Craigslist Personals Review (Craigslist.org) - Dating Sites Reviews (2024)

CL personals here in the US was "killed" or died officially about a month ago now, but I think that was really the best thing for it. It had gone practically totally to hell over the past few years.

There was a time, perhaps 7- almost 10 yrs ago or so, when it was feasible to actually meet someone to date off of CL. I know it was possible back then because it worked for me a couple of times (bearing in mind of course that I'd had to post probably 100 times before even 1 real meet-up / match-up went semi-successfully).

But the past 4-5 years roughly speaking, if you were Not a gay or bi (or 'curious' -- or perhaps straight but absolutely desperate) male posting in one of the m4m or t4m sections, or maybe a woman posting in the w4w (I don't know what kind of luck or results bi or gay women on there ever had), it was about 99.9% pointless to even post on CL.

If you posted on the m4w "casual encounters" section, a spam storm soon attacked whatever email you had just used to post there (all of which were 2 liner msg's, obviously written by foreigners, trying to get you to give them your direct email address or cell #). If you posted on the m4w real "dating" section you either heard nothing back from anyone, or you occasionally got a msg from someone asking if you were "generous$" or, again, you got something that was easily identifiable as a spam response.

The entire CL personals were by now basically hopelessly infested with working girls and spammers/scam posts. The best thing for it was the (albeit an unintentional 'side effect') passage of the "FOSTA" bill which finally led to it being put out of its misery. Better off with a free-to-post legit dating website anyday.

The CL personals in more recent years ranged from futile to potentially dangerous (again, maybe unless you were gay/bi, and/or unless you were looking to 'pay to play' -- but even then, how safe was it really to go and meet a total stranger at their home or at a motel or elsewhere, for a random sexual encounter??....). I'd imagine also that not all -- probably not half -- of the many m4m random hookups that took place daily from off of there were really "safe sex", and thus STD spread was possibly realistically a problem from there too, to a certain extent. The elimination of the CL m4m and t4m (and the other personals) sections may in some way help to cut down on that a tiny bit as well, given that it likely makes it that much harder now for random men to meet and have anonymous encounters without actually having to go somewhere out of the house, converse, etc. All in all, it was for the overall benefit of society to get rid of the CL personals; that was not truly what CL was created for in any case, I'm fairly certain -- to become a giant cyber bathhouse or gay sex club.

I would like to start off by stating that i am a married white male in my 40's and i never get on the craigslist personals looking for a female since i am married, now having said that i would definitely have been addicted to it and used it to meet females 20 yrs ago when i was active in meeting females that way, i didn't know about it at that time so i was left with phone chat lines which revealed plenty of females, most of which lied about their ages to lying about their looks so many of my encounters were everything from just OK to down right disgusting.

Since being married and me being the freak that i am sexually the thought of me being with another female just didn't appeal to me, but once i realized that the thought of my wife being with another man really turned me on i have on many many occasions browsed this site looking for another man to fulfill some fantasies, but have not yet met the right guy for them since it is a very scary situation to make happen, and the reason i say that is because there are so many people that are infected with some sort of sexually transmitted disease and most do not even know it and since most are transmitted through bodily fluids having sex with someone can be very scary.

I will admit that i cant get around what turns me on, so no matter how much it scares me i still post ads and browse the ads looking for Mr. right, the one thing i can admit is that when i look at the pics that are posted of these guys and what i am assuming is their REAL packages as well as their REAL faces i have found many who if they posted their faces and bodies as well, i most likely would have met with someone to discuss this fantasy.

the main problem is that most of these guys as well as the females only post pics of the genitals, or only of their face, so that creates a problem, if someone only posts their face , assuming that they are REAL and it is REALLY them in the pics if they only post the face then how can you be sure that he has a big enough package to satisfy your needs, and on the other hand if he posts only a pic of his junk and it appears to be the right size, then how do you know that his face and body is equally attractive, at least up to your standards, and the same goes for the females.

So here we are at the point of my complaint, since i have been using craigslist i have noticed some really annoying which makes a user like myself not even want to use the site again, and that is the fact that the way they have the site set up to deal with what ads stay and what ads get removed, and if you read the description in the faqs section under being flagged for removal it will tell you that their are two ways that you can be removed, one is by the users who also browse the site flagging your ad for removal, but from what i have been told it takes many to flag your ad before it is removed, and then the other way is an automated removal system or a computer that has its parameters set to be alerted to what ever it is that is not allowed by or under the craigslist terms of service.

But what ever is removing ads on this site it has it set way to high, i mean if it is the users themselves then that would mean that a group of guys or females are serial flaggers and are just doing it for kicks, and if it is a computerized or automated flagging then its sensitivity is set way to high, i created a email then i posted an ad, nothing that was out of the ordinary, no curse words or vulgar talk or even any pics, and i was flagged for removal within a week, and since then i have posted literally 45 ads one after another , all with different text, and different pics added , some fake and some real, and all were flagged for removal with in 2 days to a week, and the only way you can find out what or why this is happening is to use the craigslist forums which is like a chat room for all the users, and i am supposed to ask other users why i am being flagged and take their advice, but tell me this, if i have posted 45 ads all different than the next some with curse words and some with out, some with pics and some with out and everything i have tried fails, then WHAT IN THE HELL CAN THEY TELL ME THAT I HAVEN'T ALREADY TRIED!!??

At the end of the day this site is worthless, with the exception of selling something like a car or a t.v., other than that the personals are a joke and the staff or whoever runs the site are basically getting paid to sit on their butts, in my opinion the way to a successful business is consumer interaction, and even if like in this case this site being almost free in many ways with the exception of adult services and paid ads, there still has to be some sort of link put into place for all users to contact customer service and someone to work dealing with customer complaints, and getting rid of the computer section that is flagging people for no reason, or at least making it harder for just anyone to flag you and having their friends flag you just because they couldnt get laid in a morgue.

As a guy who has had some success on CL, let me offer my thoughts. First off I've NEVER had success answering existing ads from women. Most are fake, like almost all of them. Occasionally there is a real ad, but unless they have a butt ugly pic up, or something really bizarre, they get inundated with messages from dudes. Even girls that have no pic up (most real ones don't, hell most fakes don't either), and a couple sentences probably get 40 messages in the first hour. And these are from REAL guys.

Moving on, posting on CL - mostly for sex, has netted me some really attractive one night stands. I look for something somewhat specific, but common and something many women are into, even if only temporarily. Early 2013 is when it started working, and throughout that year CL brought me four or five girls from me just keeping my handful of posts up. Keep in mind I said I had *some* success lol. It's not the only place, online or offline where I meet women. Anyways only one of them was probably a 5, cool lady, 42 yrs old, though and we had fun, but the rest were 8s or 9s and early 20s. Then early 2014 I was dating a beautiful 18 year old girl (I'm almost 40) for a few months. I guess the age gap/her immaturity made it not last but it was fun. I met a couple other young ladies around 20 over the summer, again for fun times.

So that was looking for sex obviously, not dating. Several years back, probably around the time the original article was written, I posted more traditional ads looking to date. Got some quality responses from women actually, and one came over and we got to know each other a bit and then hooked up. She wanted to keep seeing me, and even though she was very attractive and slender, (and age appropriate lol), she had three kids so I wasn't looking to pursue it further.

But unfortunately, lately, my usual tricks aren't pulling any women. Very few responses, and also very little spam, which is odd, responding to my ads. I tried a few different email addresses. It feels like it's just not working for me any longer and it's time to try something else. Most of the best looking girls in the last few years were from CL, so it's disappointing. Maybe because there was a format change a few months ago, or CL is doing something to slow me down, anti spam, not letting messages through IDK, I could be paranoid, and maybe I was lucky to get the fast action that I did from such nice looking ladies. I don't think the ads are being ghosted, I find them in search results.

Maybe it will improve again soon. I find that late winter/early spring is one of the best times to find (horny) women online.

I'm a guy. I posted on this site for Las Vegas to see what would come up. Got a lot of spam emails I thought were legitimate at first. Cool pictures for taking care of the male things but nothing else. No actual human on the other end as far as I can tell. The e-mails just directed me to some "dating" website I couldn't get into.

The only time I actually talked with a real human being was when one of the ladies offering a "private massage" messaged me. She seemed cool but she was only looking for people to use her "services". I deleted the account. Still get the fake spam messages once in a while. If I go back to the site it will only be to look at the pictures.

I think I'll try looking for meaningful relationships offline from now on.

Skip. Skip, And did Imention, SKIP?!? I am a decent looking female (read:normal body weight, average height...ok, I'm average...) Idecided last week to try to find a few dates on Craigslist...I'm not looking for anything awesome or mind-blowing, just a beer in a bar and a taco at a truck would be cool...anyways, I responded to some ads on CL personals, and wrote one of my own. CL ghosted it...I have no idea why. Iwrote another one. Same story. CL ghosts everything I try to do on CL for some bizarre reason, it may be that I'm originally from "back East" and they're picking that up somehow, even though I'm posting out in L.A. I have no idea, but it's intensely frustrating Wrote another one, ghosted...and you can't try to put the same general ad up again, there's some kind of block built into CLfor it...so I created a new email account and tried again...but for the personals they require your number, and when I typed the number in, they informed me that I can't create a new profile with the same damn phone number within 80 days, or something godawful like that.

So of all of the guys Iresponded to, a couple replied back...do not, I repeat, DONOT reply to a male's ad posted with no pic. You are wasting your damn time. When you finally get that pic, you'll wish you never did. But I did get a few responses...from people who just wanted to email incessantly...or even if they get your number....text message incessantly. Two guys actually called, and didn't just fade into the ether that is CLpersonals...I talked to one for an hour and a half...seemed promising, he sent me a bunch of pics, looked decent...and then...he disappeared off the face of the earth. Ok. Just looking for coffee or something here, and why did you waste my damn time talking to me if you never had any intention of even grabbing a slice of pizza for crying out loud?Thanks.

Actually had the misfortune of meeting the last guy. Pictures do NOT tell a thousand words, by the way. All of the pictures he sent me, and Ieven saw a video, made him look cute, scruffy, sexy in kind of a hip way...he sounded awesome on the phone...awesome....crackin jokes and being all cool and social...we met up one evening and when Isaw him standing there I almost turned the damn car around...not that I'm super-picky, mind you...but let's just say, he's photogenic. VERY photogenic. In person he was SMALL (they all are on that damn site) , VERYsmall, with a little, weird face that photographs REALLY well...doesn't exactly look awesome. His hands were dirty, he had really odd mannerisms, and the pics had been taken so long ago that he had since bleached his hair completely, then it had grown out a few inches...sheesh. We went to a local bar, and he ordered a co*ke. On me. SKIPSKIPSKIP. Not that I'm a huge drinker, but I just felt that there'd been some bs in communication here...Imean, why are we meeting up to go to a bar if I'm gonna buy you a damn soda?? Anyways, being the kind lady that I am, we hung out and chatted...he was a cool enough guy, Isupposed, but all I'm saying is that I could have walked into the bar we were in and gone home with ten other guys that would have been much more my type...(read:taller than me in my chucks. sorry.) Iwasted my time, my breath, a few bucks, and now THISguy is incessantly text messaging me...!!!

SKIPTHISDAMNSITEFORDATING!!!! Sell your bookshelves on there, that's about all it's good for. Negative stars.