TiHabanero

All summer I have been selling my collection of vintage and newer bike stuff on craigslist. In the title of each posting is a easy description of the item. For example if it is a bike the title looks like this: Vintage Raleigh International 1970 58cm green
In the listing itself the brand, model, year size and color are repeated in the first line then more details after that. Without exception, every bike or part that has been listed and someone sends an email they will ask "what is the color?" or "what size is it?"

My question is thus, are people lazy and do not read the listings? Or do they read the listings, but simply do not register what they have just read? Or am I an a**hat, and need to simply shut up and deal with it?

StupidlyBrave 

I'd live to know myself. Like you, I try to address every detail to minimize any wasted time on the part of potential buyers. I am doing them a favor? Maybe they just don't know how to start a conversation. Maybe they've seen so many ads placed with inconsistent details, impossible "facts" or pics which don't seem to match the description that they start to question everything from everyone.

I'm not sure you have a choice here. *shrugs*

indyfabz

Uh…Just look at many responses on BF.

GamblerGORD53

I have concluded that they are just phishing for a bloke to scam.

canklecat

To misquote Dean Wormer, some folks grew up thinking fat, lazy, stupid, narcissistic and mean really was the way to get through life.

Every day I read social media I'm persuaded we have exactly the society we deserve. Most of what passes for communication now is memes expressing complex thoughts distilled down to target the dumbest element of society... and they still get it wrong.

It's not just that they can't, or won't, read even the simplest instructions. They can. But they still believe their personal phrasing of the same damn question makes them so special it deserves a special reply, cream filled, sugar coated and cut into neat wedges specifically for them.

And those same meatpuppets express their own uniquely individualistic "thoughts" which amount to little more than regurgitated propaganda with absolute certainty.

As a longtime caregiver for three elderly family members at home for as long as possible (something I was glad to do, despite my cynicism about other people), one thing I learned was that as their physical and mental capabilities diminished, the world existed for them only within a decreasingly narrow plane. Eventually anything above their foreheads or below their chins did not exist. I joked around that the ideal home would be a single continuous shelf placed at their eye level, running along the entire house, with everything they needed or wanted on that shelf and nowhere else. And that was just for my grandparents, who retained most of their cognitive abilities. My mom also suffered from dementia, so not only did she need a single continuous shelf, but one that refreshed itself daily with self-announcing instructions for its purpose, as she began to forget almost everything other than her memories of childhood and young adulthood, which she retained until the end.

In the online world, many people seem to be incapable of remembering more than a single, simple statement of instructions, or to scroll a page to view the entire contents. Yet somehow they seem to manage to drive cars, work some sort of job, find their way to and from home, feed themselves and give the appearance of functioning as more or less autonomous meatsacks.

Darth Lefty 

I think this should be a poll, but speaking for myself, I’m just whatever.

genec

yes

johnnyace 

I think this offers some clues:

blacknbluebikes 

Even if the curve is 'normal' (I suspect a lot of skew), half of the people are more stupid than average. The right-siders aren't asking you those questions. Applies to drivers, too. Out on the road, I have to keep reminding myself that every-other car is a below-average driver.

indyfabz

What's a "right-sider"?

Juan Foote

The thing to understand about replies from CL is that the majority of them aren't "human" at all.

I hope you have this listed through an alt. NEVER put your phone/email directly on CL. There are people that mine #'s and email for "spammers" (in a general sense) and CL is among sites they heavily use to populate such lists.

Aside from that aspect, would suspect that most actual humans see the headline and reply without reading details. I have been guilty of it myself while hard researching finding a specific item and just bulk messaging in hope that someone will answer back. See the above and reverse it.
I NEVER put my phone number on there and only make it available to potentials after we have had two replies that are on point and make sense. AI is getting really really good.

Hondo Gravel

most people are bored and drunk. more than likely they can’t read.

Juan Foote

He didn't ask specifically about you, as I recall...

Hondo Gravel

No beer today as of now but that is subject to change. I need a beer when I am watering everything in the yard and beyond.

Juan Foote

^ I find that beer helps me too much with watering things, so I stick to whiskey/bourbon.

veganbikes

What is this post about?

Juan Foote

My understanding was that we were talking about peeing on bushes. Amirite?

J.Higgins 

Buying/Selling on CL is one of my favorite hobbies. I feel your pain. I try to make my ads bombproof and foolproof, but the fools always win. Over the years I've developed a very patient and pragmatic approach to this.

I think people are JUST. PLAIN. DISTRACTED. So much to see. So much to do. So many distractions, and not enough brainpower or time to process all of it. There's an old computer science term called garbage in, garbage out, and I think that's how peoples' brains process input now. People's brains are so loaded up with junk that its hard for anyone to function. So much information overload, something has to give. Imagine what life was like say, in the 1800's. No distractions! No continuous input of data to our brains to cloud our judgement or reprioritize what needs to be done over what seems to be important at the time. I think without the distractions our lives would be more full, and our feelings and emotions would be stronger and more vibrant.

genec

My wife has this particular bad habit of reading part of a page or only seeing part of an image... often times she then complains that "the information wasn't there..." My answer is always the same... "did you read the whole thing?" Inevitably the information was right there, maybe in the second or third sentence... I attribute it to the distraction you mention.

Now the flip side is that I am often accused of "taking too much time" to do a thing... That just comes from the fact that I am reading the whole thing or following ALL the instructions.

Frankly, in jest, I blame this all on the fax machine and "next day delivery." People now expect "instant gratification." The internet has reduced information searches that used to take hours to seconds... It used to be you went to a library; looked up in a physical card catalog for the information you wanted; went through the stacks to find the books and then read them; carefully taking notes.

Now a 10 second google search returns something, and people do not even bother verifying that information with subsequent searches. We are rapidly heading towards "idiocracy."

veganbikes

Mabybe I didn't read it...LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

blacknbluebikes 

sorry, been away. "data points on the right side of the bell curve"

kaseyriot

the movie Idiocracy explains this well

jerrymor

I believe that most people are just very and very lazy and unfortunately i am one of them. We all have so much potential in us and very often use our brain on 20-30% only. I've been taken a course about how to turn idea into a business already few months ago and i still didn't move from there anywhere. I honestly think i have a brilliant idea but the laziness takes it over and instead on working on my project i watch tv and play phone games.

veganbikes

Hey that is jus

rsbob 

I give away a lot of stuff on CL. ‘Free’ moves stuff quickly but still get an amazing number of flakes. I too am very descriptive in the title and then go into the weeds in the body along with lots of pictures. Doing technical writing in one of my incarnations makes me detail oriented. Inevitably I get questions about items that I spelled out in plain language - usually at a third grade level. Then I will get a number of, “Is it still available?” And then crickets. A few people are excellent communicators and keep me informed of their every move until pickup but they are the exception. I grew up in the era when if you thought you were interested and changed your mind, you would thank the person and say I had a change of heart. Yeah manners are so old skool.

Of course advertising for free you get the ‘something for nothing’ crowd, so expectations are low. I do question reading aptitude and comprehension - and like others mentioned, it’s probably due to people’s short attention spans.

If your serious about selling stuff, I put it on a specific forum tailored to that audience or EBay - yeah I know they charge too much.