I decided on a whim to try to really sell myself in a personal ad. Well, I guess that’s not the beginning.
I love to read the craigslist personals. It’s funny and sad and insightful and it passes the time. Sometimes I’m intrigued enough to send an email; sometimes I’ll answer a question that someone has posted (“Why do women…?”); mostly, though, I just read and judge people silently.
So I decided to try to really sell myself in a personal ad.
Because I read the personals, I know what all the different code words mean. I know the formulaic structure of what’s typical. I know how to read far enough in to determine what most of the posters actually want, despite what they listed out and I realized that it’s amazing that this works for anyone! Personal ads are entirely about “A list of things I hated about my ex” or “These are my superficial requirements” or “Why I am awesome and also the best.” Hrm… that tells me absolutely nothing. So I went in a different direction and I wrote an ad to sell myself. Not quite like a product, but as a single woman on the market.
I talked about living on the strip between the cloth of society and the fringes. I said this is who I am. This is what makes me unusual. Here are some examples of how diversely unusual my life can be. I called myself “not for the faint of heart” because I think that’s really true. I told them to email me with actual content and conversation and gave an age limit.
And mostly what I got were semi-illiterates, creepy old men and guys who are offended by women smarter than them. But there were a few who caught my attention.
Now, I have to admit, I’m in a new phase of my life where I am desperately trying not to packrat anymore. One of the successes I’ve had is not keeping emails after I’m done with them. This, combined with the whole “not reading in” resolution means that I reply to an email, then delete it. No going back, so I can’t quote anything directly.
I got what appeared to be a poem, attempting to lure me further onto the fringes and away from my soul sucking (not my words) corporate job. I got an anti-government diatribe about how people are ruining it for people. I got one guy who was somewhat flowery at me for 4 paragraphs as he told me about how he’s into NASCAR and likes to drink Budweiser. I got one reply from a guy so bad at math, I wonder whether or not he can accurately use money. I got more than one probable conspiracy theorist, one who’s hobbies include “2012 interests”. I got someone who decided that my anti-establishment nature (eh, not really, but ok) must mean that I’m a Ron Paul supporter, and anyone who knows me AT ALL can imagine just how I reacted to that accusation!
And maybe a couple of kindred spirits. I’ve had some interesting conversations that, as usual, end when they find out I’m a fat chick. Even the ones who are so receptive to the like-mindedness and chemistry and say “Wow, maybe we could just be friends if romance doesn’t seem in the cards.” I guess single guys don’t even want to befriend fat chicks.
And then my ad got flagged and deleted. No kidding. Despite craigslist’s claim that “Only 2% of flagged content is misflagged”, their forums certainly say otherwise and, if there’s no actual violation, their helpful posters over there will tell you exactly what they would change about how you present yourself.
So the end result is that there is a huge market out there for a dating site for “weird” people who don’t fit the “this is what I look like, wanna fuck” demographic, but trying to market myself to the type of people who will actually like me 1) can’t happen on mainstream websites because people’s sensibilities are offended (I did say I wasn’t for the faint of heart, apparently no one listened) and 2) the end result is more of the same. I feel like I should have expected that, but I didn’t.
So there’s my (failed) experiment.