recent college grads do on a typical Tuesday night: I was browsing craigslist.org. For those of you in the know, I don’t have to explain that craigslist is an online classifieds of sorts—offering items for sale, job listings, pets, event calendars, personal ads, and virtually anything else you can imagine. I was ostensibly searching craigslist for a job, but eventually started scouring for an appliance I didn’t really need. (Something like an omelette maker. I never eat omelettes but that may be due to their terrible habit of turning into scrambled eggs whenever I try to make them. With a machine designed to omelette-make, I reasoned, I could at last omelette-eat.) Unfortunately, I never found one.
I did, however, stumble upon craigslist’s peculiar world. Unlike a typical classifieds site, craigslist has several sections devoted to rather unusual topics. Forum headings like “casual encounters,” “missed connections,” and “housing swap” all caught my attention at first, but one called “rants and raves” proved the most interesting. In the Providence “rants and raves” section alone, there were over 40 posts each day with topics ranging from “Why people suck” to “Overheard in the ladies room, Providence Place Mall.” Headings only grew more diverse the further I explored. And so, omlette-less and with more time on my hands, I dove fingers first into the rants and raves of further craigslist cities.
Of course, before anyone is allowed entrance to read either a rant or a rave, they must first pass the Internet’s classic impenetrable defense system used by bootleg and pornography websites alike: the warning page. One that reads, in part (and in red): “I understand rants and raves may include patently offensive content…I am not bothered by patently offensive content. By clicking on the rants and raves link below, I will have released and discharged the providers, owners and creators of this site from any and all liability which may arise from my use of the site.” (Can’t you just see them brushing the liability off their shoulders?) Fortunately, like any American whose watched a Bush speech for more than a few minutes, I’ve become desensetized to most patently offensive content, and clicked right on in.
Given the amount of personal weblogs, message boards, chat rooms, and newsgroups on the Internet, a fair argument could be made describing the world wide web as nothing more than a world wide collection of rants and raves. What makes the assortment on craigslist so unique is the absolute anonymity of the postings. Most webpages offer comments from individuals who have identified themselves in some way (perhaps as the host of their own website or participant in a forum geared toward a specific subject). On craigslist, the posts are from entirely anonymous men and women—with even more anonymous email addresses (the website offers the option of masking contact information)—who often express obnoxious, and sometimes disturbing, sides to their personalities for the sole reason of doing so.
In one unsettling post, dated January 10, 2006, a man from New York City titled his message, “Rant: My mother died this evening. Rave: She was a great mom.” And describes in detail his mother’s declining health and eventual death, writing, “I can't believe I don't have parents anymore. I'm 34, own my own place, have a lot of good close friends…but I can't help but think—it's all not quite as good without my mom and dad…I almost wish I didn't have a good relationship with them, maybe this would be easier.”
Now what can anyone say to him? Should we simply feel pity and move on? Write him through his anonymous email address and offer equally anonymous words of consolement? It’s striking that one of his first instincts following his mother’s death was to post an anonymous message on the Internet. Perhaps in his time of need he simply craved a platform where he could express his feelings and not feel as though he were burdening anyone else with his pain. It’s hard to tell what he had in mind. His post simply ends, “That’s the human condition, I suppose.”
But for every touching account of personal trouble, there are just as many (perhaps more) off-beat rants. In one, an airline passenger from Denver told the story of a woman she sat beside who used her armrest for the duration of the flight. Apparently unwilling to ask her to move at the time, she sought refuge in the anonymous shelter of a world wide rant, posting a message that claimed she had been robbed of “four inches of comfort and privacy”—going so far as to request payment for her portion of missing room, calculated to exactly $27.70. If this message was a joke, the punchline is lost in the writer’s insistence on naming her co-passenger “the fat girl on the plane to Charlotte.” Though she is willing to clarify. “I by no means hate fat people. I believe in the freedom to do or eat anything you want so long as it does not infringe on my freedom.” Words to live by, certainly, but I wonder if she will ever receive the money she so desperately seeks.
In my attempt to break the Internet’s fourth wall and contact the two anonymous users who had posted these very different messages, I met with failure each time. Both of my emails bounced back as undeliverable. It seems that craigslist had given them the self-contained, anonymous existence they sought. One without need for explanation or further discourse. Letting them share their voices for one minute and pull a Keyser Soze disappearing act the next. Perhaps it’s just as well. These one-sided Dear Abby letters seem to have served their purpose and there are hundreds more on every version of craigslist from Albany to Zurich all doing the same. Some uncomfortably troubling (like a married man from Hartford requesting a sexual tryst); and others more troublingly uncomfortable (like “cute male paw paw tree seeks healthy deep-rooted paw paw to exchange pollen in early spring”).
Whether your appetite is for the heartfelt, the colorful, or the downright unusual, there’s plenty of fodder to feast on in a craigslist “rants and raves” forum. Though the only reason for it may be the simple ability to share anything with an assortment of perfectly inperfect strangers. In the countless channels of the world wide web, there’s no better excuse than complete anonymity to be entirely ourselves—for better, for worse, and for downright bizarre.
Originally Published:
The Noyse
