Missed Connections

Submission 18,920

Part of a series on Craigslist. [View Related Entries]

About

Missed Connections are a type of personal advertisements posted by Craigslist users to share stories of chance encounters with strangers and their contact information in the hopes that the other party will read them and contact the writer.

Origin

In September 2000, Missed Connections was introduced as a part of the personal section of the classified advertisement website Craigslist.^[8] By 2010, New York City's Missed Connections, the most popular chapter of its kind on Craigslist, was receiving over 8,000 submissions a week.

Spread

On March 30th, 2009, A Missed Connections-themed Tumblr blog^[5] was created as a crowdsourced gallery to showcase particularly strange or funny missed connections. On June 2nd, 2012, Buzzfeed reported on a missed connections street art project called " I Wish I Said Hello" created by artists Adria Navarro and Lisa Park that involved creating stickers based on missed connections post and stuck on the locations described within them.^[6]^[7]

On November 9th, 2011, the pilot episode of a web series called "Missed Connections" was uploaded to Youtube.^[9] The series contained eight episodes with the final video uploaded on April 9th, 2012. The series used the idea of and phrase missed connections without a direct relationship to the Craigslist section.

Notable Examples

Almost on the L

On August 30th, 2010, @almostontheL, a Twitter feed that tweets missed connections from the New York City L subway train, sent out its first tweet.^[3] As of February 2014, the Twitter account^[4] has over 700 followers.

I told you the string you picked off your shirt had fallen on your pants. You called me observant and said you liked my hair.
— almostontheL (@almostontheL) May 26, 2011

You had short, pixie cut, Jean Seberg cut hair, and were carrying bags with a bunch of sunflowers in them.
— almostontheL (@almostontheL) May 19, 2011

We shared a few moments last night on the L train while a drunk guy was sleeping on you.
— almostontheL (@almostontheL) May 9, 2011

Illustrated Missed Connections

On September 22nd, 2011, children's illustrator Sophie Blackall published a collection of illustrations based on missed connections posts titled Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found.^[1]

On October 4th, 2011, the book's publisher, Workman Publishing, uploaded a promotional video for the title on their YouTube channel.^[2] As of February 2014, the video has over 6,000 views.