Remember the Craigslist killer? (Don’t roll your eyes. A month is a long time in blogger years.) Were you scared? Outraged? Were you one of the people who thought that the Erotic Services section of Craigslist should be shutdown? If you were, this will make you super angry. But if you were like us, and more or less indifferent, this will crack you up.
The Erotic Services Section on Craigslist has been renamed the Adult Services section. According to an article on CNET News, “The biggest difference between Craigslist soon-to-be defunct ‘erotic services’ and the new ‘adult services’ sections will be human monitoring.” This sounds good, no? Before the murders, Craigslist relied on its users to patrol the Erotic Services section, but now, it will be monitored by employees who will vet each and every post before they go live. (Side note: What a hilarious job that would be!)
We decided to check in on how the new name had changed the section. This is what we found:
There is the ALL AMERICAN SEXY COLLEGE GIRL READY TO HAVE FUN, and a woman who claims MY NAME IS DOMINATRIX and tells you to call her for more details. I think I got it from that, thanks. Then we have a !GORGEOUS!♥ LATINA HERE FOR PLEASURE!, the ever-popular SEXY=========PLAYMATE========, and, for the more faint of heart, a gal who promises to “give you sweet moments.”
“‘All the texts and photos within ads submitted to the adults section will be reviewed by a Craigslist employee before being posted,’ said CEO Jim Buckmaster in an interview with CNET News.” What exactly are they looking for? Twenty-two-year-old med students with gambling addictions? It’s weird.
What’s even weirder? This post on the Craigslist blog from Buckmaster pointing to “a few out of tens of thousands of ‘escort ads’ featured on backpage.com adult classifieds owned by Village Voice Media, publisher of a chain of weekly newspapers.” It might be a way to spin attention away from his site, but if we’re going to point fingers, he’s right — it’s time to re-examine publishing standards across the board.