• explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    I’ve been married for a long time too and we met on the greatest dating website of all time: Craigslist Personals.

    You entered your gender, age, a written segment, and an optional photo. No algorithm, no matching. Everything written was searchable and published via RSS. All communication went through email. No app, no subscription, and the only ads were sex workers.

    In the context of this article, it forced the user to engage by reading people’s blurbs instead of just swiping for brain chemicals like Candy Crush. You felt like you were talking the other humans and the website was just where you went to meet them.

    If such a site were recreated today, users would want to run the RSS feed through a slop rejection filter.