Craigslist Whitetext Mystery

October 10, 2011 10:01 AM

What are the mysterious, apparently non-sensical, religious-sounding words that are appearing as small white text on white background on Craigslist car+truck ads across several cities?

A friend orginally found them on Vancouver's Craigslist, but I've also found them in Seattle and SF-Bay Area.

Go to Craigslist Cars + Trucks section. Search for "revenge" (although some other words would also probably yield good hits) in entire posting. Some listings should come up (they've been dealer listings I've noticed so far). Click on the listing and search the page for "revenge" and you'll see it's part of a larger string of white on white small text along the lines of:

"of Mighty put Fortune chickens do Fish wings out boy victor Give forward merry,. dead to pitchers man Comparisons be author, by tide do better Talk can't son. go eat makes watched pans, the kingdom what a we You due better in.
sometimes the worth Do your has without picture is. A a Good. can baby Only showers does Revenge judge.

tnctnctnc I pray to God, that never dawn the dayyou that my master may be buried, and that some knight may revenge mymut vastaus, min niihin sai hän, vieläShatters the boss, was fashioned of crystal,"

posted by Extopalopaketle to writing & language (3 answers total)

Automated posting agents add random text to confuse craigslist's "you've already posted the same ad" filters. It can be gibberish, random characters, book excerpts, pretty much anything.
posted by mullicious at 10:05 AM on October 10, 2011

They'll use html tags to make the text some combination of white, small, and or put a lot of page breaks so it doesn't distract from the actual ad. Ideally they want the text to confuse anti-spam techniques but not appear on the page. I can only assume if someone is confused enough to buy from a spam ad, they could easily be lead astray by a couple of mixed up Bible verses.
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 10:25 AM on October 10, 2011

Ah, thanks for the quick answers! Makes sense now.
posted by Extopalopaketle at 6:44 PM on October 10, 2011