The author and comedian Megan Koester got her first writing job, reviewing Internet pornography, from a Craigslist ad she answered more than 15 years ago. A few years after that, he used a listing website to find a rental property where he still lives today. When he wanted to buy a property, he searched Craigslist and found a property in the Mojave Desert. He built a living space in it (never mind that he would later find out it wasn’t allowed) and furnished it entirely with finds on the freebies section of Craigslist, down to the laminate flooring, which had been used by the manufacturing company.
“There’s a lot of stuff in my life that’s on Craigslist,” says Koester, 42, whose Instagram account is dedicated, at least in part, to listing screenshots of what he calls “horror photos” from the site’s free section; on the day we speak, he’s wearing a cashmere sweater that costs him nothing, except for the faith required to answer an ad without pictures. “I ride or I die.”
Koester is one of an untold number of Craigslist aficionados, mostly in their thirties and forties, who not only use the old-school classifieds site but also consider it an important, if anachronistic, part of their daily lives. It’s a place where anonymity is still possible, where money doesn’t have to be traded, and where strangers can make meaningful connections—through romance, direct transactions, and even airing unusual creative projects, including experimental TV shows like Rehearsal on HBO and Amazon Freevee Jury duty. Unlike flashy online marketplaces like DePop and its parent company, Etsy, or Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist doesn’t use algorithms to track users’ movements and predict what they want to see next. It does not offer public profiles, rating systems, or “likes” and “shares” as a form of social currency; as a result, Craigslist makes it obvious that stalking and virality—behaviors often rewarded on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X. It’s a complete vision of an earlier, more honest Internet.
“The real surprises come off Craigslist,” Koester said. “There’s an innocence to it.” Still, the site is in worse shape than ever: Craigslist shut down its “just meet” ads and took its personals section offline in 2018, after Congress passed legislation that would have put the company on the hook for potential sex traffickers. The “missed connection” category, however, remains active.
The site is what Jessa Lingel, associate professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, called the “unverified” internet. If so, then internet gentrification has only come to an end in recent years, due in part to the rise of AI. Even Wikipedia and Reddit, virtual reality sites originally created with a Craigslist-like emphasis on fostering communities, have both incorporated their own versions of AI tools.
Some might argue that Craigslist, by contrast, is outdated; an article published in the magazine more than 15 years ago called it “underdeveloped” and “unpredictable.” But for the site’s most dedicated fans, that’s its appeal.
“I think Craigslist is having a renaissance,” says Kat Toledo, an actress and comedian who often uses the site to hire editors for her LA-based show, Besitos. “If something is built in a simple way and really helps the community, and doesn’t ask for much?
Toledo started using Craigslist in the 2000s and hasn’t stopped. Over the years, he has turned to this place for romance, a place to live, and even his current job as a psychologist’s assistant. He worked there full-time for nearly two years, defying Craigslist’s reputation as a purveyor of potentially one-draw gigs. The stigma of a website, sometimes like scammers and, more than once, killers, can be hard to shake. “If I don’t do well,” Toledo joked with his employer, “just remember he found me on Craigslist.”
