Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

'Living Craigslist' Experiment Challenges College Grad to Live Off Craigslist

by Amar Toor on January 22, 2010 at 10:20 AM

The Great Recession may be showing signs of recovery, but with unemployment rates still exorbitantly high and people continuing to face foreclosures, lots of us are still taking a financial beating. So, if you count yourself among the many still suffering from the Recession Blues, you might want to take a page out of Jason Paul's book -- and live on Craigslist.

As Jason Kottke writes, Paul is a recent college graduate, who, after having no luck finding gainful employment with his major in communications, decided to try and live entirely off of Craigslist. Before taking on the challenge, he laid some pretty specific ground rules. He started with the $2,500 he'd saved during college, and allowed himself the luxuries of a car, phone, camera, and computer to document the ordeal. He decided, though, to not let himself live in his car, crash at a friend's place for more than a week, or even initiate contact with anyone unless it was online. The only thing he had? Craigslist, and the myriad opportunities for employment, residence, and social interaction the site provides. Paul says that the sojourn will continue for nine months in total, and will involve living in three different-sized cities along the way.

Paul's documenting the whole thing on his cleverly designed blog, and, from what we can gather, has been doing pretty well for himself, despite that whole drug-addled, cricket-infested communal living situation. If anything, the entire experiment demonstrates not only how all-encompassing the classified site is, but how it really has become its own online marketplace. If a disgruntled college grad faced with a meager employment market can make a decent living for nine months, it'll come as a welcome reassurance that, no matter how bleak our financial situations get, we'll always have Craigslist. [From: Kottke and Living Craigslist]

Tags: Blog, craigslist, jason paul, JasonPaul, living craigslist, LivingCraigslist, recession, social experiment, SocialExperiment, top

Comments

4

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular