Just a brief note, as in just a few minutes I have to run out the door. For the last few days, my browser (Mozilla's Firefox) has been crashing every time I log into blogger, but the problem seems to be solved. This was a good weekend for me guys, and it's been and will be another busy week. Today, I want to talk a topic I haven't addressed in ages: internet personals ads.
Over the past few weeks, hip, internet-using singles have been wrestling with the take-over of the once hip internet dating site, Nerve, and all others in the "Spring Street Networks" by the technologically clunky and personally invasive, Fast Cupid. Among the charming aspects of the new nerve is that the pictures are smaller, everything costs more, people can vote on your photos (gasp!) and you can see who's viewed your picture and who's "hotlisted" you. (one guy had also bookmarked me on Friendster, and looked cute, but didn't respond to my note.) I don't mind the visibility of the hotlisting/views thing. I think it's far superior to the cheap and annoying "wink" as a non-commital expression of interest. Also, I discovered that a number of guys I'd gone on dates with had recently viewed my profile.
I wound up going through a little Fast Cupid madness the other night, as I got a surprise email telling me that my personal ad on "bgay.com" had just been approved. Wondering what my profile had to do with all those discussions of gay marriage and pictures of guys in tightie-whities, I deleted the profile, unwittingly deleting my entire account with Spring Street. I finally joined again, using a new email address as the old one was still in their system despite the deletion of my account, and this morning I did see that a few credits had been added to my nerve account to make up for the 2000 I lost when I deleted my "bgay" profile. I never did get an answer to what the hell happened that I wound up with my personal ad on a network for which I never signed up. For discussions of the terrible new nerve under the Fast Cupid regime, go to: retrotrac's blog on nerve, which is frequently posted, but seems to disappear a lot, and this post from the urbanhiker blog. There's an ongoing discussion at the Bust lounge as well.
As a result of all these kinds of things, some websites are offering special deals to former Spring Street Denizens. Corante's Dave Evans has the story.
I'd love to tell dating stories, but to protect my upstanding professorial reputation, I will keep mum.
3 comments:
Yeah, the new Onion Personals format pretty much sucks. But being able to see that people are viewing my profile is not so bad.
I guess my biggest gripe about meeting people on line is that the people who take the initiative to contact me are either batshit crazy or mail-order brides, from Ghana, Russia, Phillipines etc.
It's kind of a lame experience finding out that people who are interested in me are either insane or that the thing that they find most attractive about me is the fact that I have indoor plumbing.
I have heard from some mail-order type guys too, but mostly on Friendster. It's a bit weird. The Onion format is the same as the Nerve (and also Salon), and now apparently, as Bgay.
My good news is that my profile and credits were fully restored this afternoon. As for other dating sites, it looks like "democratic singles" net is sponsoring a singles' bus to DC.
how many "singles" does one have to meet?
sure there are better people for us than others,
but don't you think that almost any couple can fall in love ? (within reason)
the dating sites seem like big boxes of chocolates
which very hungry people find than begin picking through, popping the centers and then tossing most of the pieces-people.
Ok we are not bon bons, but here is another food analogy, in a sense I think
NYC and environs offers a bumper crop of cute,
smart nice people. we just become way too picky and end up burning most of the harvest.
compra?
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