[LINK] "Blogger arranges his whole life through Craigslist"

[rfmcdonald]

I'm at once impressed and saddened.

When he was in university, 22-year-old Jason Paul only ever used Craigslist to get rid of furniture and find apartments. But post-graduation, he was jobless and decided to give the online classifieds site another chance. In an unusual social experiment, the Washington, D.C. native vowed to devote nine months of his life to a three-city journey in the United States – completely executed through Craigslist.

He started out with his car, just one bag of clothes and food staples, a phone, a computer and $2,500. Everything else – jobs, housing, friends, leisure activities – he had to find through the popular classifieds community. And there was one more rub: He restricted himself from interacting with anyone new unless contact was initiated online.

Mr. Paul is now more than halfway through his expedition, which began in Oakland, Calif. (where he made cash by street canvassing) and has taken him to Denver (where he’s working at a Denny’s restaurant).

He’s been documenting it all at livingcraigslist.com. He’s scored a free Thanksgiving dinner with strangers, found a friend he meets weekly for crochet lessons, and experienced the highs and lows of searching for roommates online. But with each passing week, he’s had more difficulty defining his role – is he an interloper running an experiment, or a legitimate member of the Craigslist community? And, as Mr. Paul told The Globe and Mail in a phone interview, this has led to some tough questions about how honest he should be with the people on the other end of the Craigslist ads.

More's at the Globe and Mail site.

I also feel a certain sense of bemusement. As a commenter notes, any number of books have come out recently which purport to deal with the author's year-long experiment, everything from organic cuisine to following the Bible. Is this really a news-worthy story?