Tuesday, April 11

my new soap operas...

Since I no longer have a post that allows me the luxury of watching television all morning and night (ah, how I miss the days of working at the dry cleaners) I have found that I don't really miss the soap operas I used to watch, not really, even when I see glimpses of the faces I am so familar with staring at me from magazines in the checkout aisles, or commercials on cable for the soap network, or even when I go into Siena on an afternoon that Val works (she's very much into the soap operas on Channel 7; which was the favored channel at the cleaners simply because it had the best reception).

I know that it's not really good for me anyway and there's no reason to like such junk, but like bad trashy novels, or a bag of chips, the lure of the soap opera drama still calls to me, and I still listen.

Imagine my surprise when it came online...I randomly checked out craigslist for a class assignment (I had to find three job leads online), and I noticed the section called missed connections. I was intrigued. Similar to something I've seen in the Reader; it wins by having the posts linked via a subject header, which means you can read whatever post that has the most interesting content (like this recent one: "You Gave Me Your Number - And Slept With My Friend - w4m") and skip the rest. Recently, I was captivated in searching for the origin of a cat fight between two college girls at UIC. What could this woman have said to make "Christine in 481" so angry? Just that she ought to stop acting like the class is such a waste of her time and maybe smile once in a while. By the end of it, the back and forth posts had them making fun of each other's breasts, "mine are classy, not trashy."

I don't care how highbrow you are, this shit is absolutely fascinating. So I have been trying not to read it everyday, mostly because there's so many other things to do, but the truth is, you miss a couple days, you could be behind a hundred postings or so and miss something...which is when I realized it's just like the soaps.

And, the funniest thing is, they even have their version of "Luke and Laura" in the form of "Dan and Elena," who apparently actually connected on the missed connection board and are getting married...someone recently flamed them as "exhibitionists who have nothing better to do with their lives than post about them online"!

Though the format's crude and there's not usually visuals, the truth is, it all comes out the same in the end, it feels just like being addicted to a soap opera, except it's whiny people who have too much time on their hands, and it's more "real" than "The Real World" and there's something oddly appealing about a bunch of anonymous people trying to find someone they saw in real life online.

2 Comments:

At 4/12/2006 7:42 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

When I was in New York and San Francisco for a few weeks, I'd cruise the missed connections section, "just in case" someone had posted there about me. Ah, young naiviete.

Anyway, just wait until you discover the "best of" section. It's absolutely hilarious. There's also a cautionary post about why you should get sucked in to craigslist that was put up in the last month or so... something you might want to read before it's too late. :)

 
At 4/12/2006 11:34 PM, Blogger stine said...

best of? sucked in? it's too late!

you still have a little aw shucks naiviete!

 

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