About chickenlist

Twenty years ago I was left on the side of Everest with food poisoning while lammergeiers circled overhead. My team had hiked on to the overview of the Rongbuk glacier. I was propped against a rock at 20,000 feet, and the birds were making reasonable assumptions about my future.

When you've had that kind of afternoon, you tend to think hard about human connection. Why, in a world full of people, is it so hard to connect with our fellow beings? Not only romantically. Not only professionally. Just meet someone. Find a person who wants to eat something, or argue about a book, or go somewhere on a Saturday. The simple, ancient, human thing.

I didn't build it then. I sat with it for twenty years instead, which I don't recommend, but which at least meant that by the time I did build it I knew exactly what it was supposed to be.

A chicken list is what salespeople call the contacts they're too afraid to call. The list of people they keep meaning to reach out to, keep putting off, keep finding reasons to avoid. I thought that was the most honest name I'd ever heard for a website about human connection. So that's what I called it.

Chickenlist is a classifieds site for meeting people. Not just to find a life partner, not professional networking, but to find authentic relatedness through a common interest or passion. For a meal, a hike, a book argument, a jam session, whatever. No algorithm. No swiping. No profile optimization. No duplicitous cookies. You write a short ad about yourself and what you're looking for, and you post it. That's it. Oddball, analog, and very dial-up era — by design.

Craig Newmark, who built the original classifieds internet, liked the idea when I sent it to him. That felt like the right blessing from the right person.

Chickenlist launched in 2026. It's early. The first listings are going up now. If Craigslist taught us anything, it's that the simplest things last the longest.

— Ascot