1/30/09: Getting real personal in mostly virtual way

Recently, I realized I needed more local friends.

I could pontificate here on the fragmentation of modern society, the industrialization of things that used to be personal and the disaffection caused by modern communication methods and media that may have gotten me to this point, but I won’t.

This isn’t a story about how I needed to find friends because globalization is a lonely making force.This is actually a story about how I found them.

Two weeks into the new year, I posted an ad on Craigslist, a Web site community familiar to most who consider themselves geeks, nerds or hipsters.

I’m using the word “community” here deliberately; Craigslist isn’t only a dating site like Match.com or eHarmony. It isn’t a career site like Monster or Idealist.org. And it doesn’t only offer free things to people willing to pick them up like a regional Freecycle listserve group. Craigslist is a do-it-yourself version of all of these things in one.

And it’s free, and is organized by geographic location, which was what I was looking for.

I was a Craigslist novice when I first looked up the personals section on the Hartford network, but I knew enough to realize that the “strictly platonic” category of personal ad was more for hook-ups than friendship-building. So I posted my ad in the section I thought would get me the most responses: “women seeking men.”

I introduced myself to central Connecticut as a nerd looking for people to hang out with, sat back and waited to see what I’d get back.

I was almost immediately overwhelmed with responses: In the first three days of my ad being posted, I got e-mails from no fewer than 50 different e-mail addresses.

True, some of these were spam ads for other “dating sites,” and some were from men looking for the sorts of relationships I wasn’t interested in — but the majority were from real people looking, as I had been, for a sense of connection.

I was touched, personally, by the positive responses I’d gotten. But beyond that, I was shocked by how many people out there — how many of us — are searching hopefully for others to have fun with, relate to and share their ideas and passions.

I got e-mails from people who liked the same music I liked, filled with “they’re great, aren’t they?” types of comments. I instant-messaged about the comic books I’ve read and the independent coffee shops I like to hang out at. I learned a bit more about towns I’d grown up near but never investigated.

I found a local whose hometown in China is an hour away from my adopted hometown, and a fellow nerd who took me to task for never having seen “Dr. Who.”

I was charmed by the people I wrote to, and even more charmed by the ones I met. Who knew central Connecticut was so full of engaging people?

I decided to do a little more digging and see how deep this vein went.

It wasn’t all sunshine and springtime: One responder said I was the first person he’d replied to on Craigslist who was real — the rest had all been spam ads.

And Mike Z. of Berlin has had plenty of trouble finding the connection he’s looking for.

Mike has been posting a new ad on the Hartford Craigslist most days since Jan. 2. He says he’ll continue posting for 30 days, or until he starts corresponding with someone interesting — and real.

Next week, Mike’s story.