Craigslist Has Lost Its Innocence
By Sarah Z. Wexler
Craigslist, we thought we knew you. Your communal, hippie vibe and San Francisco roots made us feel like we could open our door to the stranger coming over to buy our old Ikea futon. But then the head of the Seattle Police Department's vice unit called you "a vehicle for promoting prostitution," and you got busted for solicitation rings across the country. We took a break, thought we'd be better off without you in our lives, but then we needed a kitchen table, gently used, and came running back.
Then, a few months ago, we heard the worst thing so far: a murder tied to you — a 24-year-old Minnesota girl turned up dead in her car.
She was trying to save up for a trip abroad and had responded to a nanny job. The 19-year-old man who wrote the post is being charged.
Craigslist, you're not the Web Utopia we thought — we hoped — you were. And though we're not ready to totally call it quits, we are going to start bringing our hockey-playing brother along on our future dates.
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