Craigslist vs. Lifestyle sites

[shes_in_parties]

Pardon the heresy, but what are peoples' thoughts?

We tend to use craigslist more than lifestyle sites. While there is a lot of flim-flammery on craigslist, it's easy enough to post an ad and ignore the spammers and pic collectors. There's something to be said for anonymity; no one knows if we have seen their reply, liked their pics, decided they are fake, or whatever. By and large we have had really good luck with craigslist over the years.

On the flip side, we have met exactly one couple on a lifestyle site. It seems that because of the lack of anonymity (lifestyle sites always involve a profile), no one is willing to actually meet up. After all, what if it goes badly? Now you've severed more than one connection, and you could get a bad reputation.

The only downside to craigslist is too many newbies; not that being new is bad, we were all new once, but there are lots of people who are just flirting with the idea of swinging or don't really know what they want. This is probably due to the ease of advertising on craigs - no need to make a permanent home for yourself.

So what does everyone think? It's clear a lot of people like lifestyle sites, but it's also clear there are frustrations there.

[lardub]

Same here we have had more success with kijiji, very similiar to craiglist. Both house parties we attend are a direct result of kijiji adds, we also have considered a third but the Mrs has reservations about this one as they seem to allow an awful lot of single males, and she isn't into the whole gangbang reciepient (sp) aspect.
We tend to keep our options open, have yet to place an add on kijiji, we simply check it out and if something jumps out we send an email and ask for more info. In our area craiglist seems to be more spam and game players, while kijiji has more real adds in our opinion

[fun4Ds]

The only problem for me is. Craig, is not a swinger.

It just feels better spending my time, resources and yes money. With real, lifestyle owners.

It's just personal comfort I suppose.

[SandJinVT]

We have to agree with that. We don't know if Craig's a swinger or not, but it certainly isn't a site "meant" for that sort of thing. And now that they're pulling their "sexy ads" section out, I doubt that anyone will be finding much of anything in the swinging sector.

If you want a good comfort level, go to sites that are run by swingers for swingers. They really DO try to weed out the miserables, the fakes, etc. There are newbies on every site, and a lot of wannabees, but you learn quickly how to sort through them. I'm a little leery of Craig's list, since ANYONE can write an ad. And we wouldn't ever go to a party listed there, mainly because we'd have no idea what we would be walking into.

We have profiles on a lot of sites, mainly because we travel, and we really DO like meeting people and actually meeting and having sex (gasp!). But they're swinger's site, where we have a good chance of meeting up with people of like minds.

[DE_BBC]

I tend to use CL a lot, and like some of the others have had quite a bit of luck.

As long as you're willing to sort thru the fakes and pic collectors(which once you know what to expect are easy to spot).

I've never really had any luck with any of the swing sites(sexy ads, Swing Lifestyle, ect..)
Aslong as you're careful and smart, CL is great.

[Dave_kat]

We'd heard about CL for a while, it keeps popping up in mention from time to time around here.. So seeing this thread we had to take a look.

One thing we noticed was there was no way of telling who was genuine and who wasn't, nor any way to determine off the bat who was real and who wasn't, nor was it sorted in any real friendly way.

To be honest, it doesn't look too realistic, and we'd be worried about what we're really getting into.

[slevin]

I wonder if the preference for Craigslist isn't born out of the fact that Craigslist is focused on "happening now" vs. the swinger sites which can be far more "plan this out" kind of interactions. Regardless of the relative success rates of either approach, that overall immediacy perspective might tip one side in favor of the other for some people?

[shes_in_parties]

What interesting replies! It's true that craigslist is more immediate, and I imagine that's a good part of the draw for many people. That said, our best experiences there were when we emailed people for a good week or two before schedules worked out to meet up...but I suppose it's the promise of immediacy that draws people.

We've found that the easiest way to tell if a couple is real (after our various spidey senses weed out the obvious fakes and not-readies) is to show up at a pre-arranged bar. Safe, public, and if we get stood up, we have a date night to ourselves. After a bit it's very clear who's worth chatting to and who's not, every bit as much as on a lifestyle site.

Thanks for the tip about kijiji!

[slevin]

Originally Posted by shes_in_parties

We've found that the easiest way to tell if a couple is real (after our various spidey senses weed out the obvious fakes and not-readies) is to show up at a pre-arranged bar. Safe, public, and if we get stood up, we have a date night to ourselves. After a bit it's very clear who's worth chatting to and who's not, every bit as much as on a lifestyle site.

That's the same thing we use to weed out the people who are serious and who isn't when looking for people on lifestyle sites like AFF and Swinglifestyle

[Meetussoon]

We use craigslist to sell and purchase items, in fact both our current cars are CL specials. We read the personals, and have emailed some with little response.

The question is, will the "CL killer" limit opportunities, garner police attention - yes, and or lead to a closing of the categories.

Tom

[shes_in_parties]

yeah, someone mentioned that above. Nowhere was that felt more than here in Boston. CL eliminated their "erotic" services and replaced it with "adult" services, whatever the difference is. Ironically, it means that prostitutes now flood the therapeutic massage section. They should put it back the way it was - reactionary decisions are rarely sound.

It doesn't seem to have affected Casual Encounters at all.

[Dave_kat]

Dave here,

I'm in the middle of moving to Ft. Polk, and since Kat is still in Ga working on selling our house, I decided to conduct a little social experiment on Craigslist here in Lake Charles.

So I put this ad up in the casual encounters section this morning, and decided to see what would happen.

"Let's see.. I'm wondering if anyone really reads these ads, or if they are all advertisements for dating sites, so I'm going to put it this way. I'm a 38 y/o fit male and new to town (I've been here a week) and haven't met a single person in town (well, other than the Wal-Mart greeter and a couple of waiters (the guys just ain't my type). So I'm going to post one more advertisement here. To prove I'm real, I'm going to suggest going down to Marble Slab off of 14 (by Lowes/Wal-Mart) for ice cream tonight and/or tomorrow night at 9pm. If you want to actually link up, let me know ahead of time.

A note for those dating site/age verification site people - Don't reply to this - I might do something about it (and I don't mean nasty emails).

If you're genuine, and want to meet up for real, and over the age of 25, email me, we'll chat online, and let's go for ice cream in a public place and see if we click."

So anyway, as of the time I post this, I have the following in responses:

1 bi male asking me if he could help since I seemed so desperate
1 cam girl from an single's site who sent 3 real emails before sending a link to see her webcam after making a purchase to join the site
3 emails within a minute from each other from 3 different realtor's saying the same thing in each email
1 from one of the website owners asking me what I could do to them (I sent him back his ip address from his email account header)
4 from "girls" with definite male names for emails
2 from "girls" asking me to go to fake age verification services - watch out for those, they only collect your credit card number and DO NOT go anywhere, much less to verify your age
7 from people sending me a "I saw your ad, let's trade pics after you message me on this site" with a fake redirected web address

Needless to say, I didn't get a single genuine response on there. I'm still going to Marble Slab tonight and have me a chocolate amaretto ice cream since there isn't anything like Marble Slab in Savannah that I know of. I'll let ya'll know how it goes, although I expect I'll have about 30 guys there seeing if it will work and about half might hit on me, but probably no woman of course (Like I really expected one to show up).

To be continured later tonight.

[Dave_kat]

well.. just an update - not a single person was there... So much for that experiment.. Maybe tomorrow night

[shes_in_parties]

Well, it's only ever really been good for us as a couple meeting other couples. I think since you're temporarily a single guy the odds are against you.

We got together with swinger friends last night and had replies from 2 or 3 other couples planning to meet us, but no one showed. Good thing we had our friends!

[Dave_kat]

Probably, although the Lake Charles casual encounters probably gets about 75 w4m postings a day... I've thought about emailing each one and seeing what responses I get, but I think the amateur sites have taken over in this area.