Casual encounters craigslist experiment

This seems like something I would do (not suitable for work).

Sociopath = into S&M?

Most of the responses from my empaths-who-date-sociopaths-are-asking-for-it experiment were from the women seeking men ad. Maybe that means that straight men are more into sociopaths than straight women, gay men, or gay women. But I think the more likely explanation is that straight men looking on craigslist for women are looking for a dominatrix. Guys looking for nice girls go to church social functions, guys looking for easy girls go to bars, and guys looking for dangerous girls go online. True? How about this as a case in point:

Just a Great ad .... and straight to the point .. so well done you .... pity half the people who worked for me arnt like that ... save me so much time ... but thats life i guess... and i like jimmy Stewart also ....
You will also no doubt be deluged with replies .... and some very strange i bet ... however if no suitable white knights on horseback ( in full shinning armour of course ) happen to appear just let me know...... and i will feed my steed and drinks ( the Sanderson is good fun ) and dinner would be my pleasure ....
Me .... 6'2 200lbs (slim ) 54 considered attractive ( well a frog needs a kiss now and then )..... my home is in Liverpool and i keep a flat in London as my business is down here ....as I am every week for 2/3 days (for all my sins I am in the fashion industry ... we supply clothing to most high street strores River Wallis Oasis etc etc etc ... ... ) we have an office in Hong Kong were i go for around 8/9 days every 8 weeks or so .... I also keep a home in Majorca and try to get out there most weekends during the summer...

If i hear from you when it would be nice .... and if not i wish you luck on your quest....

Peter

Peter, like many others, was not dissuaded by my addendum to my personal ad:

Almost .... no stutter ..... and of course he was very nice to all in " a wonderful life " ... and most of the other listed things are .... well " cool "
.. sinister ( hmmmmm ) promiscuous ( more HMMMMM .. capital letters ) .. flexible and able to rationalise ... ( dont we all ) manipulative ( most women are ... its actauly a gift )
.... so you sound quite the lady .....
Now if i was a couch doctor i would probably find many things wrong with you .... however as i am not and of course my services are free ... and include the bottle of good wine and dinner ..... it may be well seen as " sinister " ..... " promiscuous " and " manipulative " .... but you decide.
I will of course promise not to bore you.....

Oh, I know you won't bore me, Peter. I won't let you.

S is for serious as a heart attack

One response to my men seeking men personal ad:

You sound so conceited I want to cry

I had to laugh at this, of course, but I also really respect this guy's astuteness. I sent him the same follow up email I sent most of the responses to my ad:

Okay, actually, I should have added a few more things to my list: sinister, promiscuous, flexible definition of the truth, emotionally unavailable, able to rationalize almost anything to myself, manipulative, prone to boredom, weak sense of empathy. Still very Jimmy Stewart -esque, right?

He mistook my complete sincerity for being a joke and actually apologized:

You gave me a good laugh. Thanks. I need to lighten up. It's rare that I send snide remarks to strangers. I can reduce that to zero. Don't know if it's jimmy stewartesque. You sound honest here.

Ron

Thanks Ron. I was being honest. And by honest I mean that the words I said were to be interpreted as having their ordinary dictionary meaning.

I don't understand how empaths can say one thing and mean an entirely different thing and the true meaning is understood by other empaths. Ttsk tsk to the whole phenomenon of sarcasm. But prevalent sarcasm and insincerity make it easier for sociopaths to "pass" in normal society. If you've ever seen an episode of Dexter, some of the funniest moments are when he is telling the horrible truth about something he did but no one will believe him because no one wants to believe that horrible things and people exist. But we do. Seriously.

Are you sane?

So read one response to "my" personal ad with this picture attached.

I was actually relieved to get such a response. Although I definitely think there are people who truly want to date sociopaths because they are sociopaths (and some do it successfully), I also think that most people do not want to date and/or are not well-suited to date or otherwise be involved with a sociopath. Of course the better the sociodar of the people in the latter category, the better off everyone is. So congrats to the author of this response for having enough good sense to know that we are not quite sane.

Love crimes: the experiment

I finally kicked off the personal ad experiment. I posted a sociopath-seeking-love ad in four different cities in four different categories on craigslist. If you're interested in what the ad looked like in its final forms, here's New York, London, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Craigslist doesn't have permalinks and they'll only be up there for a few weeks, so sorry if the links don't work for you.

I've already gotten quite a few responses -- I'll let you guess which ad most of the responses are coming from. If I ever do the experiment again, I think I would add words like "sinister" and "emotionally unavailable" to the description because I am getting several responses like "that sounds like me." I wonder if there really could be that many narcissists or sociopaths out there, or whether people are just ignoring the negative parts of the description and projecting what they want to see.

This has been some of the most fun I have had recently. There have been a few very sincere responses that made me feel funny or a little evil. But I quickly got over it. Mainly I think the responders are suckers, "asking for it," or that they would do the same thing to me if they had half a chance. More details on the responses later.