Director’s Notes: Episode 267 - Missed Connections

I have always loved weird little “anonymous” type columns in newspapers, going back to my middle school years when the Portland Mercury had a section called “I Saw You”. I Saw You wasn’t exactly a Missed Connections, but was oddly focused on seeing people on public transit or on the street and then writing about it. The main difference was that the writer never seemed to be wanting a connection with the other person—it was more of an acknowledgement-only, on-the-street-reporting blurb of weird observations around the city. As a nearby small town kid, I ate it up. That column doesn’t exist anymore, though the Mercury has a current column called “I, Anonymous”, which runs a broader gamut of anonymous notes from missed connections to I Saw Yous to unsolicited advice to rants and random poetry to highly personal messages clearly directed at a specific individual (who is also unnamed), and I love all of these too. And of course, I follow Missed Connections for my city, which never disappoints. Just a huge fan of anonymous public declarations over here! There’s something inherent in that particular form of public speech that allows the writer to be more vulnerable and honest than they would otherwise be, and it feels like such a special window into humanity. 

I’ve been wanting to bring a Missed Connections segment to Night Vale for a while now and once I started writing one, it became the entire episode. In fact, I ended up generating WAY more missed connections than I could use, and this was the first time in writing an episode that the word count started to get away from me. I definitely want to write more of them for future episodes, because I honestly feel like even this full-length collection barely scratches the surface of what Night Vale Missed Connections could be. In the meantime, I’d love to know if anyone here has a favorite “anonymous” column from their own city’s media outlets, either past or present—or if anyone has ever posted a missed connection, and if so what happened?? Please feel free to spill and/or dish in the comments. 👀🍿

-Brie Williams

May 1, 2025

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