Craigslist Personals Alternatives: 10 Replacements For Finding Easy Casual Encounters

After the Senate passed the Fight Online Sex Traffickers Act, or FOSTA, Craigslist opted to shut down “Casual Encounters” and its other personals sections, explaining in a statement that keeping the sections could leave the site legally liable.

This means the end of classified sites as we know them.  Finding hookups online from now on means that you will have to create an account of some kind.

The rest of this post will focus on the alternatives we've tested and how well they fill the gaping hole left by craigslist pulling out its personals section.

Here is a nifty table that goes over the sites we will be reviewing.  There is also a list of sites that are best alternatives for gay hookups.

An Ode To Craigslist Personals

I don’t remember when I first discovered Craigslist, but I remember my first “Casual Encounter,” as a freshman in college.

Not the guy ― he blurs hazily into memory as one of the many generic men I’ve summoned from the Internet over the years. What I remember is the dawning sense of power, the realization that I could order up sex, when desired, as easily and quickly as a pizza. He came to my dorm room and we rode up in the elevator together. I never even had to bother to put on shoes.

I posted and responded to many ads over the 17 years since that first casual encounter. In the “Men Seeking Men” section, where I met a long-term boyfriend. In the infamous “Missed Connections” section, where my admirer complimented my pigtails and glasses, and turned out to already have a girlfriend. But it was “Casual Encounters” more than any other section that captured my imagination. Near-immediate, easy, anonymous, it served as a playground for my not-insubstantial id.

On “Casual Encounters,” the laws of supply and demand meant a bare-bones posting could net hundreds of responses, sexual possibility flooding into my inbox so quickly that sifting and responding became its own hypnotic ritual. The ads in the section ranged from a casual hookup request, to an elaborate group sex fantasy, to niche fetish ads from, for instance, a breast enthusiast looking for an “adult nursing relationship,” or ANR. They stripped human sexuality down to its most primal truths ― money could be exchanged for sex, and drugs. I smirked at men who thought a wordless dick pic sufficient to secure a woman’s attention.

The section had its own vocabulary ― laughably transparent code words skirted descriptions of illegal activity, acronyms shorthanded sex acts that I sometimes had to Google. All manner of perversions were laid bare, all interest groups represented. Men sought women, women sought men, multiple men sought men, couples sought women and all other permutations one could calculate. It was an underbelly of sorts, but a beloved one.

Where else could someone decide they might like to engage in some light bondage at 2 a.m. ― and actually make it happen?  

Even as technology advanced and others moved on to Tinder and other apps, I remained loyal to Craigslist, preferring the anonymity of the platform as well as the democratic base of people attracted by the free, low-commitment interface. Users didn’t have to go through the hassle of creating an account, and could put as little or as much effort into finding a partner ― or partners ― as they wanted. And there was some other ephemeral quality that drew me ― Craigslist “Casual Encounters,” I felt, had heart.

Alternatives For Gay Hookups

Craigslist was a great place to find M4M encounters and the sites above are more oriented towards the F4M and M4F crowd.

Here is a quick overview of the sites we've tried that are meant for gay hookups only.