Missed Connections

The impression I've been given by friends and colleagues is that I am the only person who has not heard of this missed connections thing. Just in case they're wrong and you haven't heard of it either, this is my perspective on it.

You get up from in front of your computer and take a walk through the real world. You see somebody you think is kind of cute and rather than go over and talk and wink and flirt, you go home and post a note on Craigslist about how much you were attracted to whoever that was. Then you hope that person reads Craigslist and remembers you as "that attractive person leering at him or her from behind a tree yesterday." You exchange emails, send pictures, meet for dinner, fall in love and live happily ever after. Or, if that seems like too much time spent away from the computer, you just send pictures.

Angela Hill, one of the excellent writers in the MediaNews collection of wordsmiths, is writing an article to explain this whole phenomenon to pop-culture ignoramuses such as I. Here is my accompanying illustration.

And here is the first rough I did.