by Gwydion McCarthy
(12/27/00)
First, a disclaimer: I've found my Love (and I'm not gonna tell
you where, yet). So my knowledge of Web personals is based on recent
research done purely in the name of science, lust, and Clean
Sheets. It is my personal goal to get every one of you laid
in the New Year, and in the spirit of this pursuit, I'd like to
offer you my picks for the best Web sites for finding sex, love,
and happiness (not necessarily in that order).
Many Web personals sites are very much the same. You fill out a form, you
post an ad, and you wait. You can make the ad as sincere as a virgin in
confessional, or as fake as a used car salesman's toupee. The ad is the one
medium you offer up in order to catch the eye of the future Mr., Ms., or
Mrs. Right. By learning the sacred art of personals writing, you may have
a chance to increase your success rate. To do this, you must attain the wit
of Dorothy Parker, the cleverness of a dot-com ad copywriter, and the
smoldering sexuality of Barry White. You must be resolute, creative, sexy
but not too sexy, smart but not too smart.
Of course, remember that long time regulars of the personals know how to
decode your cute, clever whimsy as quickly as a substitution cipher on a
cereal box. You know the drill -- "Needs discretion" entails a bit of
cheating on the side, "Intense personality" means "Long arrest record" and
"Spontaneous kisser" means "Poor impulse control." Still, people keep
coming back to the personals, in hopes of meeting just the right person and
beating the odds.
If you plan on actually meeting a person at any point, be
technically honest in your writing. Don't say you're a certain height unless you are verifiably that height.
Don't give the weight reading from the scale ten years ago, give the current
number (If the sole reason they don't like you is because you're too fat for
them, you're better off without them!). If you have kids, say so. If you
don't smoke, say so. Let people know who you really are. This is the main
thing you have to offer, not your cleavage or your six-pack of rippling
steel tummy muscles.
Generally, once you load your ad, you have an option to post a picture. My
advice is that you find a picture in which you are identifiable but not
easily recognizable. This may be a very difficult thing to do. You want
people to catch an idea of what kind of person you are by how you look, but
on the other hand, you don't want to provide some possible psycho-creepo
with the ammunition they need to hunt you. Just don't use anything obviously
stolen from your favorite porn site -- this is bad karma all the way around.
I can't say enough about the importance of Internet safety, especially when
you are meeting people this way. There are many people who seek
to educate about this particular area of personal security -- one group who
can help you is Working to Halt Online
Abuse (WHOA). See their "Resources for the Public and Site
Administrators" link, especially.
Most of the sites I feature here have extensive advice sections talking
about how you should go about meeting people you hook up with on their site
-- read them. The primary rule I want to get across to you before you meet
someone is that you should always, always, meet a new person in a public
place. Don't make plans to go anywhere. Have coffee. Talk. Set a decent
time boundary. Even if the chemistry is perfect and your juices are
flowing, don't go forward with the relationship yet. Savor the unresolved
sexual tension, have your meeting, and then see what happens.
You want to always have a back-up, a person who knows the name and driver's
license number of the person you've gone to meet, so that if you turn up
missing, the cops have a lead. Some people require a criminal background
check before they meet -- although this can get prohibitively expensive, it
can also save you a lot of heartbreak. Especially in the case of
long-distance relationships, do not ever go visit someone without having a
way to push the "eject" button and get the heck outta there. Rent your own
hotel room, have your own transportation, and arrange a "deadline" phone
call wherein you call your back-up and let them know you're OK.
Now that we're clear on safety, here's the good stuff. On the Web, the best site I've found for personals is Webpersonals They are something of
an 800 lb. gorilla of e-personals, offering personals services to the
lesbian, gay, and het communities, whether or not you are a swinging couple
or a single, whether you're looking for just fun, just romance, or just sex
(or some of all three.) And their model diverges from the standard concept
by offering special astrology-based matchmaking help, and an
instant-messaging style feature that allows people to chat anonymously.
They also handle all initial contact through a site-based email system. The
downside, of course, is the only thing free about Webpersonals is its
initial entry. You can post an ad and receive instant messages for free.
Anything beyond that, and you have to pay, and Webpersonals is very cunning
as to how they get you to pay.
You must first purchase a block of credits that allow you access to the
chat and other features. These credits are worthless if you don't use them,
of course, so the obvious urge is there to spend them if you have them. But
human nature is a funny thing, and I imagine if you find someone you really
want to talk to, you'll pay through the nose in order to keep talking to
them on Webpersonals, if they're not yet ready to talk off-site. Most
people who are concerned about their personal safety (i.e.; most people,
period) will not want to take things off-site because even "anonymous" free
Web-based email accounts can be tracked by those who know what they're doing.
The question is, "Are they biting at Webpersonals?" Well, yes, they are. I
created a female ad just to see what the response was like. It was
incredible. Thousands of men spending their credits to instant message me,
asking me all kinds of things, attempting to seduce me, and trying
desperately to get into my virtual panties. Sorry guys, remember: If an ad
sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. However, even in my
guise as a male, I received a few instant messages from women (not many,
but a few) and I was able to find women who were interested in starting
conversations (which is the main stopping point most guys have, really).
Over on the gay Webpersonals site, I once again found them hopping, getting
several lewd proposals and an offer of marriage (just testing, Andre,
sorry!) from the moment I logged on. Now, our astute Clean Sheets' readers
might say to themselves, "He must've hung out on the sex parts of the
sites." And they would be right. I cannot effectively evaluate the Romance
and Dating part of the site because of my quest to get all of you good sex. But
I assume if the sex part was jumping, the rest will be.
Next up we have alt.com. Where Webpersonals is more
like a raunchy, steamy singles bar, alt.com is like a hidden BDSM club
in the backroom at your local Goth danceteria. Like Webpersonals, this
thing is danged expensive. You can sign up for free, and you can post your
ad for free, but the interface only allows you to contact one personal per
day for free. If you want to contact more, you're going to have to get one
of the subscriptions. Now, considering what you may be paying to jerk off
to various porn sites, you might consider this an investment, a possible
lubricant-savings program. Are they hopping at alt.com? Well, my test
personal got very little response -- was this because I was too honest? I'm
not sure.
I give them major points for having tremendous numbers of people
considering the rather generous response to my infinitely picky search
requests ("Find me big, beautiful redheads with sassy mouths and pouty
attitudes, who clearly need to be tied up, fucked soundly, and spanked for
being bad girls"). Alt.com offers chat rooms, as well, but these are not
as elegant as Webpersonals' smooth-running chat blowtorch. Then again,
you're not ka-chunking out credits every time you type a line in alt.com's
rooms, so it all balances out. I like alt.com's naughtiness, and the fact
that they also try to sell you stuff while you're searching is
not as annoying as I thought it would be.
For the perceptive and intelligent bisexual, I have to recommend BiCafe. This is the sidewalk cafe of the
e-personals world. I received excellent customer service from the people
running the site. If you want to sign up for their newsletter, you can get
a small, free ad. Otherwise, you have to pay. The site has a very
interesting design, allowing you to see immediately who's on and who's not.
Are they hopping at BiCafe? Well, I imagine if I were a more body-beautiful
kind of person, I would've gotten more responses. Still, the fact that
people were willing to chat with me, and the site managers were very much
"on call" to me, makes me think that if I were really actively searching, I
could actually get help that would eventually put me on the right track to
finding a new bisexual relationship.
Finally, I'd like to introduce you to a lovely e-personals site
called Pearz. Pearz is the e-personals equivalent bookstore
hangout. It is not a typical e-personal site, because it focuses
on the individual and allows for many different kind of interesting
polyamorous configurations. Webpersonals will let a couple link
up and go looking for a menage a trois, but Pearz will facilitate
meeting and flirting between an anarcho-syndic organic-foods free
love commune in San Francisco and an open-source libertarian group
marriage enclave in New Jersey, with ease. Plus, they ask for long
essays on all kinds of interesting topics, which will also help
you plan such things as what to serve the enclave for dinner when
they all electro-bike cross-country to meet you. This is very heady
stuff, but it is very lovingly made. Please exercise extreme patience
with the server, as it is new and very slow. Pearz bears mentioning
because it is unique, not because it is necessarily successful --
yet. This is one to watch.
I must say that no amount of personals writing or responding will
find you your true love (or true lust) if you do not first make room in your
life for that kind of interaction. You must feel good about yourself first
before you can expect anyone to find anything interesting about you. So, my
advice to you is to write down fifty things you love about yourself, work on
being more positive, and masturbate a lot. This may seem
counter-productive, but self-love, especially for inexperienced
practitioners, is one of the best ways I've found of increasing your
self-esteem.
Also, get out from behind your desk, do something that you love -- heck, you
may even wish to visit a church of your choice (there are even a few that
accept agnostics and atheists these days), volunteer for your favorite
cause, or if nothing else go out and help a neighbor fix their house, rake
their leaves, or bring in their firewood. As for myself, I didn't find my
Belle by instant messaging in a sultry chat room -- we met in a very liberal
church -- she a recovering born-again Christian, and me a pentagram-wearing,
ritualistic Pagan. We weren't actively looking for each other, but it was
kismet, and the rest is libidinous history.
Here's hoping you find an excellent date for New Year's, and here's hoping
that your "kiss at midnight" is someplace naughty!
