Boston Craigslist or Austin Craigslist?

This is how Craigslist informs you when you've been a little too off-putting for some tastes at the internet's premiere bulletin board. Which, if you've read the "best of" section, you have to realize is a remarkable feat.

And I've done it twice! By posting some of my Associated Content articles.

Now, I'm not going to be sneaky here, I intentionally picked articles to submit that I thought would get some attention. And within that rabble of fetish confessions, brazil wax anecdotes and odes to nitwits and dipshits, I expected a fair amount of anonymity, to be honest. I mean, for chrissakes, I logged on last night and found pictures of a pink, upholstered vagina couch, complete with a clitoris as a pillow. Craigslist junkies could handle some meager little instructional articles, I was pretty sure.

The owner wanted $600 for that couch, by the way.

The website also includes its own sensitivity disclaimer:

"Craigslist does not control, and is not responsible for Content made available through the Service, and that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise objectionable."

So imagine my surprise when the notice of my second flagging showed up in my inbox. I might have expected this if I'd posted my "Vinegar: The Domestic Wonder Fluid" article at, say, the Topeka, Kansas Craigslist. I could see some of the upstanding folks in America's breadbasket finding my presentation a little objectionable as I titled the post, "What to do if you suspect your husband of cheating."

Once you opened the post, you would then find a link that simply read:

Rub vinegar under his ball sack.

But I didn't post it at the Topeka Craigslist. I posted it at Boston's. A city in which you might hear filthier things come out of parishioners on their exit from the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. And a city, which anyway, surely includes itself among the "we've seen everything" hierarchy of American metropolitan areas.

And yet, there it was - a scant two hours after making the post - shamefully flagged.

I've posted articles at several different Craigslist sites. I try to make them as locally topical as I can. For example, I posted my Bigfoot article at the Seattle and Vancouver Craigslists. I posted my "Los Angeles County Wild Cobra Refuge" article at the Los Angeles Craigslist. I've posted other things in Chicago, Toronto, Miami, New York. Places where I think people will appreciate the insight most.

Since Craigslist tracks duplicate posts from city to city, I have to be pretty selective in deciding where to go. That's why the uber-hip ryhming twins Boston and Austin made my short list.

But I got my first "inappropriate" flag when I posted at the Austin Craigslist this article:

Join a spontaneous human combustion support group today!

I didn't pick Austin for any particular reason. Maybe because it gets hot there and, if there were ever a potential hotbed for spontaneous human combustion sufferers, it would probably manifest deep in the heart of Texas.

And Austin may, in fact, be spontaneous human combustion central, but now the city will never know how to establish its own SHC support group because it is also home to one of Craigslist's uppitiest members.

Now, you may think it's wrong to hold a grudge against an entire city for the actions of one citizen, but a friend of mine happens to live in Austin and for good measure I've decided to no longer speak to him in case he was the one who flagged my precious article.

You never know.

So I'll let the rest of the Texas state capital off the hook. This time.

And it's hard to stay mad at Boston for too long either, what with its wonderful New England Patriots, its classy European-style architecture and the city's top standing in the rich history --

-- of tattling on people!

From Paul Revere's ratting out the arrival of the British to the jackass who flagged my Craigslist listing. It's all the same! Dirty rotten snitches to the last!

Sorry for that. Some times just letting it out helps. Kind of like spurned ex-lovers venting on Craigslist.

At any rate, while my personal random experience is not even remotely an indication of which North American cities have the most uptight Craigslist members, the citizens of the Massachusetts and Texas state capitals should hearby consider themselves flagged.

Any more incidents and I may have to put both cities up for review.