Via reader request, Kushal asks:
Why do people use missed connection ads? Do they ever work? Is it a sign of enduring optimism of people? Has anyone reading this ever posted, or responded to, a missed connection ad? How did it work out?
I don't have access to data here (anyone?), but I've long assumed that missed connection ads were not intended to target a specific person. I view them as more like personal ads but wishing to break out of the form. Maybe describing a missed encounter you had makes you sound deep, yearning, and soulful, whereas "SWM, 43, potbelly, good sense of humor, minor league hockey fan" does not.
You come across as less desperate, more picky, arbitrary in a charming way, and maybe a bit of a horse's ass.
On the other hand, I suspect that a "missed connection" ad yields, on average, fewer replies. It makes the responder feel presumptuous and thus selects for a given kind of person, namely someone who doesn't mind pushing himself or herself forward.
That is just a guess. Can any MR readers enlighten us? Can you cite any data?
In Washington DC, fall 2008: A woman leaving a restaurant (I was still eating and hadn’t actually seen the woman) had her friend approach me about meeting later that night at a bar. I didn’t meet up with her that night, but a woman at my table urged me to try missed connections — she herself read them all the time, she explained. I tasked her with trying it for me. She posted it at noon on a Sunday, and a half hour later I had an email from the mystery woman at the restaurant. We did meet up — once — and though I was extremely curious I resisted asking her all the questions I had about her, and others’, missed connections habits because she would have felt awkward and I would have had to tell her that a woman had done the work for me.
@true story,
Oops, never mind. I confused the woman at your table with the woman who approached you. Poor reading skills.
And yet… the sheer implausibility of the half-hour delay suggests that maybe all three women knew each other and planned the whole thing together?
Manufactured serendipity is hardly farfetched in a town like Washington DC.
The usage of them as unconventional personals is also plausible since it signals that you are a person who someone else has shown interest in.
Conventional personals signal a lemon tag (rightly or wrongly) that you are failing to attract the interest of others by conventional means. If no-one else is showing interest, why would the reader assume they’d be of interest to them.
Reading a missed connection ostensibly addressed to someone else seems to indicate that at least one other person has shown a sign of interest.
You: loyal MR reader. Blonde hair, or maybe it was light brown. Glasses. Jeans and a sweater. You closed your browser before I could say hello. Shortly thereafter I was struck by a thunderbolt of what-if. Meet for coffee and a discussion of which blade of the scissors does the cutting?
I guess I assumed the CL Missed Connections section was mainly a form of anonymous self-expression rather than a genuine attempt to get in touch with someone. Kinda like Tired, NotProud, FML, Texts From Last Night, Learn From My Fail, etc etc etc.
missed connections play in to our feelings of regret, i.e. counter factual thinking. in turn, it gives those that partake a chance to gamble (yet another form of risk taking) on whether or not they’ll catch the ‘missed’ reading the missed connection ad.
I’m with Noah Yetter. I had a friend who checked every day until she found one written about her (she didn’t respond, she has a boyfriend). She just wanted to see if anyone had noticed her. The author can be seen as doing the same thing, but with a very narrow focus.
Tyler,
Your suggestion sounds plausible, if not often the case, to me (for whatever that is worth). I fancy a power of suggestion explanation; it’s all some cruel pyschological farce. My question, is should a missed connection candiate respond to the poster, and is not the person the poster aimed to find, what is the proper protocol in handling that?
I assure you, people post Missed Connections ads sincerely. You see someone, you’re struck and you then obsessively refresh CL for a few days in the hope that the object of your affection was similarly struck.
There’s even, now, a nifty little location-based iPhone app called Urban Signals to facilitate Missed Connections-type connections, which is (I think) the logical conclusion of the format. The existence of such a service is the closest thing I can give you to data…
I agree that the format plays on our ideas about authenticity, seeming somehow less “desperate,” more “charming,” more romantic. But that’s just it…for as many lecherous opportunists as the format might attract, it attracts an equal number of bleeding-heart romantics (the kind of people who really do believe in love at first sight).
I think most people would be interested to know how people perceive you on a sexual desirability index. However the exchange of such information honestly is culturally difficult.
I could imagine some kind of application which would allow you to “rate” other people, and have that info anonymously delivered.
The “rated” person would want to be pseudo-anonymous. One could post your picture on “hotornot.com”, but that would be embarrassing to have your picture on there.
So the application would run all the time, capture the faces of everyone you meet all day, then you could rate them at night. The faces would be converted to some kind of video fingerprint and uploaded with the rating to a website. You would query the website with a video fingerprint of your face, and then you would be provided with an average rating. Note that accidental misidentification based on two people’s faces looking the same is not much of a problem, as one would tend to rate similarly looking people at the same level anyway.
I placed a missed connection ad myself once. It was totally made up, but it was the easiest way for me to get something I wrote in the newspaper for free.
Also, I had a friend at a dance club who was given a card telling her to check out the missed connections ads. It seemed like a very cowardly way to ask out dozens of people in one night and hope one was desperate enough to respond.
I think maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way. I’ve never been a Missed Connections reader either, but after reading this I am suddenly imagining myself trolling that section of the newspaper to see if anyone has described me (hopefully in flattering terms). Maybe the utility is to the reader’s ego, not the person placing the ad.
i re connected with a missed connection on this site. im sure it was luck ,but it did work.
I see that (like me) there’s alot of guys
reading and replying here. Now I have noticed that, in late 2010 in Vancouver, BC -that it is almost 100% w4m in these ads. What that tells me is that there are alot of shy and indecisive girls around here that later regret not acting on their feeling(s) when they have them and the perfect, and possibly only opportunity to act (which is when they should act or risk foreverlosing said opportunity). Sad state of affairs. How does this compare to the past? Why is this happening? I’m not totally sure what the answer is but it seems to me that society and courtship has not changed alot in the last 100 years and that some, not all, women want it both ways and they don’t really know what they really want or they don’t have enough experience or maybe they just want to make up and change the rules however they see fit for that moment? I could be wrong but I may be right.
Also – I’ve been happily married for 15 years.
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