I truly enjoy practical jokes of all kinds, so this story appealed to me:
“Calling all Roys or Troys or Leroys,” began an ad posted to Craigslist in October. A photo of a heart-shaped tattoo with “Roy” inside accompanied the ad, which continued: “I was with a Roy before but it didna’t last as long as my tattoo. Getting the tattoo removed is not something I want to do, plus Ia’m so accustomed to bellowing it (Roy) out in bed.” The writer said she was seeking a new Roy, or anyone whose name could be inked around the word, Scrabble-style.
It was signed Dynah, but actually written by Johnna Gattinella, a 31-year-old writer in Santa Rosa, Calif. Ms. Gattinella is working on a book called “My Year on Craigslist” that will include her fake ads and the often earnest responses.
“A lot of men took the photo of the tattoo and put it in Photoshop and then altered it with their names or different variations and e-mailed it back,” said Ms. Gattinella, who hasna’t shopped the book to publishers yet.
The tattoo, by the way, is real, as is her husband, Roy.
Across the country, aspiring writers are using Craigslist not just as a place to offload their futons, but as a pixeled writing workshop where they test their stabs at social satire on some of the more than 30 million visitors that the site draws each month. Their personal ads ostensibly seek a soul mate, but what theya’re really looking for is an audience.
Some, like Ms. Gattinella, are working on a book, while others are just trying out material. Some find Internet fame when popular blogs link to the ads.
“One of the motives is they are trying to start something viral that takes off,” said Peggy Wang, an editor at Buzzfeed, a trend-tracking site that recently linked to several fake Craigslist ads.
Blog-worthy ads tend to fall into three categories: outlandish yet grounded by an internal logic and clearly true; probably fake, but funny; so absurd only a naif would believe them. The best fake-ad writers telegraph the parody but never wink.
Some ads defy forensics. In September, bloggers were agog over a New York Craigslist posting in which a 25-year-old woman who described herself as “spectacularly beautiful” sought a husband who earned at least $500,000 a year. The author, dubbed “the gold digger,” has never come forward.
Craigslist is “a fun place to look when you should be doing something else,” said Debbie Newman, an editor at the gossip blog Jossip who trawls Craigslist for offbeat ads. “If youa’re a talented writer and maybe a frustrated one working somewhere like a law firm that limits your day-to-day creativity, you take your opportunities where you can find them.”
Craigslist has advantages over other soapboxes. “You can set up your own blog, but people are not necessarily going to go there,” said Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist. “If you havena’t established an audience, you can do worse than Craigslist.”
- Source: Andrew Adam Newman, You Say Fake Ads, They Say Satire, New York Times, Nov. 15, 2007
So I wonder how many people are doing this? Also… how many ads that I replied to were fake? And what’s the funniest Craiglist ad you have read?
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