Wanted - Bear Cubs for My Children: One Hundred of the Weirdest Posts Ever Seen on Craigslist

by Gary Fingercastle

What do haunted furniture, bear cubs, and a skydiving baby have in common?
Serial craigslist poster and parodist Gary Fingercastle .

Picture Author and agitator Gary Fingercastle posts hundreds of mock advertisements on the popular website craigslist.org and receives thousands of real-life responses. And because truth is stranger than fiction, he learns

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2009

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

ah, the internet... the anonymity to hide behind photographs of hotter (or in some perverse cases, less hot) individuals to talk filthily with other similarly faux-people or to insult and attack strangers - all the primal urges are satisfied in one place. we've come so far and become so efficient.

the internet can also be used to fuck with people's heads on craigslist. that's this guy's particular fetish; pranking the gullible. and the people, ever reliable, will respond. if he says he has a haunted mirror to sell, you people will line right up. if he says he wants a tattoo for his 12 year old daughter, you give advice... is there no limit to your depravity?? do you really want to dress up like a christmas tree to have sex with a stranger?? is there no less retarded way to get cheap thrills any more?? does my lack of interest in christmas-tree sex mean i am officially stodgy? am i just too cynical? should it disgust me that someone actually volunteered to infect a stranger with an std to get back at her cheating boyfriend? do i just need to watch more maury or something to fully appreciate the depths of humanity? does this mean that i am too classy?? me?? miss nutella-arm? because and here's another thing - every time i am forced to read stuff that "regular folk" write, it just mortifies me - no one can spell or string even one coherent sentence together. (not you brainiacs on goodreads.com, here i represent the inarticulate lows)

dunno - this book is worth reading for the casting call section, simply because i think some of those movies (the strongest man with the biggest guns)* sound like they could be pretty legitimate, low-budget gems. go to your local, read a few pages, feel better about yourself.

* i don't have the book in front of me, but it is something like that... i don't want to ruin the joy of discovering it for yourselves...

[Miss Ryoko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, despite my slight disappointment in finding out the original posts were all just fake, made up posts by the author of this book (I thought they were going to be actual posts he had come across), I still found the book to be quite amusing. I cannot believe some people actually thought his posts were legit and real!

This was my favorite post in the entire book:

Crazy girl looking for insane night out - w4m

Here's what I want to do tonight:

Sniff glue * Smoke glue * Drink a bottle of rubbing alcohol * Paint the sidewalk with cattle blood * Smoke cattle blood * Roll around in a campfire * Drive my car into a storefront * Walk backwards across interstate traffic in a blindfold * Lick the roof of your mouth * Punch a stop sign *

INTERESTED?

Response: thats all what will we do after that? age? pic where in bk(brooklyn) r u. so you had a week like mine i take it

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Oh my gosh I couldn't stop laughing! I can't believe anyone thought for a second that post was legit!

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

This has been sitting on my shelf since 2011. Taking up space. Space that some other book could have had. Oh well, I've read it now and almost wish I hadn't.
The 'weirdest posts ever seen on craigslist' were fabricated by the author to see what responses he could get. And in the end, I didn't find the posts or their responses to be to humorous or interesting. Maybe it just aged poorly? Or I think it would have been better if these posts had indeed been posted by anonymous humans? But one man, behind a keyboard, making crap up, kinda ruined the fun for me.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite as hilarious as I would have hoped. The fake ads that Fingercastle came up with were all extremely clever and a few were chuckle inducing, but I was hoping for some completely off the wall responses from people to these ads. Unfortunately, most of the responses are pretty basic or simply consist of a permutation of "I'm interested, call me." Add to the fact that there's a ton of wasted white space, reproductions of the email correspondence info (to/from/date/post ID/etc.), and unneeded extraneous junk for each post (we get it, these are craigslist ads, you don't need to have it there for each one) this is really a 75 page book strung out over 200.

Still, as I mentioned, some of the fake ads are priceless and this is a good, quick, harmless, entertaining time-waster of a read. I'd say my hour or two reading it was well used.

[Jax · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as funny as I was expecting it to be...more than anything, it was a bit depressing to think that there are that many people out there who responded to these fabricated situations...and then, the way they respond...well, that's a whole other matter. Some of the responses that Fingercastle received, though, gave me a shred of relief that there still are a few people out there with sense and gumption to call him out, even if they can't spell or have bad grammar. Granted, this collection is but a mere sample of the total number of responses and are chosen by Fingercastle (and/or his editor), so the whole thing is a bit skewed from the start.

[Pamela Hubbard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quick read if you are in need of a good laugh. The author created 100 crazy, hilarious, frightening Craigslist posts and published them along with the real responses. It is impossible not to laugh while reading this, but it is also extremely sad to see the responses and it leaves you with the feeling that our country is not getting any smarter!

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure I understand. Did Fingercastle (*snicker*) post these ads? If not, how did he gather responses? If so, then the subtitle is misleading - "...Weirdest Posts Ever Seen..." Either way, it wasn't all that great.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is awesome!!! I was laughing out loud multiple times. It is a very quick read, and the craiglist posts are hilarious!

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny. A great diversion.

[Tom Fuchs]

meh - has moments. but they're few and far between

[David Schuster · Rating 3 out of 5]

Confident funnyman author shows off the funny postings he made on cl and the often-creepy replies. But that's what we expect, right? Some of it was REALLY funny!

[Thankful · Rating 3 out of 5]

Darn trolls. But still funny!

[Tammi Drevers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man people are stupid and feel the need to have stupid stuff.