Missed Connections ads are super-creepy. A Missed Connection ad is basically a plea for a do-over, a sad admission that “I was too timid to say anything when I first saw you because my perfectly-rational creepiness filter was in place, but this is the Internet now so whoops! There it goes.” Or sometimes they’re cries to a universe that’s unfairly maligned them, as in “The train doors closed the instant before we locked eyes on either side. From the platform, I watched you get pulled away from me. I dug your glasses and think we could have attractive babies.”
If posting an ad helps one get the stranger-obsession out of one’s system, fine. But one should never forget that anyone who would possibly respond to this sort of ad is going to be weird.
Now then. Julia Wertz, the creator of Fart Party, has edited an anthology of Missed Connection comics by nearly 100 cartoonists. A ton of fabulous people have contributed their interpretation of individual Missed Connection ads — for example, Laura Park:
Oh, and also me! I’ve got a page in this thing as well, with a hand-drawn comic that’s pretty, uh, different from standard Wondermark fare. I guess it should go without saying that some of the entries in this book are pretty bizarre/NSFW. But dang if they aren’t fascinating.
For more information, visit the official site (with links to reviews, an NPR interview with Julia, etc.), or you can pick up a copy on Amazon.
That one’s going straight on my wish list! (Not straight into my cart, I’m afraid, but when the big bucks start rolling in…)
ps: I know someone who met her husband this way! At least, I assume they’re married by now, because she must be one of the most conventional people I’ve ever met. Not weird at all. But a boy she had noticed many times before on her daily trainride wrote about her in one of those free newspapers that you can get at stations, he was too shy to say something just like that, I assume, and they’ve been living happily ever after since then. So there!
You: tall, lean, bearded. Me: Also tall, lean and bearded. Our eyes locked briefly over our beards. I was too stunned to speak, then your pegasus took off. Coffee?
Y’know, New Zealand’s too small for this sort of thing – it’s more a case of meeting someone new, talking for about 3 exchanges, finding out they slept with your sister/your best friend/your ex and walking off.
This is why kiwis can be found on every other inhabited continent … need to spread the gene pool out.
‘you: geeky, self-possessed, gay(prolly) – me, tired, broke, geeky & political’ => relationship suicide
cynical, no …. 😉