INTERVIEW WITH TWO YOUNG DETROITERS WHO LEFT FRIENDSTER AND NOW POST CRAIGSLIST MISSED CONNECTIONS INSTEAD
Q. We hear you’re from the Motor City. Was "8 Mile" realistic?
YD1: Yes. It is dirty, empty, and there are a lot of poor people here. And MC battles I guess.
YD2: Yes. Our shit is like that, only we never went to any MC battles. The other side of that coin was this place called "Zoot's," which contributed to the furthering of the indie rawk scene. Only complete fucking hardasses USED to live in Detroit until a while ago. Most everyone else lived in the surrounding cities but came downtown to hang out. Now more people are moving downtown. I live in Corktown, which is a section of downtown near the old Tiger Stadium.
Q. We hear you left Friendster. What’s going on over there that made you leave?
YD1: I got really angry at it one morning after seeing a girl in a crooked trucker hat at a bar who I recognized from her Friendster photo. Once everyone got on it, it just got really boring. I was connected to over way too many people thanks to everyone being friends with “today's special.” Also, I was getting weird e-mails from pervs asking probing questions about my nipples. The last straw was “Paris Hilton” sending me the bitchiest messages. I think she takes herself very seriously. We get less shady messages from Craigslist respondees.
YD2: There are too many people now and it is losing its edge a bit. Plus, after you get all your friends on, maybe randomly e-mail a few hot girls, that is pretty much it.
Q. Had you ever gone out with anyone you met on Friendster? How did it go?
YD1: No way. I'm the most distrustful person ever. I assume my friends' friends are out to get me too.
Q. Why did you start posting missed connections on Craig’s List Detroit?
YD1: [We] were excited that Detroit got a Craigslist, but nobody was using it. We always scoured missed connections because so many of them are odd stories, and one day I was thinking I wanted to write a fake one looking for [YD2], as a joke, and he mentioned we could start making them up. He posted “is your butt $1 too” and it took off. Everyone here reads it now I guess.
YD2: Other cities have thriving Craigslists. [We] were talking two weeks ago and just basically decided that we were going to make Detroit MC the hottest shit going. Over the course of the next two weeks we fucking did it. Wrote our own lies and pretty much just e-mailed them back and forth to each other to one-up the other. Then other people started reading it and posting their own. It has taken on a life of its own.
Q. Did you write the “Leroy the Cowboy Paleontologist” post?
YD1: I did. that's actually a real one. One amazing thing about Craigslist is that, technically, we can actively recruit friends on it. We're always looking to flesh out the assortment (we still need a tranny friend and more hot lesbians), but when I saw Leroy the Cowboy Paleontologist at the Indian restaurant I knew we had to have him. I hope he writes!
Q. Did you write the “You Don't Like Me But That Doesn't Mean I Didn't See Your Nipple” post?
YD1: No that's our friend Nick. Also true.
Q. Which others did you write?
YD1: I don't think any of mine are funny any more (short attention span). Here are some I don't mind too much:
"I was at a bar last weekend and saw you, wanted to make out, pussed out of asking for your number, and regretted it. find me.
“I see you walking down S. First, dressed for work, all the time, and I wave and smile from my deck because I secretly want my thighs to smell like your aftershave.” [This one’s] not that good (and a real person), but a vehicle for the best phrase i've coined (thighs/aftershave). Filthy hot.
“How could you think it was OK to smile at me? If I looked like you I would fucking kill myself.” This isn't true for the particular date/place, but is something I'd say. I am really, really mean and often rude.
“Stop playing hard to get back into bed.” This one is about a girl who started a weird rumor about me. Maybe everyone who reads Craigslist thinks she's a total slut right now.
YD2: My favorite one I did is called:
"Britney Spears-looking DUDE walking to Caribou today" Just a complete fucking lie. Thought of it in a second, wrote it and BOOM. there for everyone to enjoy. I haven't met anyone who doesn't just purely love it.
When writing these MC's you are forced to work within a very set form. I wouldn't want to say it is any great art form but it does force you to work within the parameters of Craigslist -- you know you'll have a title all alone by itself, people will click on it and the title will appear in bigger text and the main ad will read below in smaller letters. That sort of acknowledgment of the rules allowed me to write
"The really fat girl at the Comerica bank on Maple Rd."
I wrote these and they are all completely fucking
fake:
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14228894.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14252319.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14255172.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14343224.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14487286.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14531577.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14538013.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14547724.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14548168.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14565410.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14565589.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14566289.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14588253.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14600403.html
http://detroit.craigslist.org/mis/14615359.html
I am proud of them in the way, I suppose, a real writer is proud of his work. Like all good conversations, some of them are funny, weird funny, sad and depressing, sexy, awful, stupid, homoerotic, and filled with lots of "dude" and "fuck." Basically the same stuff my friends and I talk about or e-mail back and forth but in this medium everyone else can enjoy.
Q. Are any of these real?
YD1: Nope. I've written two to real crushes, one of them being the tall boy at Zingerman's who probably thinks I hate him. A lot of them are kind of based on real people I've seen or know, or want to know.
YD2: [I] wrote one real one about this huge crush I have for this one girl at a restaurant. Weird then, that I've only written one actual MC. The rest are entertainment I suppose.
Q. Has anyone ever e-mailed you in response to one of your missed connections messages? Anyone scary? Anyone you’d want to go out with if only they were a little less scary?
YD1: YES. One guy answered in response to the ad looking for the guy that pissed himself, and he was a total pervert!, so we called him via IP-relay, the service for deaf people online (www.ip-relay.com), where I can type what I want to say on my screen and an operator reads what I'm typing on the other end, and then the operator types in what the guy is saying and it pops up on my screen. It usually confuses people but he was totally unfazed by an operator kind of talking dirty to him in a monotone. I don't want to meet him. I have two other anonymous e-mail buddies who think the posts are funny. That's kind of nice. We write each other now.
Q. Whom would you rather date, a stranger on Friendster or a stranger who e-mails you from Craig's List?
YD1: probably Friendster because they post photos and I have a hard time dealing with ugly people. But neither. I literally trust nobody. Not even [YD2], and I spend all of my time with him basically. I'll end up alone but at least I'll never be screwed over maybe.
YD2: Probably neither. Although I love the Internet and use it every day I would feel strange meeting someone new on it. I do need to meet some new girls, though, so what do I know? I think people would probably think I am a psycho if they judged me only on the Craigslist MC's though.
Q. What’s cool about Detroit, other than Eminem and bands signed to Sympathy for the Record Industry, like The Dirtbombs? Should I move there?
YD1: Detroit is beautiful because of its decay, kind of like a bright-eyed junkie party animal. We get a lot of good music for cheap, and the people try hard to be pretty and interesting. Or at last have good hair. Rent and food are inexpensive. Fearing for my life walking down the street makes me feel harder than friends who live elsewhere.
YD2: Don't move here. Naw just playin -- we need more people here. It is cool. Really still very inexpensive compared to just about everywhere else. We can play soccer or frisbee inside my apt and it is cheap. We need more people down here.
Q. Do you read
Real Detroit Weekly or
Metro Times?
YD1:
Metro Times.
Real Detroit has a weirdly huge font that makes me feel like I'm in sixth grade remedial English.
The
Elizabeth Street Fortnightly [see below] is going to blow both out of the water, I hope. We're not going to put any contact info on it, just the URL for MCs.
YD2: Both actually.
Metro Times is a better read but
Real Detroit has the slutty hot bar photos. You basically need both.
Ed. -- Watch for the young Detroiters’ first steps into the publishing world with the Elizabeth St. Fortnightly
, which YD2 describes as a “raunchy nasty journal, which we wrote kind of in the same way as the Craigslist postings -- we just emailed back and forth and have all this great stuff. Only limited (10 copies for the first issue) copies printed, each with a dollar bill taped inside, crammed full of stupid lists and jokes about sex and making fun of people. [YD1] accurately describes it as "every Catholic school boy's dream."
