Endless Thread - Manifesting an online rom-com existence

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Of all the internet communities in all the world, you walked into ours. Hosts Ben and Amory pay homage to the magic of chance encounters with producer Grace Tatter. Together, they explore the ways in which the internet fuels random yet delightful meetings between strangers online, from a website where you can impersonate ChatGPT to Craigslist's beloved Missed Connections page. Show notes: YourAISlopBores.Me What Craigslist’s missed connections are still good for  (The Bold Italic) Credits: This episode was produced by Kalyani Saxena. Mix and sound design by Marquis Neal. It was edited by Meg Cramer and Dave Shaw, and hosted by Ben Brock Johnson, Amory Sivertson, and Grace Tatter.

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WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Hello, host Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sievertson. Greetings, producer Grace Tatter. Hello. We've all planned to be here today, but we're going to be talking about chance encounters, things that don't involve schedule calendar invites. Couldn't plan them if you wanted to. Exactly. Are we talking about the good kind or the bad kind, Grace?

The good stuff or the bad stuff? That will be in your hands, Ben. Oh, boy. Are you going to chance encounter me? What's happening? We think we've shown up for an endless thread, too. but Grace is about to flip the script. Nice. Okay.

So, yeah, I would say online at least, life has not been feeling very serendipitous lately because everything is curated by the invisible hand of an algorithm. And then there's also just so much AI online now, whether it's like content from actual bots or people using AI. I'm having a lot of chance encounters with slop. That's basically, and it doesn't feel so chance. You're right.

Yeah, it can feel like kind of a bummer. So I have a little internet antidote to all of that. My friend Emily recently told me about a site where anyone can answer questions pretending to be chat GPT. What? The URL, if you want to go to it, is your AISLopbores.me. Ooh, I'm over 13 and agree to follow the code of conduct. not reading the code of conduct. Wait, wait, wait.

I feel like you're diving in. I haven't hit any, I don't know which of these three options I should pick yet. Do I? What? Then you got something different than I did. Yeah, what did you get?

Oh, I have your AI slope bores me. What website was that? All right. Now I'm in the right place. It's got a little skull emoji. I'm clicking the things. I'm agreeing to the terms of service without reading them.

All right. I'm in. Okay, cool. And are rules popping up for you in comic sands? I see comic sands. I can't say I see rules. Okay, I think the rules might have popped up really quickly. So they say, in a world looming with the threat of AI stealing your job, save humanity by stealing AI's job. And how it works is that you earn credits by LARPing, live action, role playing, as AI, which means someone puts in a prompt either for a text response or a drawing, and you either type or draw your response in character as AI. And that gets you credits, which you can then spend asking other fake AI's questions or asking them to draw something. Does that make sense? I think so. So LARP to earn credits, go to human mode to spend credits if you want to ask AI something

yourself. Yeah, that was a much more elegant way to explain it, yes? Exactly. Okay, I'm going to hit start lARPing. Yes, yeah, I was going to say you all should start start LARPing. You should slurping? I'm going to slurping. I'm going to start LARPing. It's playing music.

So the music plays when you're waiting for a response. Because like right now we can see at the bottom, only 664 people are online. 338 humans versus 325 AI in your. AI right now. So it was waiting to match you with a human prompt. Okay. That's why you're hearing the loud music. Okay.

I got a new one. It says, could the big Yahoo save us from what we D? I think they meant did. I'm going to say the big Yahoo is busy right now. You've created a monster

grace. This is all Ben is going to do. I'm not. I'm asking them back. I'm not. I'm in. I'm in. That is now fully AI. Random, random people talking to me. That's my friggin dream. It's my dream.

What makes it so fun? And random people thinking that you're an expert. Smooches. I'm going to say the big Yahoo is busy right now. Come back later. Smooches. Of course. This is the best.

What do you mean? I mean, it's the best. It's great. I'm in. I'll see you. you guys later. Okay, well, now I feel like you should take a turn being a human. Oh, God, so boring. Ask AI something. Um, a fellow AI. Uh, okay, someone responded and said, below the, uh, knee as to where your feet at. That was what you wanted to ask. Yeah. And I said, where's your head at? And

someone responded in the gutters. Aw. And then I said, Amory, this you? See what you get back. Like, who the hell is that? Or it will be another Amory. That would really be... That would be a chance of counter for you. What are the chances of that? Someone responded, you thought you were talking to Amory, and then they go to all caps.

But no, it was I. Dio. Ooh, I got a prompt. Yay. Alien stage Luca Yao love story. What? Hmm. I'm going to just draw a little alien.

I'm just drawing two aliens with little hearts all around them. That's my good screenshot. That will be the episode art. Okay, Emery, Ben loves LARPing as AI. How did you feel when you finally got the chance? I mean, it's just silly. It's silly. I was thinking, you know, while I was patiently waiting for my prompt,

I was thinking, like, what is the bigger takeaway of this? And if the bigger takeaway is just to get people to be, Like, my problem with AI, and these are obviously broad strokes, is people using AI to do creative work. You know, like I get that the robots are good at doing some things. I just, just this morning, I could, anything that I have a subscription to, like a, you know, for example, julip, my rabbit, her hay, that's a subscription service. And I love that AI texts me now and it's like, hey, you ready for that next barrel of hay? or do you want me to delay it by a week? And I can just be like delay by a week. And it's like, great,

I got you. Perfect use of AI. But like anything creative, no, get that the hell away from me. Like, don't replace human thinking and creativity in that way. And so what I love about this is like, I didn't know what that thing was, but it got me to draw a silly picture that I wouldn't have drawn otherwise and interpret it however I want. And so I love that by LARPing as AI, I'm actually using my brain in a different way than I foresaw myself doing on this fine morning. Yeah, however fleeting, it was a real moment of human connection, which is what we're all seeking. I just realized something. What?

It seems very easy for someone to create a bot that would play a human. Yeah, fair point. So they do mention in their terms of service that they use bot detection tools. I'm sure it will get more challenging. The cat and mouse game continues. Exactly. Forever. So here's what I know about the origins of this website.

It launched in March, so as a recording, relatively recently. It's a little baby. Exactly. It was designed by Mihair Maroju, who's a programmer, according to his LinkedIn, based in Puducherry, India, sometimes known as Pondicherry. And he told Fast Company that this website was born from a frustration about AIR and how it's affecting artists. And also just filling the internet with low effort generic swap, which relatable. He's not wrong.

Yeah. So this site got lots of attention on Reddit and X in the immediate weeks after it came out. When Fast Company first reported on it, there were 16,000 users on it. Right now, we can see 620. So it's already the novelty, it's already kind of dropping off a little bit. Earlier when I was playing around with it, I asked an AI, LARPER, what about this site reminds you of the old internet? Are you nostalgic for the internet days of your?

And they responded, it's like the old internet. It started out as an interesting, cool site. Honestly, used to get witty replies and cool drawings. But now everyone is acting like a douche. Humans can't have nice things. That's a fact. Oh. I don't think humans always eventually default to douche.

It sort of depends on like what crowd discovers your space. You know what I mean? Yeah. And maybe just having a sense of humor about it. Like maybe at the beginning it felt a little bit more substantive. But today I would say it did not. And we still had fun. I had a great time.

I'm going back. Yeah. Yeah. We've possibly lost you to it. I'm going back. might have lost me for the rest of the day. How does this remind you of the old internet? It feels like a lot of the things that I enjoy now, which is it's a nice marriage of the

nostalgic and the new. And so it's like a very clean design, but like also silly and old school in the way. Something about it does feel like. old AIM or aim just reaching out into the universe and not knowing who you're really talking to, except there's a lot more room for creativity here. Yeah, I feel like this is just for fun. And there's an increasing demand for more places like this on the internet. Lately, there has been a fatigue with chat GPT and AI.

A recent survey from Gallup showed that the percentage of people ages 14 to 29, who feel hopeful about AI has dropped a lot over the past year to 18%. And nearly a third of respondents said that the technology makes them feel angry. So I feel like this is kind of like a nice place to come and maybe channel that anger by taking its job. Exactly. Yeah. And I feel like people are going to want more corners of the internet where they can go and reliably talk to other humans and not AI, which I also think it's going to be more and more difficult to cultivate. those spaces.

But we're reverse engineering just talking to each other. Yes. Great. Perfect. Well, thanks y'all for, yeah, joining me on this trip. Absolutely. Thanks for taking us on this trip. Yeah, thank you.

And I'm going to thank you by taking you both on a trip after the break. This episode is brought to you by L'Oreal Group. Beauty is a powerful force that moves us. That's why L'Oreal. Group has built a business that is inclusive at its heart with 100% of its brands, championing diversity. With 25,000 professional opportunities for people under 30 worldwide and 54% of leading positions held by women, diversity is a strength that helps L'OREL group create the best beauty products for all people. Visit laurel.com to learn more.

I'm Dean Russell, co-creator of WBUR's new Family Friendly podcast, The Midnight Rebellion. This story transports you to a future shaped by climate change. The water is high, seaweed is everywhere, and the city is ruled by salty robots. The good news, you choose what happens. The decisions you make can turn the tide. All episodes are out now. This summer, find your next great adventure at wb u.bru.org.org slash midnight or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Ben and Grace, I'm going to take us to a different old nostalgic place of the internet.

Is it Funky Town? Are you going to take us to Funky Town? I'm going to take you first to Philadelphia, okay? Is that Funky Town? Oh, Philly's definitely Funky. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Right. Exactly. Funky Town with a P.A. The Philadelphia Funk. Yes. We're going to go near Clark Park. Okay. Here's a post that I'm going to read you. You're studying osteology, but I think not in Philly. You and your girlfriend admired the plastic dog skeleton on my porch. and you thought it was extremely amusing that its scapuli were on backwards. We tried unsuccessfully to repair it. If that's not enough for you to know I'm talking about you,

then you will also remember that you identified a mysterious skull I found in the ocean. You may recall, I mentioned a dead groundhog I buried last summer that I was hoping to put its skeleton together somehow, and I believe you two wanted to help. I think I might see if it's sufficiently decomposed now to do this project. If you're still interested, please get in touch. Just to be clear, this is a platonic request for help to reassemble the skeleton of a dead groundhog. So not quite as funky town as we might hope.

I think it's pretty funky and fun. So this was posted to Mist Connections on Craigslist back in 2017. And do either of you have experiences with Misty? connections? I used to read them. I feel like when I was like late high school, early college, and I was procrastinating on homework. I would just like read Craigslist's misconnections and like New York where I did not live at the time. Like just for the drama, the narrative potential of it all. I used to I used to reassemble a lot of skeletons, but that's my only connection. I'm just kidding. I also used to I also used to I used to I used to. I used to. I used to. I used to, I used to, I used to,

to read a lot of Craigslist misconnections. It was like often romantic and sometimes absurd. Yeah. And to me, that's the stuff that I was into is the absurdity. Totally. And sometimes they would go, particular posts would go like crazy viral. But people couldn't like comment, right? Because now on my neighborhood subreddit, there will be like a lot of missed connections.

And people can kind of help figure out like, oh, they weren't. at this coffee shop, it's the barista who works at this coffee shop, that's Josie. You know, like, they can actually solve it. But with Craigslist, like, there was no crowdsourcing. You just had to hope that someone, the right person saw it. And I think that's what I liked it. It was like there was a chance, it was born out of a chance encounter, right? Like, they just happened to see each other in real life. And then it would take so much more chance for the right person to see that post. So a little more about misconnections. I didn't know that it was born of Craigslist employees just noticing that there were a lot of like, oh, I saw you over here kind of messages popping up naturally in the personal section of Craigslist, which doesn't exist anymore.

And we'll get to that. But it was officially created in the year 2000. And I want to share one description of misconnections that I loved from an online publication called The Bulls. Old Italic, this is by Kayenne Landau, said, tiny and nostalgic and electric with longing. Each one feels like the beginning of a rom-com that will be inevitably abandoned midway through production. I love that. That's what I was trying to get at before, but I think it had that vibe.

Yeah, a lot of longing and yearning, for sure. A lot of longing, a lot of like potential for a great meet-cute story. But most of the time it doesn't go right. So first, let's talk about an instance where it did go right. And there's this, there's a thread on Reddit where someone asked, like, have any of you had success stories with missed connections? And someone tells this story of basically playing like a long game of what they call smile tag with this woman on the train. And they're really awkward. And they have this smile tag.

And then the person doesn't say anything to the. woman and regrets it and just on a whim posts on misconnections and there you go. They date, they've now, at least at the time that this thread was created, which was now 12 years ago, this person said, we've now been dating for over two years. So that's a pretty, I know, that's a pretty rare thing. Of course, it can go really wrong in many different directions. You know, sometimes you're just never going to find that person. That's not wrong. It's just, that's predictable. But I remember one of the very, because I used to make the podcast Modern Love,

one of the very first modern love essays that we turned into a podcast episode was a woman who gets catfished by a guy who just makes a very, the post is so generic that he's literally just casting a line and seeing who he gets, seeing if anyone is like, oh my God, that was me at that club in a red sparkly top or whatever. And there's a lot of that out there. but also the blogger missteps, aka Laura Zorowski,

points out that shortly after Congress passed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act in 2017, which allows websites and platforms to actually be held responsible if they knowingly facilitate sex trafficking

on their site. Craigslist got rid of the personal section altogether and moved misconnections over to the community section of the page. So it still exists, but no more personals, and you can't post pictures in there anymore, which you used to be able to do. And then, and I wonder if you guys, Grace, your comment about just reading them for fun, there are a lot of posts on there that are incredible, but that

people suppose might just be creative writing exercises. Perhaps like the groundhog skeleton. Perhaps like the groundhog skeleton, absolutely. There's a really famous one that took place in Boston. It was made in 2015. This one did go viral in the sense that it got picked up by Glamour magazine. Wired said this post might be, quote, the first Craigslist ad to win a Pulitzer. It was covered in multiple publications. And it's this recently returned Vietnam vet, New Year's Eve, 1972. He has a plan to take his own life. And then he's walking around Boston. He stumbles upon a woman who's been crying. They get coffee. They have this incredible connection. He goes to the bathroom, comes back, and the woman is gone.

And he never sees her again, despite allegedly returning to that shop where they had coffee every day for a year after that. Wow. Sounds like the notebook. Yeah. But the writing. I would watch that movie. Yes. And the writing is beautiful.

You know, there's this excerpt. So they get stuck in the book. rain, he says, you'd taken shelter under the balcony of the old state house. You were wearing a teal ball gown, which appeared to me both regal and ridiculous. Your brown hair was matted to the right side of your face and a galaxy of freckles dusted your shoulders. I'd never seen anything so beautiful. It's a much longer post, but it's, yeah, it's real or not, it's beautiful. And it's from before Chat, GBT, BT, so we know a real person wrote it, whether or not they were. That's right. Hell yes. But my favorite kind of post, I have to say, is the more kind of, you know, low stakes, no risk of embarrassment, just one person noticing another and shooting their shot in a very, like, respectful way. So I, of course, was going to like my local, the Boston Craigslist Miss Connections page earlier this week. And there's a, someone made this post at,

something called The Butchery in Danvers, Massachusetts. And the whole post is just, hey, chatted in the parking lot at the butchery. You seemed interested, but we were both nervous. Reach out if you wish and describe a bit of what we discussed so I know it's you. If not, that's okay. I understand. You seemed cool. Be well.

I just feel like I'm doing this kind of stuff in my own life all the time. Like romantic gestures on behalf of my friends, not for myself. But like. That would be quite the reveal. I know, right. No, but just earlier this week, I was at dinner with a friend. The server was, I was like, you know, I have a friend that he should go on a date with. And so I wrote on the back of the check.

I just said, hey, if you're willing to go on a blind date, I have someone you should go on a date with and gave him my email address. What? I love that. Yes. Did he email? Has he replied? No, not since this morning. But I do this all the time, all the time.

Oh my God, just randomly giving out your email to people. We randomly give out our email to people every day. That's like literally part of our job description. But that's work email. I don't know. Did you give them your work email? No, just my personal email. Anyway, this got me thinking about Craigslist and missed connections.

And even though it still exists, it still feels like a, you know, like a. bygone relic. And maybe that's because the internet feels more sprawling these days. There are platforms like Reddit or people look for each other on, you know, TikTok, Instagram, whatever. But I was- Also there's Tinder and Hinge and, you know, all that stuff too. Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But I'm just like thrilled that misconnection still exists. And I encourage people to read through some misconnections on Craigslist from your community. because, you know, who knows, maybe someone posted about you, but also you're probably going to find something that will just brighten your day in some way.

I love that you think about it this way. Then I also think, like, you know, just believing in the possibility of a, you know, of a rom-com existence, I think is also really nice. There's someone in my life who I will not name who loves rom-coms very much. much and just wants to believe so hard. And I will say that this person made a deal with someone who they once dated that if they didn't find true love by a certain time in their lives, that on a specific date, they would both fly from across the world to the base of Big Ben and meet each other at the base of Big Ben. And the person in my life did it without being in touch.

Like that was that they made the deal. They said, I will be there. And they did it. And the other person didn't show up. Oh, no. Were they heartbroken? I think they were heartbroken. Yeah.

Did they know if the other person had even remembered the deal? Like, did they check in to be like, did you consider coming? Which was part of their folly. Do you know what I mean? Like they were like they wanted. to believe that the other person would be accountable to the promise that they made to each other. And so they were like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to go like we promised we would and I'm going to be there. And they did it. And the other person didn't show up. And so I love that's,

these are sad examples, but I just in some ways, but I, I love believing in the possibility of a rom-com existence. And I think misconnections is, is a part of that. And so I'm glad to know that it's still exists in the world as well. Well, and I would argue that a rom-com existence is, you know, it's really just the act of noticing and the art of noticing and then the taking a minute to write that post. And these posts that I've read thus far, like, I'm not their intended audience. And yet my life is richer and the world is a little bit more colorful because I know that other people are noticing each other and looking out for each other and wanting to connect with each other. And that is like sometimes the greatest hope I have on any given day,

not to sound too bleak. You know, I believe that if we want a rom-com existence, we have to create it. You know, it's up to us to create the serendipity and the meaning in the world and the connection that we want to see. Yeah. Love that. Listeners, if you have a story of a chance encounter that you had or witnessed or want to have, we want to hear about that. Yes. You guys were both like, yes, yes. Give us a happy Big Ben story. We're looking for romance.

Endless thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Culliard. Gianni Saxana and co-hosted by Grace Tatter and me, Amory Siebertson. And me, Ben Brock Johnson. It was edited by Meg Kramer and Dave Shaw, mix and sound design by Marquis Neal. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Emily Jenkowski, our production manager, Paul Vikis, and our managing producer, Summata Joshi. Endless threat is a show about the blurred lines between a missed connection and a chance encounter. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wide, story from the internet, a chance encounter perhaps, that you want us to talk about?

Hit us up. Endless thread at WBUR.org.