Sex ads on Denver Craigslist spike with Democrats' arrival

DENVER--An unusual phenomenon has recently appeared on Craigslist's Denver Web site. Sex-wanted ads spiked this week, which happens to coincide with the Democratic National Convention.

Ads seeking casual sexual encounters through the Denver Craigslist site increased an average of roughly 70 percent to 80 percent over the same days of the week earlier in August.

"Casual encounter" ads spiked the week of the Democratic National Convention. But correlation does not, by itself, prove causation. The vertical axis is posts-per-day, and the horizontal axis represents every day of August to date.

On average, 425 posts on Craiglist's "Casual Encounters" area appeared on the first three Sundays in August. But this Sunday, when tens of thousands of people had arrived for the convention, 763 posts appeared--an 80 percent increase.

The general content is what you might expect. Posts suggested "Here 4 DNC? Come get sexual with me"; "Does the DNC make you hot?"; and "Looking to service a young Democrat." (Most are far more explicit, but unsuitable for our upstanding, discriminating readers. Use your imagination.)

Other days showed the same week-over-week jump. Monday increased 77 percent over the average of earlier in the month; Tuesday increased 69 percent; Wednesday's increase was 74 percent.

This is where we insert the disclaimers. Mere correlation does not imply causation: other factors could explain this rise in advertisements.

Perhaps universities are back in session, or it's warmer or colder out. Perhaps loyalists of another political party are intentionally posting fake advertisements in hopes that the Democrats will be blamed. Perhaps the thousands of journalists in town are seeking extracurricular activities. Make up your own mind. And yes, we'll be paying attention to what happens during the Republican convention as well.

(Technical details: We saved headlines for the posts of each day in August into a text file, and ran the Unix "sort" and "uniq" utilities on each to eliminate duplicate headlines. Also, we noticed that the posts-per-day can vary over time, as posts are deleted once someone's needs are met, making this analysis something of a moving target. The outlier in the chart--a one-day lull--on August 10 seems to have been caused by a previously reported outage.)

[pjhenry1216]

It's also plausible these are ads placed by people who want to sleep with a politician. Some people are attracted to power and (some) politicians have power and/or wealth. They may state casual, but they may be hoping for an on the slide mistress type deal as well. Or it could just be there is now an influx of people, therefore a rise in the amount of people who want sex. Check the numbers the next time there's a convention in town and see if maybe certain categories of conventions (any dentist conventions held in denver? i know of a certain profession that does well in vegas when there's a dentist convention) have higher numbers.

[trippleLman]

Edwards - Kennedy - Kerry well what do you expect from the Demo craps

Just Don't Smoke Obama Dope !

[galewgleason]

Yeah, haha poopy! poopy is funny cause it smells and it comes out of your butt.

[the_ricochet]

Wow, yet another anti-Democrat article from Declan McCullagh. What a surprise...

Since when did CNET turn into yet another vehicle for subtle yet consistent right-wing rhetoric?

[declan00]

So now I'm "anti-Democrat?" Readers were calling me "anti-Republican" when I wrote these articles criticizing the Bush administration:
http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-983921.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9763099-38.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9765305-38.html

Hint: It's possible to criticize one major party without endorsing the other. I'm surprised that this is a difficult concept to grasp.

[Perry_Clease]

The Denver Post is reporting that in relation to the DNC Convention that there has been no spike prostitution, http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_10326215

Furthermore strip club business is down http://www.denverpost.com/popular/ci_10320230

They expect business to go up with a tech convention next week

[GuyBlaise]

I am far from being seen as misogynistic. Exchanging sex for money has existed since the world is the world. Some people will call it ?prostitution?? The economic impact of DNC on Denver is large. Even in sex industry.Democrats and Republicans are not angels.One thing is true, as the Batekes of the equatorial forest of Congo say, ?If money grew on trees, women would marry monkeys.?
http://guyblaise.com/

[Thomas, David]

I held a large degree of respect for you. It has dropped off somewhat.

[Solaris_User]

Nahh.. Republicans will be the same..

Why?

Politics is a "dirty" game.

[qednw]

I will await CNET's reporting of the rentals of X-rated videos in the hotels in Minneapolis-St. Paul next week.

[GotAMD]

Can someone explain to me why so many people commenting seem to be up in arms? This is far from a hit piece. I thought we left 19th century prudery with, well, the 19th century.

[Thomas, David]

I think you completely missed the point. The story itself, and not saying that Declan is the origin of said story, is what one would refer to as "Yellow Journalism". He should have recognized it for what it was.

[jr3houston]

Why does anyone care how much sex people are getting? Is it a prerequisite to be a good politician if you abstain from sex? I think not. Where somebody gets it is also not any of our business.

Why was CNet in the men seeking men section of Craigslist anyway? Hmmm? Yeah, I went there.

[sarahjmck]

Probably meant to say correlation doesn't imply causation. Correlation does indeed imply correlation. ;)

[Shankland]

Thanks--we corrected the text.

[marshallkirkpatrick]

What is wrong with you? Did you try this search? http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/search/ppp?query=RNC No mention of the number of sex ads re the RNC??

[declan00]

There's nothing wrong with us; there seems to be something wrong with your reading comprehension. I presume you didn't see the section of our article that said: "And yes, we'll be paying attention to what happens during the Republican convention as well."

In case you haven't figured it out, the Republican convention hasn't started yet.

[Penz303]

Come on guys, have any of you tried any of these? They 95% fake SPAM! The increase is a PHISING operation from social networking dating sites to get you to create a profile. The writers of this article need to be sacked... And the people who hired them...

[eketch]

Apparently the RNP members are too old to know what Craigslist is, much less how to use a computer. They just stick to airport bathrooms, and running the country into the ground in 8 year spats.

[nonrational]

"... and ran the Unix "sort" and "uniq" utilities on each to eliminate duplicate headlines."

you can just use $ sort -u

[declan00]

Ah! Thanks for the tip. I still do it the slightly less-efficient way; it's clearer to me what I'm doing when I revisit it months later (yes, at the cost of some efficiency, and we're only talking about a few hundred KB here).

[bzlghtyr]

This article reflects an ignorance of how CL CE works, especially when he leads his piece with the word unusual. By far the majority of ads on CE are put up by regular run of the mill prostitutes or other people looking for money. Posting ads on CL is free and this is just one of the many ways they advertise there services. What would be unusual would be if the ads did not increase in number. I can bet dollars to donuts that the ads will go up also on the Minn CL CE when the Rep are in town. Declan get a real stroy to report this one ispointless and wrong

[sadelson]

duh - - - this is not news (at least not NEW news)

Shifts in populations on websites has been happening on all social networking (and hook up) sites for many years and with ever other major event - like the Olympics or Tech conventions in Los Vegas or even the populations shift out of New Orleans with Katrina. It happens with republicans too!! ;)

What this is to me is more boring dribble used as political weaponry by pseudo-creative writers...

[pjk0]

And this is newsworthy on a tech site how? Shall we expect a puff piece on Deborah Palin next?

I agree: once upon a time Mr McCullagh wrote hard-hitting pieces of interest and value. That was then.

[declan00]

Thanks for your note that I "wrote hard-hitting pieces of interest and value." A few days before this article, I wrote a 2,800-word piece on Biden's tech record, with references to bills, testimony, precedent, etc. It's possible to do multiple types of stories, you know, and not just focus on legislation.