American University released Paul into the world in May 2009 armed with a degree representing four years of study but filling only two lines of a resume. Paul needed a job.
One hundred eighty cover letters later, he still needed a job.
Jason Paul
Jason Paul decided that for nine months, he would get everything he needed from Craigslist, including employment, housing and transportation.
Like 50 million other Americans, Paul turned to Craigslist to find what he needed. Not only would he seek employment, he'd seek housing and transportation and friendship. For nine months, from the fall of 2009 through the summer of 2010, if it wasn't on the list, it wasn't in his life.
In addition to taking a different approach to the job search, Paul told AOL News his experiment, which he documented at LivingCraigslist.com, sat at the convergence of several of his interests.
"I've always been interested in technology, and Craigslist embodies this cross section of technology and society. It seemed like an interesting thing to study," he said.
"How possible is it to use Craigslist for everything? Everyone knows what Craigslist is. Everyone uses it. But no one had used Craigslist to do everything, from housing to food to friends. It just hadn't been done. I wanted to be that guy."
(Note: At least one other person, Craigslist Joe, lived solely on the Craigslist grid, though his experiment lasted only one month.)
While Paul yielded control of much of his life to a simple, five-columned, blue-and-white website, he set basic time and geographic parameters: three months in a large city (San Francisco, pop. 809,000), three months in a medium city (Denver, pop. 600,000), three months in a small city (Savannah, Ga., pop. 131,500).
Beginning with the big, Paul headed for San Francisco, where Craigslist was born when software engineer Craig Newmark started an e-mail list to keep his friends updated on Bay Area events. Paul found a great job nannying for a happy family he's still in touch with.
"They were a home away from home," he said.
But as is the case when taking a chance on Craigslist, Paul didn't always score wins. Being preached at by a math professor during a mid-pheasant-hunt break was uncomfortable. Watching fellow restaurant employees cry after another reaming by an evil manager might top the "lose" list were it not for the house in Denver.
Moving into a house described on Craigslist an "art collective," Paul fought the low thermostat setting by wrapping himself in a blanket and fought the rodents by moving his food. He persevered when "art collective" turned out to mean no bedroom door, no kitchen stove, and bathrooms so unclean he preferred to go public.
But he fled when he walked in on the artists using drugs, enduring a well-written but vituperative e-missive when he dared ask for the return of his security deposit. (For legal reasons, we can't publish Paul's heated e-mail exchange, but we recommend reading it on his blog here.)
Sitting at home in Rockville, Md., holding the Denver rat's nest at a year's length, immersed in a book he's writing about the experience, Paul said the occasional thumbs-down is to be expected on Craigslist.
"Everyone has to have their Craigslist scam story," he said.
Ultimately, the experiment confirmed to Paul that Craigslist, despite the occasional tale of horror (e.g. the Craigslist Killer, Philip Markoff), is about people living up to founder Craig Newmark's original vision of the site: a place that helps people find what they're seeking.
Witness Paul's Thanksgiving: Having nowhere to go, he asked Craigslisters to adopt him. Two dozen people responded. Paul enjoyed turkey, croquet, football and 15 new friends.
"That embodies the community that is Craigslist," he said. "I really appreciate all the things that Craigslist has enabled me to do."
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