The thrill of the hunt

Illustration: Emily Flake

John* is what you might call an extreme dater. The 28-year-old Brooklyn-dwelling self-described “creative type” has been a bit obsessed with Craigslist personals for the past three years. “Perhaps addicted,” he admits.

That’s one way to describe someone who has posted more than 178 ads to the site since late 2005, around the time he first moved to the city. “I knew no one,” he explains. He has posted with remarkable consistency since then, usually four or five times a month, reaching a peak in January 2006 with 35 ads.

“Posting a personal ad on Craigslist is sort of like fishing,” he explains. “You might catch something if you’re lucky—or extremely unlucky. It is very much a game.”

He focused on his profile, which, he insists, was “completely truthful and genuine—I was not just passing myself off as a fantasy character.” He would then alter the posting slightly by adding a photo (“without a photo, there were almost no responses”), then a few more photos (“responses increased dramatically”), changing the text (“shorter posts got more responses”), mixing up the headline (“it didn’t matter at all”). Each ad, he says, receives 10 to 20 responses, which he carefully filters. He’s met more than 100 women in person, although he claims to have slept with absolutely none of them. “But I only paid for both of us two or three times out of the hundred,” he adds.

Sounds like a bizarre correlation to me: If he had paid he would have gotten laid?

John says his purpose was twofold: to meet people and to find out what makes them tick. He talks like a social scientist, dropping phrases like data trending and A/B tests. “I kept a spreadsheet of time posted, the ad text I used, number of responses, individual response’s psychographic profile, intent, attractiveness,” he says. But, he assures me, “While I was mainly doing this to better understand the people, who knows? Perhaps I could meet someone as well.”

So, were there any keepers?

“They were all interesting. It was especially interesting to see the disparity between the girl and her photo. Still, I would definitely not describe anyone I met on Craigslist as a regular person. With every single one, you’re just trying to figure out what their damage is or what’s wrong with them.”

I think this applies to any date—not just those off Craigslist!

“The funny thing,” he says, “is that 80 percent of the girls wrote that they had never dated on Craigslist before. They’d write something like, ‘I’ve never done this before, I was just looking for apartments or furniture and I clicked on this link by accident and I thought you were cute.’ Later I found out they had gone out with six or seven guys from Craigslist.”

So, why would they lie about it?

“Because they think everyone else on Craigslist is weird, so their excuse is ‘I’m not weird.’ ”

Except, I say, you pretty much just said they were weird. “Well,” he counters, “I think everyone who meets someone from Craigslist knows it’s not going to work out. If you’ve gone on one Craigslist date you know it was a horrible mistake, and the only reason you do it again is because you really hope that you’re going to meet somebody who’s interesting or fun or cool—or someone you’re going to sleep with.”

And after 100 dates, you really never found anyone?

“Nope. But going on Craigslist dates was better than TV.”

Plus, the odds of finding someone while sitting on your couch and watching 30 Rock are pretty slim (hope as we might).

E-mail her at julia@timeoutny.com.

See previous Julia Alison on dating