For most college students, hook-ups and relationships come from people met at parties, mutual friends, etc. However, for some, meeting people can be difficult. These people sometimes turn to dating websites like eHarmony or Match.com. I am not writing about these people—dating websites are a perfectly legitimate way to meet people in our modern, fast-paced world. However, some lonely people turn to darker corners of the internet to satisfy their desires. For this year’s sex issue, I made the horrible decision of agreeing to write about the shadowy world that is Craigslist sex.

Craigslist is a classified ads website that allows anyone to post for free. It has sections devoted to all kinds of things—jobs, concert tickets, used furniture, you name it. The most interesting section, however, is the personal ads—and more specifically, the “casual encounters” section. “Casual encounters” is filled with nothing but ads soliciting sex in every conceivable form. I was interested in talking to some of the people posting on the “casual encounters” section of Craigslist and hearing their side of the story—why did they turn to Craigslist for love? Are they frequent posters? How successful have they been in establishing connections using Craigslist? A lot of these answers, it turns out, were not things I wanted to hear.

My original plan was to send out an email to a bunch of people who had posted ads on the “casual encounters” section and ask if they would be interested in answering some anonymous questions. Several people suggested I conduct interviews in person, but I was a tad worried about being murdered, so I stuck to email. I sent out 50 emails to begin with. I tried to avoid ads with lewd photos (this turned out to be incredibly difficult). The results: 35 people did not respond, seven simply responded with “no thanks” or something similar, four responded with something along the lines of “f— you” and four people responded that they would be willing to talk.

However, I hit a massive roadblock in my investigation when Gmail deactivated my account. For some reason, it looks suspicious when you create an account and send out nothing but dozens of form emails to postings on a website soliciting sex from strangers. Due to the tragic deactivation of my account, I was not able to get any meaningful answers from the four brave souls (well, five—one respondent was a couple) who said they would talk. I had to turn to other methods.

I decided to adapt my methodologies and simply post several fake ads on the St. Louis Craigslist and see what the responses were. I posted four ads: one for a woman seeking a man with whom to spend Valentine’s Day, one for a man seeking a man, one that said “group of hot girls looking for cute nerdy guy ;)” and one nonsensical one that had “ORGY!!!…” written in all caps and some pictures of cows. In 24 hours, I got 184 responses.

Not surprisingly, the post about the group of hot girls looking for a nerdy guy got the most responses, with a total of 102. Some of these respondents saw right through my disguise and sent emails saying things such as “Really?” or “I don’t believe you exist. PICS PLZ.” Others tried to prove how nerdy they were by saying “I’m a librarian!” or “I like Star Wars!” or even “I wear ninja turtle pajamas!” The ads for the woman seeking a man and a man seeking a man got a total of 79 responses and were largely uninteresting. There were three very strange emails responding to the orgy/pictures of cows post that do not need to be reprinted in this respectable newspaper.

At the end of my investigation, I had not figured out the questions I set out to answer. I am no closer now to understanding the mindsets of people who look for love on Craigslist. However, what I have realized is that I do not want to know the answer to any of these questions. I have read things that I simply did not want to see and may have violated some codes of journalistic ethics in the process. Craigslist may be the right medium for some people, but for most Wash. U. students, I have a few simple words of advice—stay away. And don’t click on the links with attached picture files.