A Swingers Guide to Using Craigslist

We're somewhat embarrassed to say we use Craigslist due to its reputation, although we defend it fairly vehemently (Example!). We thought that the best thing we could do is outline what helps us determine who is real and who is not, while debunking some common misconceptions. Despite how savvy we think we are, we still get it wrong some of the time though so, feel free to take this with a bit of caution.

There are plenty of posts discussing peoples' opinion about Craigslist. This is not one of them A post on CL is a lot like an ad, except you have to renew it if you plan on continuing to use CL as a meet resource. We'd love to hear other pointers on how to navigate the CL environment.

Finally, we use CL to find other couples only. Our experiences may not apply to other areas of Craigslist. We do not define ads as fake or real, they are all real. There are no 'bots' on Craigslist, every respondent to your ad and ever ad was created by a human being. Your challenge lies within determining whether or not the poster or respondent is truthful about their intentions; not whether they are real or not.

Red flags when viewing ads others have posted:

1. Pictures are 'thumbnail' sized, irregularly shaped, or of their genitalia only.

2. Pictures have copyright or blurred copyright/ownership tags on them.

3. There is too much emphasis on trying to prove the poster is real. For example: multiple mentions of the weather, whether or a local sports team has won or lost recently, asking respondents to add a word to the subject or their response.

4. Abundant use of lingo or stock ad. (Link to Swinger's Board Dictionary). Our definition of a stock ad is the following:

"Wife recently changed her mind and we're looking for another couple for full swap. We're not Ken and Barbie and do not expect you to be either. Both DDF, non smokers and looking for the same. The weather is 63 degrees today and the Sox won! Put "some random word here" in your response so we know you're real!"

The emphasis is on a one, two or three line ad with common terms and making a point to prove they are real.

5. Too much ambiguity. If you cannot say why they swing, describe how to they look (from a picture or description) or exactly what they are looking for, then their ad is too ambiguous. You should take this is as a sign they are not serious or not truthful.

6. Excessive white lines. If the post starts after 2 or 3+ blank lines, they have done a very sloppy job copying and pasting their ad to other city's sections.

Determining if a respondent/poster is posting a fake ad/response

1. Images should be equally sized but you should take into consideration cropping if they are not sending unaltered photos. Images should be sent through email and be larger than 400kb.

2. If there is a clue in the photo to a preference from either party, casually ask them about it in a later email. Similarly, pay attention to whether or not their later answers match up with the information in their ad. For example: He is wearing boxers that say Ohio State University on them. Ask if he is a Buckeyes fan.

3. Simply verify they are who they say they are with a quick call. Both of you should be available at the time of the call, and if you prefer the same from the other couple, ask that they both be present.

4. If something is too good to be true, it probably is. An 11 inch penis is most likely not his.

5. Very quick reference to anal, double penetration, or excessive swinger activities should be a sign of either poor judgement or too much pornographic influence.

6. Requests to trade pictures of wives are always, without fail, false. If you're looking for another couple or person, you should be passing over these anyways.

7. Use of age appropriate terms. If someone is over 30, we do not expect 'lol' to be used after every other word.

8. If the poster refers to themselves too objectively, it is probably a single male trying to live out his fantasy. For example: "the male does x, or the female does y". Use of 'he' and 'she', to an extent, is acceptable!

9. If a respondent or poster quickly jumps to describing, in detail, what they want to see happen or what they'd like to do to you/your partner, etc., it is likely they are living our a fantasy.

Positive signs the poster or respondent is truthful

1. Their post or response is detailed, descriptive and lengthy.

2. A picture is G (or X, but not hardcore) rated with both people clearly pictured.

3. They can speak accurately about a local swinger's club.

4. The respondent has CC'd his or her partner or does so in a later email.

5. Knowledge of the local area or lingo is helpful. This helps demonstrate an understanding of the area.

Common Myths

1. There is no such thing as 'bots' responding to ads. Once you understand what you mean by 'bot', you'll understand why this is not a realistic concern.

2. Asking for a respondent to put a word in the title will prove the respondent is real. All posters are real, the question is whether or not they are truthful.

Personal Notes

1. If you post an ad and it is very, very obvious you are truthful, at least half of the respondents will be real/truthful. Thoughtful ads that relate a quick impression of how long you've been swinging, who you are and what you are looking for, why you are looking for it especially with a link or mention of a paysite profile; will have equally truthful respondents.

2. Posting a picture does not tremendously help your cause if your ad is truthful and well thought out. Pictures are quick ways out of putting work into your ad.

3. A mention of 'No Single Males' in your ad will not deter single males. This requires patience over a quick tongue.

4. A 'pic collector' is someone whose goal it is to collect as many pictures as possible of yourself and your partner. Ask yourself, have the pictures you've sent given the other couple a reasonable expectation of your looks and physique? If so, feel free to voice your questions about their intentions.

5. Craigslist is the only resource for letting the area know you'll be at a bar, club, or restaurant and are looking for another couple or single person. Simply posting that you will be at X tonight and are looking for another couple can have very positive results.

We've been using Craigslist for 5 years (off and on). If you can navigate the internet, you should not have much trouble with Craigslist ads

Real Examples Section

This is what a picture collector's post looks like:

Quote

Willing to share explicit photos of my gorgeous, petite, sexy, toned, 40-something wife (long brunette hair, 5'5", 105 lbs), for similar pics of your younger (18-25) wife. All kinds of pics available for private trade.

This is what a post that is non-truthful ad looks like:

Quote

We are a 43 yo cpl looking for another gl, fit, clean couple..Or a single Bi / Bi curious female..

 

looking for massages, soft swap , girl/girl...possibly full swap at some point..

 

he is 5'5" she is 5'2" he is straight , she is Bi social.........Reply only with pic or will get deleted..plus type" MWMW" in subject.. Voice verify is needed before meeting..

 

NO MEN.. Couples or single females only..

Another!

Quote

College mf seeking a male a female or a couple. Couples go to the front of the line. Full swap possible. Male loves eating pussy and the female loves having her pussy ate. Both clean and in shape. Please respond with what you are into and a pic if possible. Looking for tonight.

This is a truthful ad (Can you see why?):

Quote

We're a mixed race (she's Asian, he's Caucasian) couple, both good looking, 43, and HWP. We've been exhibitionists and voyeurs, but enjoy full swap the most. We like to meet for drinks, get to know each other and see what happens. We are both professional, educated, kind and nice people to meet. We live in MetroWest and we can host and don't mind travelling. He's straight, she's mostly into men, but will enjoy certain women. We are both very good at pleasing and are fun to watch being pleased. ?

 

Tonight would be ideal, but we'll be on this earth a while longer, so we can set something up for another time.

 

Send a pic and you'll get more of ours.

 

Us

Another!

Quote

Cute interracial couple.....she is 43, BI, size 12, cute...he is blk, 42, athletic build and handsome....We are looking to meet up with another couple tonight for a few drinks and hopefully more...

 

We are very laid back, easy to talk to and we both have a great sense of humor...we like music, karokee, dancing, cards, movies....anything fun

 

We are hoping to find a couple who is similar to us and looking for fun IN and OUT of the bedroom...we are not looking for a "quick" fix...we would love to find a couple to hang with and hopefully have it be something other than a one night thing....on going is what we would like to find.....We are not hung up on much but we all know there needs to be a attraction for it to make it to the bed.

 

We both smoke and drink socially

 

full swap, oral, g/g and all 4 together ...safe sex a must...d/d free...no drama, b/s or endless emails...we are only looking for those who are "real"

 

If you are looking for the same and a fun loving couple to hang with then send us a email with a pic and tell us something about yourselves...don't just ask for a pic of us. or a one liner..unless you have nothing to say about yourself which isn't a good sign to start.

Awesome job with laying out how you've been successful with CL.

Thanks for taking the time to share it with the board. While we tend to stick with the tried and true, there may come a day when we have to go with the CL route for whatever reason, and using your guide will help the process, a lot.

Great job again!

Thanks! Similarly, there is a long-running thread where people can post their site profile and have it critiqued. I wanted to link to that post since a lot of the examples are relevant to posting on Craigslist, but could not find it. Grrr.

Thanks for your detailed post! We never dreamed of ever using CL until we traveled to an area where there were only about six couples listed on SLS. We bit the bullet and tried CL and met a great couple we would have never found otherwise. If we had seen your post about a month ago it would have saved us a lot of trial and error, lol!

Excellent lesson on how to use CL. We have at times used CL too with success. As a follow up to your methods for spotting insincere respondents, we find that a lengthy chat can serve as a great tool to further eliminate candidates that don't fit what we are looking for. We rarely if ever post looking to meet right away and are a little more cautious when using CL than when we use sls.

Where would you find a majority of posts in CL? I took a quick gander at the NW Chicagoland and Rockford sections under "casual encounters" and "misc romance" and it's a barren wasteland out by us. I saw one that might have been legit, the rest were obviously fakes.

Usually Casual Encounters. The Northwest Surburbs only had about 34 ads

Signing up for a website like SLS is probably a better bet in your case!

I do have a couple of questions/thoughts for you on this....

1. Bots. Are there not bots that scan CL ads and respond to them with canned messages? Granted these should be easy enough to weed out, but are you saying they don't exist?

2. That CL is the ONLY place you can post where you will be and looking THAT night, I don't believe that is true since I know you can do it on the "hot date" feature on SLS and I believe that other swinger oriented ad sites have similar things ("booty call", "hot date", etc). Did I miss something here?

Hi Julie, this is Dave. Lins asked me to respond to your questions because of my profession.

1. Yes, we are saying there are no bots responding to CL ads. It's important to make a distinction between spam (You've won the Montana Lottery!!) and untruthful respondents to Craigslist ads. When you create a post, you're given the option to mask your email on the ad or not (it is masked by default). This system discourages spam because the email addresses that are picked up are only valid for a short period of time (until the ad is flagged/taken down/expires) and messages sent to it have to be routed through Craigslists' email servers to be routed to the poster of an ad. If Craigslist has any redeeming qualities, it's their ability to reduce or eliminate spam.

The untruthful respondents are not bots for mostly the same reason that spam is not prevalent through Craigslist ads but for a few additional reasons. First, let's play out what happens if bots were sending messages to Craigslist posters in the MW4MW section. A bot replies to an ad posted in MW4MW with what purpose? To ask the couple to meet? To ask for more pictures of the couple? If the poster of the ad doesn't respond with more pictures or agreeing to meet or learn more about the 'bot'; doesn't a human have to intervene at this point? If not, how is a bot...which is just a computer program like Microsoft Word...responding at this point? The definition of a bot (link to Wikipedia Bot page) is that it runs an automated task...this is why the Turing test (link to Wikipedia Turing Test page) has been valid since 1950. If a human does have to intervene, what was the point of the bot in the first place? What I'm trying to get at here is that there is no benefit to be had in relation to the amount of work it would take to have something auto-responding to MW4MW craigslist ads.

It is always a human responding to your Craigslist ad; the untruthful respondents are the people confused with 'bots'. Their motive could be living out a fantasy without reprisal. Maybe trying to collect pictures. Everyone is real on Craigslist, but not all are real about swinging. The trick to Craigslist is being able to differentiate between the truthful and untruthful respondents to your ads....

At best, asking those who respond to your ad to put the word "football" or something obscure in the email subject prove they read that line of the ad.

2. We meant it in the sense that it's one to many where you can post without expecting a response or contacting anyone in particular. If you feel it is not unique, please remove it! We want that to be accurate as possible.

Thank you for asking!! I hope my responses made sense and were helpful.

My question on the bots comes from my experience with CL (buying/selling things) in that it's not uncommon at all to reply to a "for sale" ad and get a response back trying to sell me something else or get me to sign up for an MLM. Or when posting an ad the common thing is you get a reply "is xyz still available" then when you reply back you get a pretty standard "oh my sis' car broke (or some other random tragedy) I can't buy it now, but you should really check out this great MLM that has made me lots of money" or something along those lines.

I'm just thinking that would translate over into the personal ads as well, with the same type of thing happening.

Oh, that happens, but of a different variety. We were hoping that the post would outline how to avoid (or try to avoid) those situations. That's what we mean by truthful...I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing where bots comes into play here? A bot is like an autodialer. When you answer the phone, you can tell within a few seconds it's a recording. A bot/spam are the same thing, we don't really encounter them on the MW4MW on Craiglist, but notice a lot of people think that is the case. We were hoping to dispel that and outline what we do to avoid untruthful responses to our ads and untruthful ads.

bots/auto-responders same thing. It's not a real person sending those replies I'm talking about, it's an auto-responder, as soon as you reply to their ad (or reply to their reply) their auto-responder picks it up and replies back. So, it's basically a bot (not in the googlebot since of the word, but in terms of it's a program doing the work not a person).

Then yes, we're saying that is not on the MW4MW section on Craigslist.

Thanks for clarifying. I think it's the knowledge of those types of scams throughout the rest of CL, at least for us, that would have prevented us from even trying to deal with the personal ads side of it. Not having that just brings it back to the same level (basically) as any other ad site (that's free), you still have people with ill intentions but you have those everywhere.

Your guide was great, btw, which is why I bumped it up to article status.

If Craigslist has any redeeming qualities, it's their ability to reduce or eliminate spam.

I do not know what CraigsList you are using but the one I have used is full of spam, still is. My old personals email is full of spam that just keeps coming, most of it from CL years ago--from webcam girls, personals sites, and, yes, bots/automated responses (there are tons of these on personals, jobs, etc.). All the spammers do is generate an endless series of new email accounts so CL will accept their ads for a few days for each account. When I look on CL now, I see some of the same spam that was there 4 years ago as well. I think your guide is only generally useful, you really just have to use CL for a while and find out what works and what does not for yourself. I met a woman who I had great times and a friendship with from casual encounters who I thought was a spam response--she fit several of the things you listed. And I have had several spammers that met all the criteria for being real, looking for sex people, but were selling something. Using CL just takes allot of patience and a big spam folder for the 90% useless contacts you pick-up.

My question on the bots comes from my experience with CL (buying/selling things) in that it's not uncommon at all to reply to a "for sale" ad and get a response back trying to sell me something else or get me to sign up for an MLM. Or when posting an ad the common thing is you get a reply "is xyz still available" then when you reply back you get a pretty standard "oh my sis' car broke (or some other random tragedy) I can't buy it now, but you should really check out this great MLM that has made me lots of money" or something along those lines.

 

I'm just thinking that would translate over into the personal ads as well, with the same type of thing happening.

Or posts that you get an email back about signing up for a webcam site...

We want to post to CL about our house party ( We have been running a local club 9 years now) I intend to call people and to speak to both and make sure they know its a swingers party and to weed out fakes Do you have any other suggestions on ad's?

We want to post to CL about our house party ( We have been running a local club 9 years now) I intend to call people and to speak to both and make sure they know its a swingers party and to weed out fakes Do you have any other suggestions on ad's?

That's great! We see this pretty often, but haven't posted one ourselves. We've responded to one, though, and it was because they included so much information in the ad that we felt comfortable making the leap, so to speak. From running a club, you probably already have a great idea of what to include in the post and since you know to speak with people beforehand; it sounds like you'll get a pretty good response to it. Let us know!

Great article. I've been leery of CL myself, but I do remember meeting some fun folks back in the day on classifieds2000, before it went to the internet graveyard haha.