Missed Connections

🚃 "just a quick note to say that i really enjoyed the quiet company of a fellow reader as we rode uptown on the A train last night between the chaos in our car and the random switch to local service at 59th street..."

This is the opening paragraph of a missed connection post on Craigslist in New York. Craigslist is an early online advertising platform where people post jobs and sell furniture. This digital town has a missed connection corner where people take a second chance at love.

In June, just shy of 200 New Yorkers found themselves in a similar situation, posting a missed connection on Craigslist. These posts blended the excitement of potential connection in a city of eight million with a tinge of regret. They captured fleeting moments, a shared glance, a brief chat with a stranger on the subway, in a park, or during a bike ride in the five boroughs of New York City.

When comparing New York City's population to the number of missed connections posted in each borough, Manhattan is where lonely hearts search and gather. However, love advertising on Craigslist seems to flourish on the official-only island borough—Staten Island.

The City That Never Sleeps also has no closing hours when searching for love.

Manhattanites are active almost 24/7 and are the most invested in describing their missed connections—they use more words to portray the missing moments.

One of the longest posts from Manhattan was posted around noon and described their missed connections as follows:
📖 "We both stopped to read a poem on the corner of 1st and St Marks. You had a large backpack and a mustache. You turned to talk about it and we chatted for a moment about who the author might be. You mentioned you were visiting from DC and waiting to meet a friend at Goodnight Sonny..."

One of the most dedicated posts from Brooklyn read like this:
👀 "Hi I hope you re doing well if you re reading this Sorry if this is super weird also but I just couldn t stop thinking about it. We were making eye contact on the train on Friday around 2 am the L train. We both got on at the 3rd Ave station and I believe you got off at dekalb or Myrtle. If I remember you had blue shorts air pods brownish hair..."

Let's not forget Staten Island, where they put themselves out there...on the ferry:
⛴️ "Hey we were on the 5 03 PM ferry going to St George Wed June 5 which arrived around 5 20 PM. I noticed you and gave you a big smile and every time you looked back I couldn t help but continue to smile at you. You then stepped out and took your bike from under the stairs and I let you pass before I walked through the door..."

These posts are where lonely hearts take a second chance without fear of public rejection. What type of exchange would prompt someone to put themselves in this digital town to look for their missing half? These are the top ten nouns people use to describe a lost opportunity.

Besides the Bronx, all other boroughs are concerned with time. (Just kidding, the Bronx seems like an early riser in all boroughs) The noun "time" or a version of it, "morning," dominates in all five boroughs. It highlights the passing moments in hopes of rewinding and un-missing the encounters.

As people navigate their daily commute in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, they often found themselves caught in fleeting moments of connection with passing glances and brief eye contact with strangers during their daily commutes.

People in Queens are the only ones who actually smile.

When in the Bronx, your nails also matter.

Having a beard and a bike is how you stand out in Staten Island.

In addition to the words they use to describe their missed connections, New Yorkers get all the details when explaining how their missed connections are dressed. If you click on something you own or wear, you might have missed connections in New York City and Staten Island.

Most of these fleeting romances happen while New Yorkers hustle through their everyday lives. Next time, while you are on the subway, look up, and there is a 0.00245 percent chance that you might make eye contact with someone and end up the subject of someone's missed connections or file a missing half search on Craigslist.

Data analysis and methodology can be found in here

This project took three weeks from data collection, analysis, and visualization. It was born out of Columbia University's Lede Program. Thank you to Jonathan Soma, who is a fantastic teacher. Thank you to Jeremy Singer-Vine, Leon Yin, Youyou Zhou, Aaron Reiss, and Gurman Bhatia taught me different aspects of data storytelling and provided constructive feedback! Thank you to all the mentors—Jessie Blaeser, Michael Keller, and Gerald Rich—and to all the outstanding TAs (Yanan, Laura, Lesley, and Manyun). You all were patient with me, and I learned so much in the mentor and TA sessions.