Hurtling through the Void

On Missed Connections and interstellar radio waves.

By Magda Lena Griffel

Illustration by Vanessa Zhou

On a Monday in 2008, at exactly 7 p.m. EST, NASA beamed the Beatles’ “Across the Universe” from Pasadena, CA through deep space towards Polaris, the North Star.

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup

They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe…

It wasn’t the first, the last, or the most technologically significant message sent from Earth across the universe, but it was the first that included a song. “Send my love to the aliens,” Paul McCartney said on the day of the transmission, as interstellar radio waves left Earth at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. The song hasn’t arrived yet, it won’t for another 413 years. But it’s out there, hurtling (slithering, slipping) through deep space.

…

Eight years before that transmission, a CEO named Jim Buckmaster created a subsection on his website Craigslist.org known as “Missed Connections.” People would describe their “you-smiled-at-me-on-the-subway-platform” interactions, as Buckmaster called them—moments of brief, often wordless connection between strangers out in the real world, and  then patiently hope for the other to privately respond so they could reconnect. These posts, which stay up for 45 days as per Craigslist policy, often adhere to a house style (me, you, where, when) and tend to request specific details of outfits or conversations to weed out imposters. Significantly, There’s a caveat though: There’s no public replies section. Responders reply to a private email address, so only the poster knows if their message reached their intended recipient. We have no sense of the website’s success rate.

…

Jan. 27, 2026: Dark yellow jeans and Blundstones on the Brooklyn bound C (Brooklyn) … You had two lines and a dot tattooed on your left hand and you were playing with your gold ring. I got off at High St. Miss you! 

…

During its heyday in the late aughts and early 2010’s, the site saw around 8,000 posts a week in the New York City area alone. Success stories, though rare, floated around on chat forums, sometimes even in tabloids. In an interview, the actor Colman Domingo shared how he found his husband, Raúl Domingo, on Missed Connections after wordlessly locking eyes with him across a parking lot outside Walgreens. “We look at each other, and I’m like ‘oh my god,’” Colman Domingo recalled, remembering that day in 2005. “He keeps looking back, and I wave, but he just keeps going. And I’m just dumbfounded.” Three days later, he saw a post describing his faux-hawk and messaged back. It was the beginning of a 21-year relationship.

These days, the volume of posts has shrunk significantly and a good chunk are individuals soliciting sex from strangers—often revealing hyper-specific fetishes. But a handful of posts still manage to capture the site’s original intentions. There’s a desperation to them, perhaps even hints of delusion. They speak to a universal need to give the story an ending. Is it the fear that the moment of electric eye contact is meaningless if it isn’t put into words, actualized? Imagine if Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet never spoke again after they first peered at each other through the fish tank.

…

Jan. 24, 2026: 2 train - One Stop (Midtown West) … You only rode one stop, but I noticed you the moment you stepped on. As you got off, you glanced back just once. I wish one of us had said hello.

…

It’s almost guaranteed that the Missed Connections posts of 2026 are shouts into the void. But that isn’t to say that the unanswered posts are failures. They preserve a moment in amber, even if it crumbles. In truth, Missed Connections isn’t about reconnecting, grabbing coffee, and getting married. The point of the 2008 interstellar broadcast wasn’t exposing aliens to John Lennon’s psychedelic-induced, timeless lyrics. It’s a way to say, we’re out here, we existed once, we dream. A radical act. Sometimes, the very expression of delusional hope (for a date, for aliens orbiting the North Star) is far more significant than the outcome. A message that doesn’t arrive is perpetually hurtling through the void.

…

Jan. 25, 2026: we said hi to each other and then kept making eyes from across the tracks, i smiled at you and you smiled back. i thought about running back over to give you my number but by then the train was coming.

…

In spite of everything, we looked up, we saw each other. Butterflies. Posting to Missed Connections is making them real—that’s enough. 

Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns

It calls me on and on across the universe.

For 45 days, the evidence will be there, and then, of course, it’ll be gone.