A controversial case study mapping the response to a faux sexual advertisement on Craigslist indicates a largely one sided response from men. What is interesting about this trend, besides that the data suggests a nationwide similarity in the male expectation of casual solicitation requests, is the utter disregard for common sense exercised regarding private information. Demographic lesson: if you dangle a carrot, the rabbit comes out of its hole.
Premise: I was surfing through the job listings at Craigslist, and inevitably wandered my way into the personals section, and became instantly fascinated with all the posts. I eventually made my way into the “Sex with no strings attached” section, and immediately wondered: Could this be real? Is it really this easy to get laid by simply logging in and making a post, when so many other people out there have to struggle to get laid the normal way? It didn’t take long to realize that for every female who posted, there were anywhere from ten to twenty males posting, and several of the posts mentioned that half the girls who posted were just spammers, which led me to believe that the ratio was even greater than that. So with this curiosity in mind, I set out to find out how hard it was to get laid using Craigslist, or rather, how many people actually responded to the “No strings attached” ads.
Methods of experimentation: I picked three cities: New York, Chicago, and Houston, and posted ads to each city, using different email addresses for each ad. For each city I posted four ads: One pretending to be a straight female looking for sex with a male, another one as a straight male looking for sex with a female, another as a bicurious male looking for sex with another male, and one as a bisexual female looking for sex with another female. I said basically the same thing in each ad and didn’t include a pic or much personal information, except that I had just moved into the city. I then sat back and let the emails build up in the inbox, and then went through every single one to assess the results, which are as follows.
Results: Here are the stats on how many people responded to each person.
New York:
Straight female looking to have sex with a male: 165 responses
Straight male looking to have sex with a female: 0 responses
Bi-curious male looking to have sex with a male: 9 responses
Bisexual female looking to have sex with a female: 2 responses
Chicago:
Straight female looking to have sex with a male: 200 responses
Straight male looking to have sex with a female: 0 responses
Bi-curious male looking to have sex with a male: 6 responses
Bisexual female looking to have sex with a female: 2 responses
Houston:
Straight female looking to have sex with a male: 54 responses
Straight male looking to have sex with a female: 1 response
Bi-curious male looking to have sex with a male: 10 responses
Bisexual female looking to have sex with a female: 1 response
Your chances of getting laid through Craigslist: A Bloggasm case study
Comments
I was very intrigued by what you had found. It gives you an edge and tells a hell of lot about human beings when it comes to marketing. I was wondering if you did the same sort of test outside of the casual sex section. Ie..men seeking women,women seeking men. My guess is that the numbers go up for men. Not by much but they should. Craigslist is probably no different they any other dating site,news paper ad or party for that matter. If you have some time to get back to me that would be great.
Bruce
Now you really got me thinking. What about the other variables. How many can I think of:
Take one demopgaphic you did:Chicago. Now I will try and ad other variables to what you had found and see if you either have an opinion or have already done this somewhere else:
Straight female looking to have sex with a male: 200 responses
Straight male looking to have sex with a female: 0 responses
Bi-curious male looking to have sex with a male: 6 responses
Bisexual female looking to have sex with a female: 2 responses
Add variables:
All four of the above with a picture included. There are five different combinations of pictures to place I can think of
1. Face and body together fully clothed
2. Just a face.
3. Just a body fully clothed.
4. Face and body naked.
5. Just the Body naked.
Will our number’s change when adding these variables?
Then do the same test you did in the “regular personals” section,exept we only need to post two catagories instead of 4.
1. Male seeking female.
2. Female seeking male.
One ad with a picture and one without a picture for each catagory. Common sense tells me that nude pictures do not apply here,but the two other combinations can.
If I thought I knew how to do this with the most accurate reading I would do it myself,but I don’t think I am educated enough. Anyway thanks for your time.
Bruce
Thank you Bruce I thought that there was something wronge with me. I figure that personal cantact is the first step but how do you get there? In aswer to your coment I never said that before, and part of my statment was a question . Sounds as if you press a putton and print that