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Welcome to Wrongcrowd.com
Friday, February 03 2012 @ 09:45 AM PST

The Denizens of Craigslist

Wednesday, September 05 2007 @ 11:23 PM PDT
Contributed by: matt
Views: 3,109

I want to direct a rude gesture to many of the other users of Craigslist, who I believe conspire to irritate me. This is posted under "humor," but anyone who has dipped their toe into the free market cesspool that is Internet--and particularly any site like Craigslist--will realize that these observations reflect indisputable facts of human nature and our physical universe.

So, read on for a most loathsome taxonomy, and get to know the Rocket Scientist, the Horse Trader, the Pollyanna, and their unsavory kin. Warning: bad attitude and salty language lies ahead, because frankly the subject material demands a certain level of profanity. The rest of this site is rated "E for Everyone," if that's your speed... but for this, I had to tap my dark side. (Last update: Added the Saint.)

We'll start our tour of classified ad hell with bad buyers.

Let's get the easy one out of the way first--Scammers. These criminal masterminds seem to hit every listing. Their odd phrasing makes them sound like a foreign exchange student who has had a stroke-or, you know, a fucking scammer. They've only been around since cavemen sent email by banging rocks together, people. Who still falls for this? NO, I am NOT sending the camera to you for a Kenyan money order. It even says LOCALS ONLY, CASH ONLY in the description. The best part is the MO is always overpaid, so the scammer expects you to send them the item and the change. If you do, you are double fucked and double deserving of it. Turn in your Interwebs license and report to my re-education center, because you are keeping these assholes in business.

Then we have Lowballers. This variety of buyer may be more common than scammers and is certainly more irritating. You sell something for $X, and the Lowballer offers you $X/2, but sweeten the deal with "I can pick it up today!" Sometimes the offer is even better: "you can deliver it today!" Say, why don't I knock it down to ten bucks and blow you for doing me such a favor?

No, here's a better idea: GFY, you deadbeat. I know what the stuff I am selling is worth. My Craigslist price is already lower than market price, because I am willing to make a little less money for the convenience of a local sale. The polite reply I send is more than you deserve, and when you counter my refusal by adding $20 and a perky exclamation point to your ridiculous offer, I close my eyes and imagine pushing you off a cliff.

Everyone who has sold on Craigslist has surely met a Phantom. The Phantom manifests and indicates its profound interest in the item you are selling. This specter may ask intelligent, detailed questions. Being a polite and motivated seller, you answer the Phantom, but you'll never hear from this entity again, because the inconsiderate fuck is probably out torturing the neighbor's cats.

Those are the worst of the buyers. Irritating sellers seem to come in many more maddening varieties, such as...

Repeaters, who post the same God damned thing as often as every day. A few reposts, sure, no problem. I get that. We're all trying to make a buck or save a buck, pal. But what about posting the same thing, every day, for months? What kind of a sick mind does that? I wish you'd spend some time with the Phantom so you get away from the keyboard.

This one Repeater used to post a diver down flag for sale every day. As you may know, a dive flag is an important safety device that you float over your scuba dive site. Nearby boaters can avoid potentially lethal boredom by zeroing in on the flag and running over unsuspecting divers, so be sure you use one.

I saw the Flag of Doom when I did my daily search for "scuba," looking for deals. This item was more expensive than a similar new item. It was an overpriced vampire, rising from its grave nightly. Further, the flag was proudly proclaimed to be of the seller's own design. What was he thinking every day when he reposted this gem? I saw it for about 4 months, and it slowly drove me insane. It's gone now, thank Newmark, and I like to think that the seller was killed by someone who was pretending to come buy it. I hope his own floating flag is marking the location of his crab-eaten corpse.

Rocket Scientists may be a type of Repeater; we're waiting on the DNA analysis. They post a nice complete listing--but it is massively overpriced. The NASA-sized price tag is your first clue that there is a Rocket Scientist about.

If you contact this seller with a reasonable counteroffer, they decline. Sometimes, they decline and call you names, because you don't know anything about the rare treasure they are selling, do you have any idea how much I could get on eBay? If you are very lucky, the Rocket Scientist's wife may answer the phone, and relay messages to and from him since he is "out on the tractor." (This actually happened to me.)

When no one is stupid enough to buy the item, the Rocket Scientist, sharp like his namesake, is quick to see that there is problem. He decrements the price and reposts... again, and again, and again, until the price counts down into the realm of reason. The countdown may be quick, or it may drag out over months, but it will proceed with mathematical regularity.

During the demented countdown to savings, there may also be a hold at a certain price. Will it last a month, or a week? Who knows when the weather will clear and the countdown will start again? Only Mission Control knows, and the flight director keeps this secret safe in his trailer out in Mill Valley.

Invariably, if you want the item, another buyer will beat you to it when the price becomes reasonable. How many megajoules did the Rocket Scientist and his victims expend during this sick experiment? Why can't his advanced calculus of profit put him in the right price range to start with? And why didn't the stupid mother fucker take my offer that one time instead of counting down to exactly that value over three irritating months? (Obviously, I missed the launch window so I am extra bitter.)

Telepaths omit critical information from their listings. Oh, you are selling an expensive gadget? How about listing the manufacturer and model, genius? Scuba tank, you say? HOW FUCKING BIG IS IT? What is wrong with you? That isn't an idle insult--I honestly would like to know. Maybe I am being unkind, though. Maybe you project this information into an advanced shopper's mind. Sadly, I am not quite so evolved. You may as well post this listing: "Thing. Make offer." I would like to help you reform, though: I will demonstrate that different items have different properties by striking you first with a golf club, and then with a bus.

Curators fancy that they live in a museum full of priceless relics. When it is decided by the museum's Board of Directors that a precious item must go, the Curator sets the price so high that only someone working off a Federal research grant could afford to buy it. If you see a listing for a five year old gadget selling for as much or more than a modern version, you may be dealing with a Curator. (Rocket Scientists usually start at a lower price--they have an inkling of what the right number is, they simply want more. Curators are just morons.)

Curators also post modern, slightly-used items for virtually the same price as a brand new specimen, for they are deeply concerned with balancing the museum's ledger. A dead giveaway is always this phrase: "I just want to get what I paid for it." This how a Curator says, "I'm a fucking moron, and I am hoping that you are one too." Well, sorry, but compensating you for your poor purchasing decision would be nothing more than charity. If I'm feeling charitable, I'll put my money in that box for retarded kids that I see at McDonald's, because they are probably destined for greater things than you are. I hope that someday a mountain of unsold, overpriced crap tumbles out of your closet and smothers you.

The next specimen in our tour of Craigslist is the Horse Trader.

In the fairy tale of Jack and the Beanstalk, the hapless hero is fooled into trading a cow for some magic beans. On Craigslist, the Horse Trader will try to fool you into giving him your cow, and taking his worthless, unwanted, 100% non-magical beans in return. (OK, in the story a butcher tricked Jack, but that would be a seriously obscure reference.)

Horse Traders will usually post looking for a very specific item, and they will offer you choices from Satan's smorgasbord of useless shit in return. WTT: Used mattress or broken VW engine for panasonic plasma tv. (mattress is stained on one side.) I've had more appealing offers from warty hookers, and their mattresses were probably cleaner too.

The Horse Trader is really more pitiable than loathsome, and a minor daemon in this pantheon of woe. His punishment is only to keep all the garbage that he is trying to trick other people into taking.

What is the opposite of a Rocket Scientist? Presented for your consideration is the Wizard. With a click of the mouse, he has the power to transform any sale into an auction. �Srry I got a lot of interest in the item, im changing the price. U can make an offer.� Make offer? I offer your liver and lights to the dark gods beyond time, you prick. Did you plan this transmogrification ahead of time, or did you decide to turn the sale into an auction when the offers started to come in? Either way, you are headed straight to hell, where you can trade posting tips with other evil entities.

Should a Wizard suffer a blow to the head from an enraged buyer, he may drop enough IQ to become a Caveman. This hairy fellow posts an innocent-sounding offer: Shiny rock, free! U haul from Og cave in Enumclaw. But because Og spends much of his time hiding from saber-tooth tigers and drinking light beer, he doesn�t realize that his unwanted shiny rock has value. This changes when a desperate buyer contacts the caveman and offers him money to shank the first responder, who thinks he�s getting a freebie. It takes a lot to get through the caveman�s bony brow, but he figures it out. �People willing to pay Og for rock? Rock not free now. Make Og offer.� Og, for being dense and unprincipled, you are taking the short bus straight to hell.

We're almost done.

One man's trash can be another man's treasure--but normal people know that usually, it's just trash. Sadly, this fine level of discernment eludes the the Pollyanna. So where you see a shoe box full of headless Star Wars figures, or a Hefty bag loaded with Cinemax soft porn VHS tapes that you made at age 13, the Pollyanna sees unbounded commercial opportunity. Maybe this is the same universe of profit that the Rocket Scientist is blasting off to--I hope I never find out for sure.

Pollyannas are easy to spot, because they post detailed lists of random and utterly fucking worthless items: Sock, $0.50. Aiwa boom box with broken tape deck, $5. Full-length mirror, small crack, $3. Journey t-shirt with mustard stains, $1. Original series Yoda figure (no head) $3. Spoons, $0.25 ea. Blue shoe, make offer. If you are indeed taking offers, I'd like to offer some colorful suggestions on what you can do with the shoe, the headless Master Yoda, the God damned spoons, and the rest of your junk, you freak. Put your OCD to better use, like cutting yourself in precise geometric patterns.

I'd like to believe that when a Pollyanna and a Rocket Scientist meet, they annihilate each other in a burst of high-energy savings and gamma rays.

It's time for our last specimen, and this one is rare indeed. What do you call a guy who posts something for sale at a better-than-fair price, says you can have it because you called first, and then holds off a dozen other would-be buyers--who are probably offering him more money--so you can come get the item as agreed on? And then when you get there, instead of getting a shiv in the ribs like you were kind of expecting, you get the item plus more good stuff than you had expected? You call that seller a Saint, that's what. Here's to you, Todd from Troutdale. Guys like you make Craigslist work.

(c) me, 2007

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