Harry Potter and Spongebob Squarepants want to live with you

My best guess here is that the rental market in San Francisco is so competitive that two desperate people from Baton Rouge are advertising their creative, nerdy and humorous approach to life in order to charm someone into contacting them to move into their apartment.

My question is, will this work? And if so, would it work again? Looking for apartments in the Mission on Craigslist is to be confronted with a harsh reality – rents are pretty much twice what you want them to be. Showing up at open houses and finding people clamoring over one another, offering hundreds more than the listed rent can be a major bummer. Is this actually a saner, more reasonable approach?