Goodbye Yahoo Answers

You were inexhaustible and irreplaceable.

There are some places on the internet I’ve always gone to feel a little less lonely. But over time, they’ve disappeared. My favorite was always the Craigslist personals section—not just the missed connections, which were always quasi-fictional, but the various advertisements that ranged from the highly specific sexual requests to wanting to not have to eat dinner with yourself. I never responded to any of the ads, though I thought about it sometimes. But mostly I would log on and read the posts in the evening when I wanted company and couldn’t have it.

Craigslist personals still survives in the “community” section, which hosts “missed connections” and other postings, but it’s not really the same. Here is a man named Robert trying to find a date for his tortoise who is also named Robert.