Monthly Archives: September 2010

Is Craigslist Really the Enemy They Claim It Is?

Politics, Religion, Social Networking, , , , , , ,

Craigslist recently announced that it is going to be suppressing its listings for sex ads. Instead of the adult listing, it now shows up as “censored” on their site. Public interest groups are now high-fiving themselves because they seem to have won some sort of Quixotic victory that they believe has somehow made things better. Others, of course, still say that it’s not enough and want pretty much the universe when it comes to compliance. I thought it would be interesting to examine this and see what’s really going on.

First off, let’s look at the original problem. Craig Newmark started Craigslist back in 1995 in San Francisco. The idea was to give people a one stop marketplace where they could take care of their every need. You could find an apartment, get a job, sell that old TV you could never get rid of, and yes, even hook up with a potential partner, if that should be your current desire. Not surprisingly, that latter option has opened up all sorts of controversial issues with the online distributor of trade.

In 2002, according to Wikipedia, because of complaints, Craigslist started adding warnings to some of their personal ad areas, such as “men seeking men”, “casual encounters”, “rants and raves”, and “erotic services”. Already, these areas were causing problems with the mainstream segments of the population.

From this point forward, Craigslist has been on the attentions of quite a few public interst groups, and not surprisingly, law enforcement officials.

Up until this time, erotic services were pretty much an entity you had to search through some pretty creative methods, often involving a lot of bait and switch circumstances that one had to navigate solely on the hope that the next time would be better than the last time. Massage parlours were often a place men would go to seek prostitution, and after a lot of false leads and deception, it was not unusual for a man to pay hundreds of dollars to receive absolutely no desired experiences. Some got lucky, but most didn’t, and it was quite often a very discouraging experience.

The Internet was supposed to change all of that. At one’s fingertips was now immediate access to all sorts of information. Craigslist jumped into the game, and people were now following want ads for what they were seeking, and in conjunction with a lot of other erotic services on the Internet, people were actually finding what they were seeking. It was not unusual to see someone’s want ad on Craigslist, then check out the profile on one of the other erotic feedback sites, and then decide whether or not to book a session with that person. Very hard to find erotic services were now being much easier to find because they could now be found on Craigslist. Many people may not realize it, but there are a lot of people out there looking for some very specific types of encounters, and having everything in one place made it much easier for these people to connect.

Well, this didn’t bode well for the industy when there were people who would do everything possible to make sure that such people could never make any such connection. But this probably wouldn’t have been that much of a problem if another entity did not show up, which made things even worse. I’m talking about the scammer.

People may not realize it, but the entity of the scammer has pretty much destroyed every good thing that has ever come across on the Internet. Porn didn’t hurt the Internet, as the fuddy duddies would like you think it did (it actually served to fuel the Internet in its infancy, which is somewhat ironic if you think about it). Scammers did. Most of your email is now pretty much worthless because scammers found out they could profit off of naive people. You are required to buy special software to protect your computer because scammers discovered they could infect your computer just by hosting evil programs on sites where you wouldn’t expect them to be. Ebay used to be a great place to buy things; scammers and thieves put a wrench in the trust factor of that entity. So it is not that much of a surprise that scammers showed up and pretty much destroyed Craigslist.

Some of the biggest crimes that have rallied people against Craigslist have been people who have been cheating other people on the Internet. Call them scammers. Call them thieves. Call them the mob. Or whatever, but it’s this group of people who have caused all of the problems that have made Craigslist the cesspool that it can often be.

Because face it. Women being prostitutes has never caused all that much of a problem, unless you’re Tiger Woods. But people forcing women into prostitution has. Child predators looking for children for sex causes problems. Again, those same people are the ones that make this sort of thing available. These people are criminals who care little for the activity but everything for exploitation and making a quick buck. Unfortunately, they serve to diminish an activity that others might be providing in a more positive way, and unfortunately, there’s often very little way to separate the two.

There are a lot of honest people who are into the sex business who aren’t trying to steal from other people or to hurt other people. They easily get pushed aside whenever the bad class of people show up, and unfortunately that bad class shows up way too quickly and way too often.

All of the issues that have caused public interest against Craigslist have come from these bad elements of our societies. No one rallies around a leader seeking to stop prostitution. But everyone rallies around anyone seeking to stop child exploitation and people who wish to develop nonconsensual slavery circumstances.

This is the problem that Craigslist has fallen into because the owners of that site really didn’t care who was posting on the site. They were more interested in developing a site that brought in money. I can’t see that I blame them, but because of this, they have become the victim of their own success. With great success comes great responsibility, to steal and destroy a great line from Spiderman, and unfortunately Craigslist hasn’t really come up to the plate for the responsibility thing. It played a lot of shell games in hopes of getting people to think it was on the right side of morality, but when it came down to it, it was really only thinking of itself. When the public finally started to become a hammer to be used against them, they censored themselves and then tried to act all First Amendmentish and posted “censored” where they censored themselves.

The fact is: They could have dealt with this a lot easier by actually policing their ads in the beginning to see how much exploitation was going on. Instead, they dropped the ball and lost the whole game. But for lack of stupid analogies, I’ll take this one step further and say that they haven’t lost the whole season yet. They can still do something about cleaning up their site without destroying what they set out to do in the first place.

There are a lot of sex workers who do rely on Craigslist, and unfortunately because of this action, they are forced to start using more exploitive sites out there that are much worse, and that’s sad. Craigslist could step back up to the plate and decide where it wants to be in this debate. It can kowtow to the Bible thumpers and give in completely, like it’s doing right now, or it can bite back and work hand in hand with the communities that have grown up with them, making sure that the evil ones are ostracized, but the ones who are there for the right reasons still have a forum in which to do what they do best.

Unfortunately, it looks like Craigslist may take the easier road because it is filled with fewer obstacles. In the end, it may be a road that leads nowhere.

All Common Sense Aside, a Virtual Girlfriend Sounds Like a Great Idea

Computer Games, Social Networking, , , , , , ,

I know we like to rag on the Japanese for adopting really ridiculous concepts like having virtual relationships with cartoon characters from computer games, but after thinking about it a bit, I’m starting to think that maybe they’re onto something here.

I mean, let’s face it. I haven’t done all that well with human girls/women. The few I’ve dated have either been completely nuts, strippers, professional dominatrices, or hell-bent Asian martial artists who have been bred with the sole purpose of destroying both my physical and immortal souls. And I’ll even admit that I’ve dated a few women who fit ALL of those categories. (the sad thing is, I’m not kidding)

So, I started thinking that perhaps I might do better if I just started dating fake women. You know, computer generated women who are designed to be what a real person might actually be looking for.

And then I started to realize that I’m not a normal person either. I have no idea what it is I’m looking for. To be honest, I was looking for exactly those crazy women I already mentioned previously when I found them, so I’m not sure I’m really the best judge of what’s best for me. Because they were pretty damn hot when I hooked up with them. You would have thought the ominous Satan music always playing in the background (when there was no actual music playing) should have been a dead give-away each time I was on a date with them, but when you’re out with a woman who looks a lot like a supermodel, you sort of overlook little things like cute animals keeling over dead whenever she comes near. I mean, a relationship is a compromise, right?

But a virtual woman seems like she’d be that much easier to handle. Okay, having seen movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, I should probably know better, but it sounds like such a fool-proof plan, kind of like that big ocean-liner they made in the early 20th century, or that awesome plan to get into Afghanistan and Iraq overnight, but I’m not really one who learns from earlier mistakes. I mean, I went back to a woman three times after she dumped me twice for “something better that just happened to come along”.

So, I’ve decided I’m going to move to Japan, buy a gaming device that they use to court this imaginary girlfriend. I mean, what can possibly go wrong with this plan?

Adventures in Volunteering…the good and the bad

Memoirs, , , , , , ,

One of the more difficult hurdles I discovered when trying to volunteer was actually finding some place where I could volunteer. Figuring that there were many agencies and groups that would be jumping up and down just waiting for a willing work pool, I started to inquire, only to discover the world of disfunctionality that exists within the volunteer corps themselves.

First, I thought it would be fun to build housing for the poor and struggling. Having seen the articles and stories on Jimmy Carter’s involvement with Habitat for Humanity, I decided to volunteer with them. Having skills in carpentry, I figured I’d be able to offer lots of assistance in this field, but when I showed up at the interview, I discovered a very interesting dynamic that existed there. The woman who interviewed me kept asking me “why” I was volunteering. She kept looking into the “crime” I must have committed to be referred to their group, and even though I kept saying I found their name in the phone book and wasn’t in trouble in any way, she kept treating me like I was some prisoner who was getting a furlough to work off a debt to society. But I tried to ignore that and eventually got to go to a site where I could work.

Well, I discovered this to be a very interesting situation in that the person in charge of that site had two modes: “Leave me alone” and “You are all scum who are working for me so get your asses in gear, or you’ll pay dearly for crossing me.” It took me a short bit to realize that the majority of the people who were part of this project were all working off some debt to society, and that most were court-ordered placed on this job. I tried to work in this environment, but I kept feeling that I was now cast in a bad adaptation of Cool Hand Luke, so that when my day was done, I decided this was not the kind of volunteering I wanted to do.

So, I looked for something else. And what I found in that search process was how much dysfunctionality there is in the volunteer search process. The people were generally nice, but finding an actual assignment was really difficult. I should point out that I wasn’t interested in working with kids, mainly because I was paranoid about the tendency of agencies to accuse anyone around kids of improper behavior, even if all you did was show up to work. I had a friend of mine who was working with kids for some years, and she was accused of all sorts of atrocities, only to finally discover that the woman accusing her was a certified looney, who the agency discovered after my friend was almost railroaded through the criminal justice system. I decided I didn’t want anything to do with that.

So, I found myself hooked up with an agency called Lighthouse for the Blind, which is a service to volunteer with blind people. The first meeting was what sold me on this group because there was a young woman who was recently afflicted with blindness, who was tasked with speaking to the volunteers who attended the first orientation. Her motivational speech about how helpful the agency was seemed insightful and interesting, but to be honest, it was when I was walking home from the first meeting when I was sold. The girl was walking down the street towards her destination, and she was taking forever to get down the street. The visuals we were offered during the orientation showed blind people making their way pretty well, but this poor girl was having the most difficult time walking down the street alone, and I was immediately sold on the need to see what I could do to help someone like this so that a journey should never take as long as that one was taking her that day.

When I volunteered, they set me up with an old guy named Frank. He was one of those cranky, “I can do everything on my own” kind of guys who really just needed help reading his mail, folding his money and getting him to and from the store every now and then. I volunteered with him for a few months, showing up a couple of times a week and pretty much being his eyes for such little tasks.

Of course, after a few months, he started opening up and felt a lot more comfortable talking to me about things. That’s when I discovered there was a hidden side to Frank that you’d never know from any previous conversation. The conversation that made me realize it went something like:

Me: You have a letter here from the AARP (the retired people organization).

Frank: Just throw it away.

Me: Are you sure?

Frank: Those people piss me off. They have too many agendas. Like the Coloreds.

Then he started referring to ethnicities and races in extremely derogatory terms. I guess he felt really comfortable with me by then, so he just opened up and, and I discovered I was volunteering to help one of the most racist people I’d ever encountered. And it never escaped me the fact that he was blind, which should have made a difference (at least to me, it seemed like it would), but no, he was dogmatic about his beliefs and he would waste no amount of time getting to how much he hated “those people”.

Finally, I realized I couldn’t continue working with this guy. I realized he needed my help, but whenever I actually tried talking about such subjects, he would pretty much shut me down and talk about issues in ways that were extremely demeaning. He pretty much hated everyone, including African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and the Irish. By this time, my girlfriend was constantly coming over with me, spending quality time with me and Frank. Bless her heart, but not once did she ever reveal to him that she was Chinese, even when he took the opportunity to refer to Asians in some horrible fashion.

So I stopped showing up and told the Lighthouse I had to discontinue this volunteer opportunity. I could have chosen to work with someone else, but by then I was completely burnt out, and my girlfriend no longer wanted me to work with them any more. I mean, there was only so much she could take, and I didn’t blame her either. She wanted to share such time with me, and there’s only so much you can ask from another person.

So I stopped volunteering. Every now and then I think about taking up another opportunity again, but I find it hard to take the next first step.