In the spirit of St. Bernard’s via negativa, there are few things to make you more appreciative of your spouse than perusing on-line personals. “Tell me I’ll never be back out there,” Carrie Fisher’s character says to Bruno Kirby in When Harry Met Sally, and after looking through a few on-line personals, the “dating scene” shows itself to be most definitely “out there.”
A good personal ad is an art. Just try describing yourself and what you’re looking for in less than 200 words. Less is more difficult.
Piling words on top of each other is much easier than constructing well-written sentences. But despite the fact that this is the _first_ impression they’re making, no one — neither men nor women — takes it so seriously. Instead, we read things like, “Hmmm about me. I guess you can say I’m a pretty funny broad.” Already we’re smiling at how much her word choice has said about her. Scroll down and we find, “Ok, where to start… like many people, I feel that I am just not meeting the ‘right people’ out at bars” To begin with, start without the “where to start.”
In advertising themselves, people tend to fall into cliché with alarming frequency – then wallow about in it. And it starts with the ad’s header:
- I’m a nice girl looking for her shining knight.
- Looking For Mr. Right
- Don’t judge a book by its cover
- Is Miss Right out there?
- Looking for the right one.
- Looking for Adventure
- No DRAMA!
- lookn 4 u!!
Some communicate on so many levels (many of them distressful) that they seemed to be masterpieces of Freudian innuendo:
- Animal lover seeking non-puppy kicker
- Gotta pay the cost to be the boss
Yahoo! personals washed up more than its share of clichés and freaks, but there were some thoughtful openings as well.
Well, one: “carpal tunnel love.” It just makes me all the more thankful that I’m married, that I no longer have such worries as “Will I still be alone when I’m sixty-four?”
She’ll still need me; she’ll still feed me.