#craigslistjoe

[theforeignreviews]

The problem with Craigslist Joe

I was brought to watching Craigslist Joe after an ex male friend made repeated smug, obnoxious and uncalled for statements about how "my problems were so petty" (I had NO problems) and he was was setting off to travel the world like Craigslist Joe, sleeping rough and relying on the kindness of strangers. The fact that he was later on busted as a pathological liar on a dearly paid, all-round professionally organised TOUR is irrelevant to this text, but I did want to see what the experience was about.

It's about a man who, in the style of Super Size Me, decides to spend a month living exclusively of whatever he can get (food, lodging) from Craigslist. The first thing you notice is that Joe, on departure, disengages from all of his possessions. Except of course his last-model smartphone and his Mac. Apparently the modern man CAN leech and freeload for a whole month, as long as there is wifi signal. The second is that he's bringing with him a cameraman for the whole month, which raises the questions: was he hired and paid, or is he just in for the adventure, under the same conditions? If he got paid, was it Union standards or just a tip? If Joe can't get food, does the camera guy just say "Ok, I'm going to KFC to get some lunch for myself and I'll be back"? If Joe can't find accommodation, does the camera guy go to a motel? Who documents Joe's hardship through the night, then? Shouldn't we be crediting the camera guy for submitting himself to the same experience as well?

Now, the main problem. Can ANYONE imagine Craigslist Jane? We always hear, with excitement and inspiration, how the local white middle-class young man (and his cameraman and exciting artistic project, let's not forget this important detail) can get by (see also: Into the Wild, before his own stubbornness made him die, or OneStep4Ward - cameraman not included), but from minute 7, when another dude decides to help him, it's really hard not to imagine how it would be for a GIRL in the same conditions, with or without camera woman (or for a 50 year old man, or for a Bolivian man anywhere outside Latin America, etc, but let's just focus on women for this purpose).

Given that 95% of people who were shown helping him were also men, or women in couples, one has to wonder. Interesting coincidence, one of the women who brings him (and 2 more guys) in, is a dominatrix, a woman whose bread winning is to be in a power position towards men.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks "young woman wondering alone and asking strangers for lodging and other favours"? Point for you who replied "She's crazy! She might get raped!", and also for you who said "She's asking for trouble" (note: the question is "what comes to mind", not "what is in her right to do?"). The second thing is, "will she be taken seriously?" This is a serious open question. We have examples of endearing young men seeking adventure and finding kindness in "brothers" out there, but how many women do we actually have recollection of, doing the same? Again, what is the first thing that comes to mind when we hear of, or imagine, a man doing it, and when we imagine a woman doing it?

Couchsurfing recommends caution. It indicates that women prefer to host and be hosted by other women, for safety. And my point is not saying that every man is a potential rapist. But I have been in Couchsurfing, InterNations, ASMALLWORLD and whatnot, because I wanted to TRAVEL and NETWORK, and I stopped counting the amount of men who wrote to me saying that I “look beautiful and they would love to meet me", "maybe I could show them around and show them a good time", they could "pay me back in massages" and "bring chocolates", and so on. Sometimes, within MINUTES of creating a profile, which is quite scary. (A friend with a duck face profile picture asked me if my photo was too provocative, which, no, it was not). I have never received the same request from a girl, or any message saying she is new in town and just looking to make some friends. And I don't know of many women who browse guy pictures and send them messages wanting to be shown the town by them because they are handsome and saying they could pay in massage and chocolate. And mostly, there is no record of ANY MAN doing this to ANOTHER MAN, so this laces the point.

Women can travel the world, as long as they are extra careful and play it safe. Correct?

So every time we hear any man saying that the Craigslist Joe or any other Rockstar Supertramp experience is possible, hence the world is a great place full of kind people just wanting to help and get back a sense of community, it's valid to ask. Is it EQUALLY possible for women?

*By all means, I’m not questioning the fact that there are nice men out there. And I’m a OneStep4Ward fan.

[lesbanim]

Craigslist Joe (a documentary)

Just watched craigslist joe, it was about a guy who spent a month living straight off people he met on craigslist. A lot of guys just traveling around with random people, people volunteering, looking for help, ect.- so trusting and almost inspiring. I could never do that but might want to.

[two4onefilmreviews]

Corporate Art: The Internship (2013) & Craigslist Joe (2010)

At first glance these two films seem to have little in common. The Internship is a big budget comedy in which Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson reprise the "funny buddies" schtick that stood them in such side-splittingly good stead in Wedding Crashers (2005) but which here is resolutely unfunny. It's a slick-looking film with a predictably modern soundtrack and it cost $58 million to make. Craigslist Joe is a documentary in which the titular Joe attempts to live off the kindness of  strangers for an entire month by posting ads requesting charity on craigslist. For some reason, the loveable goof chooses December to do this. The documentary is filmed on a hand-held camera, and I can't find any budget info but I'm guessing it cost less than $25 000, with most of the money going to securing the rights to the inspirational rock songs that pepper the film. The Internship looks like a Big Hollywood Movie, Craigslist Joe looks like a small indie documentary.

But upon closer inspection and reflection, similarities reveal themselves. (That last sentence is pretty much the default sentence for any review that ends up on this blog.) Both films revolve around hugely popular websites, Internet behemoths Google and Craigslist, respectively. Both films relentlessly and aggressively promote the notion of "basic human kindness" in a rapidly transforming world, and both films are little more than long-running, feature-length advertisements.

In The Internship, Vaughn and Wilson are co-worker buddies who lose their jobs as watch salesmen a few minutes into the film, a plot point intended to symbolize the forward march of technology, since no one buys wrist watches anymore except for Bay Street bullies, Armani-wearing shitheads, restaurant owners, Print Era magnates, and John Mayer. Then Vince Vaughn's wife/girlfriend leaves him - which has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie - while Owen Wilson is forced to take a job at his irritating stepbrother's mattress outlet. Here we have the movie's only funny scene, courtesy of a brilliant cameo from Will Ferrell. Just find the scene on YouTube or something so you don't have to see the rest of the movie. The two buddies are feeling pretty down about things and aren't too pleased about being obsolete losers. But then Vaughn googles "google" and signs the pair up for unpaid internships at the aforesaid search engine's headquarters, where, after a tricky interview process via Google Video Chat in which the two men display an allegedly humorous lack of technological acumen, zany hijinks ensue.

Here the two men conduct an interview for their internship in a public library because they funnily do not own computers nor now how to operate them.

See, despite the fact that neither man can locate a space bar, both end up getting hired at Google because the have street smarts and perseverance necessary for success. And Owen Wilson gets the requisite British Love Interest Who Initially Seemed Frosty But Was Really Just Afraid Of Getting Hurt So Yes She'll Go On A Date With Him. There is also a baffling, faintly disturbing, and extremely long scene in a strip club in which Vaughn and Wilson get their underage fellow interns drunk because they all spend too much time staring at their iPhones and don't know what true life experience is. One character after the club scene actually says "that was the best night of my life". Yech. I am sure that there are hundreds of petulant Tumblr feminists who have already written about how offensive the scene is (and I'm equally sure that intelligent feminists who actually create cogent, well-written content couldn't be bothered to see this awful film), so I'll leave buzz phrases like "body positive" out of it.

Aside from a cringe-worthy scene in which the two morons mistake a man in a wheelchair for Professor Xavier, that's The Internship in a nutshell. Simply put, the movie is dreadfully unfunny and seems to function only to show the world how cool it would be to work for Google. It can't be a traditional advertisement as (almost everyone already uses google), so there is no other reason for this movie to exist than as a propaganda piece. The people at Google who "generously" allowed filming to take place at their headquarters want you to know that Google is the most awesomest, most greatest place you will never work at. Atrocious.

In contrast to the lunkheads and shitfucks that populate the above GoogleMovie, Craigslist Joe features a truly likeable dude (and a tireless cameraman) who traverse America for a month (with one brief stopover in Mexico in which Joe becomes an Annoying American Tourist,reacting with obnoxious and overdone incredulity when the local villagers inform him that, yes, they have heard of craigslist). Joe seems genuinely chuffed at the goodwill and charity he receives from strangers throughout the film. There is a touching scene with an Iraqi family. There is a touching scene with an elderly lady dying of cancer (a lady who had a very memorable bit-part in Home Alone 2, by the way). There is a humorous scene in which Joe very obviously wants to go to bed but his host, a slightly obnoxious dominatrix, won't shut the fuck up and let him sleep. He grins through it, however, and emerges fresh the next morning to carry on his adventure. During the film I laughed. I nearly cried. I clapped. I cheered for Joe. Then the credits rolled and I started thinking. And something seemed wrong.

Joe shows how authentically progressive and American he is by talking to a black man.

Craigslist Joe is little more than an advertisement for craigslist. With the exception of the token Cheerful Old Black Man Who Sings in the above photo, every single person Joe meets and talks to in the film gushes constantly about the site, how easy it is to use, how they check it three times an hour, how one time they got a really good deal on a bike/lawnmower/whocares once. But these panegyrical odes to the online classifieds site ("I love craiglist! I use it all the time! I use it for everything!") actually seem subtle compared to the screaming blatancy of the tutorials on how to use craigslist placed throughout the entire documentary. Toward the end of the documentary, in which Joe, despite hitchiking, arrives home at exactly the time he said he'd be back, wholly unaffected by the capriciousness of thumbing lifts, meets with craigslist founder Craig Newark (who claims he "heard about what Joe was doing" - a likely story) and the two talk about how awesome craigslist is, and how it bring people together, and how it's totally not evil despite being the Wal-Mart of online classifieds directly responsible for the shuttering of untold thousand of small-town newspapers and community classifieds. Adding to all this is the fact that the film gives a clumsy nod to the economic troubles of America, features a lengthy section on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the fact that people act far differently on camera then when they're not being filmed, the film was obviously pre-planned, which is just shitty and gross. It's far too convenient that the guy visited all those landmarks and cities, met with all those families of appropriate diversity and skin colour, and made it home in time for a New Year's Eve party at his apartment. The whole thing reminds me of that sickening Coca-Cola commercial they show in theatres before trailers in which people are "caught performing random acts of kindness on CCTV cameras worldwide. Yeah right. Like that's going to happen. As John Goodman screams at Owen Wilson in The Internship shortly before firing his ass, "people hate people!"

This is the future of financial backing for films. Either corporations will sponsor films that will make them crucial plot points and praise them, or people will have to pay for movies before they get made.

[lologogo]

CRAIGSLIST JOE.  An inspiring movie.  Watch it.  Made me miss being on the road for 7 months.  Craigslist was a great vehicle to get by.

www.craigslistjoe.com

This movie is on netflix.

[chocolateandgrapes]

oh my gosh

wow wow anyone seen Craigslistjoe??

[justtumblrfamous]

Criagslist Joe

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. It has opened my eyes to so many things and I haven't even left the house. I am inspired to do so much and to simply just be a better person. If you take the time to watch the full film, I promise you will not regret it. It is inspiring and motivating and influential. I feel like I want to write so much more about it, yet I feel speechless.

[knit-purl]

Netflix

I love you and lately I can’t stop with documentaries

I strongly recommend Craigslist joe After porn ends

[tokeepandremember-blog-blog]

A trailer for a new independent documentary about guy taking a month to live solely off the kindess of strangers found on craigslist.  Interesting concept, but not intrinsically inspiring.  If nothing else, it's clearly showing that an iphone and a Macbook wielded by an upper class, able-bodied, heterosexual, white, male with a well-kept appearance being followed by a camera crew can garner attention and resources. 

[ghostfriendrec]

my future...