a Craigslist response

Finally I got an interesting post to one of Craigslist ads. This is the post:

People are dumb
Don't you agree? I mean, I'm not dumb; I'm sure you're not either. Most (not all) of my friends are pretty smart too. So why does it seem so hard to find smart people? I don't need you to rattle off PI to the 1000th digit or anything, or give me a discourse on macroeconomics; I just want someone who has a little more than usual rattling around inside their noodle. And I meet lots of people who, by virtue of their education, their employment record, etc. must be smart, yet when you socialize with them they're content talking about their favorite Seinfeld episode as if it was the latest thing. Doesn't this aggravate you?
So lets solve this problem. Let's get together and form our own little smart club and we won't have to talk to those people ever again. Who needs them anyhow! And that goes for the popular and pretty people too. Although I'm sure you're pretty and popular, and smart. I wouldn't want to imply otherwise.
Let's chat

And this is the response:

go away seth



What's interesting is that I know who she is although she doesn't know who I am. I mean, I don't know her, but I figured something out. Most people use the same email for craigslist that they use for other personal activities such as creating profiles at friendster and myspace. Once someone sends me a response I can search on that email at those locations. If they have a profile, I can find out more about them then they might otherwise reveal in their letter. Is this sneaky? Yes. Is it wrong or inethical? I don't think so though I;m sure some people would take offense at it. Of course, you can find my email on this page and do the same thing to me. Go ahead, try it. Let me know how it works out.

~A