Where have all the Craigslisters gone? I never thought I would say this, but I miss my low-ball offers and off-the-wall emails from professional scam artists looking to “take that off your hands right away” for about 50% of the original asking price. No calls, no emails, no nothing, just eery silence. On Friday afternoon I posted roughly 14 items, ranging in price from $5 to $50, covering a wide array of random, leftovers still taking up space after the bittersweet conclusion of the mass downsizing and foreclosure of 2008. I have Xbox games, computer memory, old gameboys, and other assorted items that, usually, people would be chomping at the bit to either use, abuse, destroy in a microwave or flip at the flea market for some fast cash.
Nothing. No one is even trying! I want to hear the funny stories about how your son thought his Gameboy would float in the toilet with his rubber ducky. Fill my inbox with mocking tales of your wife’s unrelenting whining about the slowness of your computer, and that you really need to upgrade your RAM before she tries to cook your laptop in the oven. I want to know about your 3 year old’s obsession with Star Wars and his quest to find the best StarWars X Box game known to man. Ask and see if I will take your ice cube trays in exchange for a 20 year old microwave, or if I will consider oranges as payment for a DSL router.
I can not try to help you out with things you might need/want if you do not take the time to contact me and propose an offer. Yes, there is a “Wanted” section on CL, but most often people on there are just straight begging or looking for brand new items for pennies on the dollar – I am not interested in that sort of thing. I am a very generous person, and I have reached a point where I really no longer want this box of useless items sitting at my feet everyday while I write and research on the web. I need you, the Craigslist Community, to rid me of these daily reminders of capitalism. Maybe the stuff I have posted really is useless junk that no one wants, but I find it really hard to believe that there is not a single soul in this area that could not get use out of a hand held steamer, microwave, or drill in need of a cheap replacement battery.
I will have to change my approach, instead of doing a bunch of smaller posts with a monetary value assigned, I think I am going to go with the barter method and compile a list of everything I have to offer and see what goods and services people are willing to trade. I can not say that I am really in “want” of anything at the present time, but I just want to illicit some sort of response from what I consider to be a dying community. I love trading almost as much as I loved getting those brown paper bag goody sacks when I was a kid, and much to my surprise, as of late I have been able to find some sort of use for pretty much any old thing that comes my way. So enough with the crickets, and bring on the emails! Flakes need not apply.
