The majority of Craigslist's Missed Connections seem to take place on the subway. Here, on the downtown 1 line, is the setting of my fictional connection. (Photo by Megan Gibson/CNS)

To the cute guy on the downtown 1 train – w4m – 26 (1train)

I’ve never done this before, but I really feel like we had a missed connection. On Saturday evening, I was the tall(ish) girl with dark brown hair, wearing a blue dress and brown boots. I was (sort of) reading New York Magazine. We definitely made eye contact a few times and I think you smiled at me. I wanted to say something but my stop came before I got the courage. Now I haven’t been able to stop thinking of you. If by some chance you see this, please message me.

Guess what? Craigslist’s Missed Connections — which started out as a romantic, whimsical way to reconnect with someone, and achieved fame as a success story for couples everywhere — has devolved, as so many romantic fantasies do, into a way for people to fake love for the sake of hooking up.

Or at least so I suspected.

To prove my theory, I conducted a brief social experiment, intended to pierce the romanticized facade of Missed Connections – the love stories, the poems, the sitcom plots born of the decade-old website feature.

Two weeks ago, I posted the above, entirely made-up ad on Missed Connections. I’ve never posted on Missed Connections before or online dated or anything like that — so I just copied other posters who seemed the least like raging sociopaths. I’m generally pretty uncomfortable with lying, so I kept the description legitimate even though I hadn’t been on the 1 train that day, exchanging glances with a total stranger. But if I had been, I very well could have been wearing a blue dress and reading New York Magazine.

Within 48 hours I had replies from 12 different men (of whom the majority didn’t apparently use spell-check) all saying they thought they’d seen me.

Some asked for more information about the guy in question and I started to weed out those who were clearly faking it. So I replied to all queries of what the guy was wearing with the totally bogus/ubiquitous “dark shirt and jeans.”

One guy admitted it wasn’t him, but continued to send messages and even his photo. Others, however, strained to make the connection. “it sounds like [me],” one wrote rather dubiously, “because I had a dark dark redish sweater.” Um, close enough I guess?

Guys started asking for a photo, of course. Although I didn’t love the idea of sending out my picture to strangers via the Internet, I figured it was a necessary step in the whole social-experiment process. So I sent out a headshot to the three guys who asked. This is where, in what was initially an ego-shattering moment, I lost one correspondent who said he’d been thinking of someone else and “sorry for the misunderstanding.” On reflection, though, it occurred to me that this was the first time rejection had ever renewed my faith in men.

But the other two continued on, insisting they recognized me. One guy whom I’ll call Chris (not the name he gave me, but really for all I know, it could be his real name) said that although he thought my hair might have been different, “the face looks like yes.” The second guy, whom I’ll call Matthew, responded immediately with, “Yea ur the cute grl I saw lol so was up.” I was floored as I read these messages. These guys were straight-up lying.

Imagine that!

It wasn’t the lying itself that bothered me, because, come on, I wasn’t being all that honest, either. What troubled me was the fact that each must know I would realize, at some point, that he was lying. It would be clear, upon meeting, that he hadn’t been the guy I had been exchanging glances with on the subway. Yet they still wanted to meet. You had to admire the audacity.

I agreed to meet Chris, who had written that he thought we should “try to make each other feel better about that missed connection.” Oddly enough, I agreed completely with that sentiment, though I’m sure for entirely different reasons.

I chose to meet Chris and not Matthew, because Matthew had flooded my inbox with photos of himself—and, well, you know. I arranged to meet Chris at a Starbucks near Times Square, the least romantic place I could imagine on the planet.

As I made my way there, I found that I was twice as nervous as I would have been for an actual first date — but then again, I usually don’t worry about whether my date is a serial killer, trolling for defenseless victims. As I walked into the Starbucks a man at a nearby table stood up.

“Megan?” he asked, offering his hand. (I had stupidly used my real name.) I shook his hand (a little clammy for a serial killer, I thought) and asked him how his day was going, as I discreetly sized him up. He was shorter than me and older, about 10 to 15 years, and did not seem to be carrying any weapons. He gestured for me to sit, and I did.

“So, what do you think?” he asked, expectantly. I realized he wasn’t going to be the first to dispel the fantasy that we had seen each other but I thought it was best to play innocent.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“About our Missed Connection?” he said. Playing innocent would now have to border on playing stupid.

“What about it?” I said.

He exhaled impatiently. “Am I the one you saw?”

I decided I couldn’t play along with this anymore. “No,” I said. “You weren’t.”

“Right, right, I was unsure too,” he said quickly. He continued to backpedal. “I mean you look familiar, I’ve seen you around. Just maybe not on the train.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t me who you saw on the train,” I said carefully. “I posted that as sort of an experiment.” I wanted to explain that the post was a fake but he didn’t seem to be listening. Were those voices in his head drowning me out?

“I know I’ve seen you somewhere before,” he said. “And I am still interested even if it wasn’t me you saw that day.”

Up until this point I had planned on confronting him, but now it seemed unnecessary. And sad. I told him that I had had someone else in mind and that it was nice to meet him.

As I was leaving I glanced back at him and he was still sitting there, looking slightly disappointed. I felt a wave of guilt, but then I realized that he had lied and so had I. Give him an hour and an Internet connection and I’m sure he’d be fine.