Love’s second chance at Missed Connections

by hclark | Mar 15, 2010

It’s a cool fall afternoon. Walking home from work, you cut through the park to enjoy its beautiful foliage. As you approach the steps, you see him. Hair dark as night, eyes as bold and blue as the ocean and a smile so inviting you almost blurt out your phone number. Instead, like an evanescent flash of sunset, the moment passes.

Yet, however fleeting, it stays with you. Replaying each second over and over in your mind, you yield to an unidentified infatuation. The more time that passes, the more you dwell on the thought of him. The question becomes: is there anything you can do?

Thanks to Craigslist, now there is.

The website has a category known as Missed Connections. It’s a forum where people can anonymously post comments about someone special they encountered in their day. Rather than letting that potential love slip away, people now have the tools for a second grasp.

“People love to have something they can do in that situation rather than be powerless,” Jim Buckmaster told the Times Colonist in Victoria. Along with representing Craigslist, Buckmaster is the man behind this new forum.

It became a feature to the website in 2000. Buckmaster says he added the category after noticing people were using the Craigslist personal ads to reconnect with someone they shared a fleeting moment with.

With 100 topical discussion forums, Craigslist receives more than 120 million user postings each year. Since 2000, the Missed Connections section of Craigslist (for all cities) boasts of 6.5 million hits, with an average of 14,000 hits a month.

It became an instant hit, says Buckmaster.

Capital connections

Urban areas have become the hub for these connections to flourish. In Canada, bigger cities like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver usually see up to one hundred comments per day. Ottawa usually receives fewer than twenty.

Nonetheless, people are trying to connect.

Nicole Mather, 23, is a former Ottawa resident and a Craigslist enthusiast. She recalls an exchange she shared with a stranger on the bus.

“When we kept smiling at each other I had a feeling something was there,” she says. “When I checked Missed Connections the next day, I found his post, which said how he loved my cute smile. He said he wished he got off at the same stop as me.” 

Included with the post was an anonymous email address, for reader replies. Mather replied, which she says led to weeks of dating. Even though it didn’t work out, she says it was worthwhile.

“I still think it was fun to just go for it,” she says.

The Missed Connections bulletin board is filled with stories like Mather’s. These chance encounters occur in all kinds of venues, from bars to bus stops, fitness centers to coffee shops.

Leon Wojciechowski working at Bridgehead Coffeehouse.

Bridgehead Coffeehouse is a busy meeting spot in downtown Ottawa. It’s also one of most frequently mentioned places on the local Missed Connections. Leon Wojciechowski, 25, works at Bridgehead, at the corner of Albert and Bank. He says there’s a history of comments about Bridgehead employees, recalling one about all the “cute boys” working behind the counter.

“This one girl wrote that coming in for coffee was the highlight of her day,” he says. “It’s really sweet because you know it could be anyone. It makes you look at everyone in a better light.”

Many posts are charming tales of a time and place. Some are vague, giving little detail about the person posting, with flattering tidbits about the one who caught his or her eye. Most are heartfelt.

“You wore a flowered dress and sat down on the 95 bus,” read one anonymous comment. “When our eyes met, my heart skipped a beat.”

What’s love got to do with it?

This site could be placed on the shelf with many other social networking forums, particularly dating sites, where finding a soulmate is the goal. But Missed Connections has a more distinctive appeal: For one thing, one or another of those posts could be about you. Someone might be trying to meet you. Evidently, many readers are people who might never consider posting a message themselves, yet still check the site on the off chance they’ll see themselves described.

“There’s something very compelling and powerful about being found, as opposed to being the one who’s searching,” says Wendy Paterson, an Ottawa psychotherapist.

Also, she says, Missed Connections differs from regular dating sites in that you are re-connecting with someone you’ve already noticed, rather than trying to connect for the first time.

“There’s so much communicated in a glance that could never happen in an email exchange,” she says. “It’s bringing back the idea of meeting by chance.”

Dan Trottier is a psychology professor who teaches a social media class at Queens University in Kingston. He says Missed Connections differs from other social sites because it exposes something real about a person.

“There’s a sense in which people are a lot more frank and forthcoming with their emotions,” he says. “On sites like Facebook and Lavalife, there is usually a sense of strategy or deliberately creating a persona in a profile for others to see.”

Trottier says that other dating sites put more pressure on people to illuminate all their positive features, which can be dishonest or misleading. But on Missed Connections, people are seeking those they’ve already witnessed in their everyday life.

He also says the anonymity of Missed Connections gives people a sense of freedom.

“It gives people the chance to put their emotions out there without any sort of reprimand,” he says.

The website tends to attract people aged 18 to 35. Many posts are written by men, seeking women who have caught their eye.

Bridgehead Coffeehouse, where connections are made.

“There is still the expectation that men are pursuers who start the relationship,” says Dr. Gary Lewandowski, a psychology professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey. Lewandowski says men are more romantic and more prone to experiencing love at first sight, while women tend to take a more practical approach.

Ottawa Craigslist fan Chris Cleroux, 26, is an example. He says he thinks Missed Connections is more romantic than regular dating sites because it leaves love to chance.

“I think if someone sees a message and seeks out that connection, it’s much more real than paying Lavalife $60 to find your soulmate for you,” says Cleroux.

Cleroux says he checks Missed Connections every couple days, in hopes of finding comments from women he’s encountered. While he’s posted comments before, Cleroux admits he’s never had replies. But this isn’t discouraging.

“I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I think you can be blown away by someone enough to know that it’s worth looking for,” he says.

Real-life drama

Not everyone who signs onto Craigslist is looking for a soulmate. Rather, some just enjoy the daily dose of nonfiction entertainment.

“We’re all still suckers for romance and the idea that true love can find a way,” Lewandowski says of this third-person involvement. “Every time you read a comment, in your mind you assume it’s going to work out for those people.”

He says the idea of love developing from brief occurrences is somewhat of a romanticized notion. Nonetheless, he says, this is one aspect that attracts people to Missed Connections.

“I still think it was fun to just go for it.” — Nicole Mather, who replied on Missed Connections

Mather says she can relate.

“I started out just checking it to see if I saw comments about my friends,” she says. “But I really think it could work out, which is why I continue to read it.”

Lewandowski says it has all the hope and possibility without the downside, which is the risk of rejection that people face on regular dating sites. With its element of anonymity, Missed Connections eliminates that, he says.

“You’re giving yourself an excuse,” says Lewandowski. “You want to give it a try by posting something, but if nothing comes from it you don’t have to think it’s because you’re unattractive. Rather, you can just assume they don’t read Craigslist.”

Paterson agrees that this allows people to protect their feelings. However, she also says this is the emerging characteristic of a society growing too comfortable with technology, where people are too far apart from one another.

“People don’t know how to introduce themselves anymore,” she says. “We don’t live in a culture where we have permission to walk up and say hello to someone that catches our eye.”

But Lewandowski says this has to do with the busy life of the modern city-dweller. “You don’t always have time to strike up conversation right at the moment someone passes you by.”

Bayview bus stop, where waiting can become a moment with a stranger.

A long shot at love

Despite all hope and possibility, happy endings are not a guarantee. Are people actually connecting lifelong via Missed Connections?

“It’s hard to tell,” Craigslist.org founder Craig Newmark told MSNBC. “The anonymity involved in posting makes it difficult to keep track of success stories.”

Nonetheless, Paterson says she sees a future for Missed Connections in Ottawa.

“It’s need driven,” she says. “As long as people have this need to feel protected, yet still want this romantic aspect, I can imagine it getting bigger.”

But Trottier says that if the site enlarges, that might change what it means for people.

“One of the allures of Craigslist is that it has that underground feel,” he says. “If it was made more explicit, I think it would lose its value as a space to confide in.”

In the meantime, self-proclaimed romantics like Cleroux will continue to post on Missed Connections — even if there’s no result.

“It just makes a person’s day,” he says. “If you can just put a smile on someone’s face it’s all worth it.”

Related Links

Ottawa Missed Connections
http://ottawa.en.craigslist.ca/mis/