Last Monday Seattle resident Jason Fortuny (and a friend) carried out a thought experiment into reality — one I think anyone who has surfed Craigslist sex ads has entertained. He took a hardcore Women Seeking Men ad from another city and reposted it to see how many replies he could get in 24 hours (the ad’s photo after the jump). Then he published every single response — photos, emails, IM info, phone numbers, names, everything, to a public wiki (Encyclopedia Dramatica — site is up and down, check back if down). Then they went public on Jason’s LiveJournal page calling it The Craigslist Experiment, inviting readers to identify the CL ad’s responders and add more info (”Your Goal: identify people you know IRL and point them out. We’ve already had great successes here.”) It has turned into quite a meme, getting posted all over the place.

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It wasn’t just any kind of ad, but a hardcore BDSM posting where a female submissive was looking for a rough male doninant to beat her up and fuck her. The ad’s language suggests (to me) that the original poster actually had no idea what the language they were using meant — clearly what the person was asking for was well beyond the included “safe sane” S/M community definitions. (This, and a few other details, suggest to me that the original ad may not have even been for real in the first place, as often happens on CL.) But the point is, Jason and his cohort took the ad at face value, as an average, and got a face-value response to what the ad’s message sends out to the world.

They got 178 responses, with 145 photos of men — cocks, faces, more; full email addresses (both personal and business addresses), names, and a few IM names and phone numbers. One respondent used a Microsoft employee email address, another used a usar.army.mil (military) email address. They got audio, too. Since then, there has been one copycat in Portland. Respondents have emailed him asking him to take the info down, and he has simply published their requests.

Since then Jason has had *his* private info published to CL and been threatened physically, threatened with lawsuits, and has been hated on by everyone from online BDSM communities to Wired (and I saw he was interviewed by the NY Times on friday Sept. 8, so I wonder what position they’ll take on all of this). Wired called him “sociopathic” while commenters are saying things like “Disclosing an email to the public is indeed a violation of privacy, and if anyone has a spine, they will take you down with a massive lawsuit that will make you regret ever doing this. You are a liar, a xenophobe, an asshole, and deserve to have your ass beaten to within an inch of your life. Anyone who lost a job over this deserves to sue you for all their future income. Sending a picture to someone over email is not the same as having a license to legally post it online. You will go down. You better start planning your escape from the country, and change your name. Cockbag.”

When researching my sex books, I’ve placed CL ads just to get a random sampling or to get ideas; I post as female. Every time, I’ve received an overwhelming amount of troll responses with unsolicited photos. I have always wanted to do something with those responses and photos, as they are often offensive and sometimes even kind of evil. But I never get past the thought process involved in the prank, even though thinking about doing something makes me feel somehow better — as I would by outing the same kind of creepy guys that stalk me and harass my female friends online. I think about it, and joke about it with friends. Sometimes I’ll even chat with other chick sex educators, laughing over beers and comparing the unsolicited photos we’ve gotten recently, just via our web presence. (”You got a *face* pic? You rate!”) Then again, I’m not pretending to be something I’m not. In the case of The Craigslist Experiment, everyone was pretending to be something they’re not. But not anymore.

Ultimately, this is going to piss off a lot of people for a lot of reasons, and a high percentage of these guys’ lives are going to change in a major way. But I’ll argue that The Craigslist Experiment is an inevitable form of online natural selection. If you have something to lose, don’t do something that could make you lose it. And I also think that if our culture was made to feel less ashamed about sex, Jason’s results would be quite different.

But isn’t what Jason did essentially the same as what the cops do? (Except the result is arrest, not just being outed.) How, exactly, is what Jason did any different than the duplicitous fake-ad and chatroom impersonation tactics police and government use to bust people for porn, sex work and online sexual solicitation? Or even something as benign as selling sex toys online?

Thanks to Thomas, Scott and Viviane for the updates — which I got while I was in Seattle, of course.

Update: Reader comment — Jonathan Moore writes me, “On her blog Violet wrote:
>But isn’t what Jason did essentially the same as what the cops do?

I think it is different, acutely. Cops can’t ask people to do illegal things directly, i.e. ’sleep with me I am fifteen’, ‘I will suck you off for $15′, etc. That is entrapment. I think that if he wanted to perform a ’sting’ then he should only report on things he *did not ask for*.

Here is the Wikipedia page on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment

I do think there was a point to this prank, though. People should realize exactly how much privacy they have when they are communicating online, and this exercise does much to illuminate that.”

Update: Reader Phil R writes me, “In your post regarding Jason Fortuny and his experiment you seem to be defending him, saying: ‘If you have something to lose, don’t do something that could make you lose it.’

But you didn’t finish that sentence. Don’t do something that could make you lose it because there are jackasses who will take advantage of you.

What if Jason was ‘experimenting’ by offering help to closted gays and then turned around and posted their identity?That’ll teach em, right? It’s a breach of implied privacy, regardless of how icky one thinks a consensual sexual act is, and it’s a shitty thing to do whether it’s done by cops or self-styled pranksters.”

Update: Thare has been much discussion between myself and other sex educators about this, as to be expected. But then tonight I got this email from a longtime educator who is highly respected in the field and quite known, and shall remain anonymous, at his request: “You know, I realized there’s something that I’ve been assuming everyone commenting on this controversy has already assumed…there is no question in my mind that the original post was not by a woman. I certainly could be wrong, but I feel quite sure it was an ‘online crossdresser’ who gets off on online sexual attention from guys. There are a lot of them, as I’m sure you know. Most of the really outrageous ‘I’m a submissive woman, tell me how you would beat and humiliate me’ ads — I’m pretty sure they’re from guys.

I feel so sure of this for reasons I prefer not to disclose.

I just realized I’ve been assuming everyone else already knows/agrees with me on this.”

Update: Reader comment — Calladus writes me, “I don’t know how far you’re following Jason’s story. I just received an email from the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office today replying to the email I sent on Monday requesting a comment.

The response was that Jason doesn’t seem to be breaking any laws - yet. Here’s the response I received:

Based on what I have read in the media accounts, I would say that there is no violation of our state criminal code involved here, yet.

Sincerely,

Daniel T. Satterberg
Chief of Staff
King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office”