Giving someone else's property away on craigslist

Free Horse, porch swing....yours for the taking

[Quinn]

I'm kind surprised this [seattletimes.nwsource.com]
hasn't happened more often.

[rocknbil]

OMG that is right in my neighborhood! Honestly, we're not all that stupid! :-\

[Habtom]

Shocking.

Meanwhile, Salisbury could not even relax on his porch swing.

Someone took it.

[jsinger]

Reminds me of a story a few years ago. Man in bitter divorce wanted revenge against the judge. So he placed a newspaper ad for a garage sale at the judge's fine home on a Sunday starting at 6 AM.

Bargain prices were advertised, and at the crack of the designated dawn, a huge mob of crazed shoppers surrounded the house and demanded entry.

[ronin]

What's interesting to me is that the looters prioritised what they had read earlier above what they were told face-to-face later.

Do people have greater trust in the printed word than in the spoken word in general? Do they trust information printed in a media format more than information told to them on the street? Do they tend to trust information they encounter first above contradictory information they receive subsequently?

Or, given that in this instance they perceived they had something to lose was it just an everyday risk assessment? In the absence of verifiable information, did the looters consider the risk of taking something and finding out later that they were a thief less painful than the risk of not taking something and finding out later they could have had it anyway?

[rocknbil]

Update on this story from the local newspaper [mailtribune.com]. Some of the people have even given some of it back (kicking and screaming, no doubt.)