Step 3. Inspiration II

Aside from being an online posting board, Craigslist is for people looking for and advertising skills and services. The creators of CL discovered a lot of posts originally under "personals" and came up with the name "missed connections" to describe what they were reading. This is the link for Montreal Missed Connections
http://montreal.en.craigslist.ca/cgi-bin/personals.cgi?category=mis


This is a blog that I found that an artist named Sophie Blackall, currently residing in NY, writes. She reads craigslist missed connections and manifests them in art form. One of the videos posted above is about her blog.

She writes: Messages in bottles, smoke signals, letters written in the sand; the modern equivalents are the funny, sad, beautiful, hopeful, hopeless, poetic posts on Missed Connections websites. Every day hundreds of strangers reach out to other strangers on the strength of a glance, a smile or a blue hat. Their messages have the lifespan of a butterfly. I'm trying to pin a few of them down. -SB
http://missedconnectionsny.blogspot.com/

Here is an article that I found that describes the CLMC scenario and even features a testimonial of a couple who claims they met because they shared a moment, and then reconnected through MC's.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/23/nyregion/23romance.html



PostSecret has been a huge inspiration for this project. After deciding to use CLMC to advertise a call out, I discovered Postsecret. With new secrets posted every Saturday, a 4 time book deal and a speaking tour, Frank Warren is the most trusted man in America. People send him secrets on the backs of postcards from all over the place. His new book, Postsecret: Confessions of Life, Death and God, features never seen post cards adorned with the secrets of the anonymous.
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Another one of Frank Warren's blogs. Postsecret Community is a site for Postsecret followers to convene, chat, and get updates on Frank's books and speaking tour.
http://www.postsecretcommunity.com/



Like Missed Connections, textsfromlastnight.com is an open source website dedicated to people's deranged, hilarious and self-deprecating texts. Sometimes obscure and completely random, TFLN is fueled by drunken and stoner student ramblings. I like TFLN because they resemble the daily secrets of the lives of those learning to understand the world and themselves.
http://textsfromlastnight.com/

FML is full or irony and self-deprication. A way to mock oneself whilst remaining anonymous and sharing life's little disappointments and insecurities, FML is an inspiration for its ability solicit gasp moments the same way secrets do.
www.fmylife.com



This guy has also been a huge inspiration. He lives his life like one giant social experiment. After hearing about him, I realized that I wanted to do social experiments full time. Part Yes Men, part Postsecret, Part Meow mix.
http://www.ajjacobs.com/content/home.asp