What you are about to read will shock you. Super-secret inside information will be revealed. Shocking tales of extreme sexual conduct will get you hot and bothered. And one of our writers will lay bare her soul as she takes you along for the uniquely personal experience of a lifetime. Consider yourself fairly warned.Here at the Anchorage Press offices, the personals are a constant yet barely noticed presence - a white-noise hum beneath the cacophony of discussion and communication related to news/entertainment coverage and advertising, but there nonetheless.
A couple months ago, the Press was on TV because someone used our personals for a cruel practical joke - running a racy ad and giving her enemy's phone number when she would call back responders. The woman whose phone number was given out was harassed by `undesirable' callers for days. And then there's the people who call me on the phone with something like, "I lost my password," or, "How can I avoid using the 900 number?" And then there's the ones who come into the office to avoid the 900 number by paying up front for a block of time on our 800 system (doesn't show up on the phone bill and gets by 900 blocks.)
And then there's Maggie Balean, our PRESSonals goddess, who listens to every message, distills it into a personal ad, censors (yes, we censor them to some degree) or excludes the really racy ads, and then shares this week's highlights with the staff. And then there's me - I lay out the personals and of course read them carefully each week. Our basic rule - no phone numbers, full names, or addresses can be left on the voice ad.
The PRESSonals Advertisers
It's not really prurient curiosity, but rather a sense of wanting to know who's advertising their sociosexual needs in so public a venue and why - and how. After being at the paper a few months, I decided it's time to stop wondering and start asking questions.
The big problem with talking to personals users - they're totally anonymous. I decided to reach them through a standard social research method, a phone survey. I left messages on a selective sample of 48 boxes and counted on about a 10% response rate. Five people responded in the end, and all of them had more than one ad in the paper. If each of them had two ads on average (none would disclose the complete breakdown of which ads were theirs or how many there were,) that would be something like an estimated 25% response rate.
The respondents were as diverse as the ads themselves, and I'll go ahead and characterize them for you right off, since there's only six of them. We've got Andrew, who honed his ad placement/copy writing technique to a fine edge, producing regular volumes of calls; Barbara, a dominatrix who's not quite comfortable with it yet, but willing to explore; Calvin, who had an intense and personally trying affair with a married woman through the personals; Dan, who has had little success finding dates through the personals and is upset about too many married women calling him; and Edward, a gay Christian with a new-age consciousness. Most of them were in their mid to late 30s.
In addition to them, we've got Mike, who placed a number of "fake" personals ads and recorded the responses for kicks. He stopped after about two weeks because he felt terrible about misleading sincere people looking for love.
Ad design
From talking to all of these people, one thing became clear - how you design your personal ad placement is critical, and will almost certainly make the difference between whether you get a date or not.
Probably the biggest predictor of who got the most dates or made the most personally fulfilling connections was time spent advertising in the personals. Andrew, who's been using the PRESSonals "since the beginning," about 1.5 years ago, has placed and redesigned numerous ads until he's honed his placement to a science. "With one of my first ads, I got one response in maybe three weeks," he says, "But I pondered different ways of writing the ads, and as it is now, I got my point across and [my current ad] is what people are responding to." Andrew currently has "2 or 3" ads in the PRESSonals, and says he gets 2-3 responses a day.
Barbara faces the typical problems of a personals neophyte - her ad attracted people she isn't interested in. Compounding the issue is a sexual desire she just became aware of and isn't sure how to deal with. This is no doubt common among personals users, who seem willing and eager to experiment with nontraditional sex and relationship structures, but aren't necessarily practiced or comfortable with their expressed desires. "I've got like 12 calls so far, but I haven't gone out with anyone yet," says Barbara, "Some of them sounded drunk, some were breathers, and some just wanted sex."
But only six weeks into the game, Barbara has begun to redesign her ad placement - a second, "less provocative" ad has drawn two responses she feels comfortable with and is excited to date.
Forum for Infidelity?
You bet! Most respondents took infidelity for granted, as do most ads. in the personals. "A lot of married men or women are looking for [extramarital affairs] and I've had several responses like that," says Andrew, "I'm glad it's there, and I will continue to use it accordingly." Calvin agreed, but warned of `snags' such as the one he's been dealing with, "I've dated a couple married ladies that had problems at home with the old man as far as sex. One lady I was seeing placed an ad with her husband's consent, but he wasn't happy when she started getting responses - and she got quite a few. They're still discussing a divorce."
Dan didn't want to get involved with a married woman, because, "married people who fool around tend to be selfish." He characterizes his last two months' advertising as "totally unsuccessful," (with the exception of a couple platonic friends) because his ad for some reason attracted a great deal of married people. From the two ads he placed, "About half of the responses were married, and the other half either didn't show up or we weren't interested in each other." He plans to change his ads to attract singles only.
Are Professionals Working the System?
Two of the five respondents related encounters with `professionals' (prostitutes) through the personals. Calvin got a strange response to an ad about a month into his personals adventure. "She wanted me to come over and `do some work for her,'" he says, "She'd straighten me out, fix me up. I'm not into that, I'm more into friendship, but they get $150 per whack."
Barbara had an even stranger experience with a `personals prostitute,' "My ad was definitely provocative, but I couldn't believe it when a prostitute responded to my ad," she says, "She accused me of trying to hone in on her business!"
Are All Those Ads Really For Real?
Now I know I already mentioned that fake ad that got us on TV, and I mentioned Mike, who placed a number of other fake ads and recorded the responses. During the course of my tenure at the Press, I've heard of a number of people who placed ads without the sincere intention of getting a date - it's highly tempting because it's free, and the subject matter is so fascinating.
Before you consider it, pay careful attention to Mike's story. "It all started as a fun joke," he told me as he put the cassette into the recorder, "But I stopped because it was no longer funny, it was just plain disturbing." The tape consists of a number of ads, ranging from the normal to the bizarre ("Space alien in a young horny woman's body..."), and the responses from each ad. Ad structure certainly had a lot to do with the types of responses, and the space alien ad was the all-time response winner.
But listening to the tape, I realized that these responders were indeed serious, some of them near-desperate. One gentleman left like four messages in response to an ad, obviously extremely interested in speaking with this person who wouldn't call them back, much less have kinky sex with them.
"It just felt so disturbing, playing with these horny guys," Mike says as he reflects on his crimes against society, "I mean, some of them were gross and may have deserved it, but on the whole the responses were very sincere. And then I began to feel as if I were disturbed, as if I were a pervert for doing this thing myself."
Well, of course Mike wasn't a pervert, because that would make me a pervert, too, for listening to his tape and talking to personals advertisers. But if you advertise, beware of false advertisements. And if you've been thinking about placing fake ads, think about the people sincerely seeking dates that you'll be teasing, throwing spam into the works of a well-oiled love machine and risking your own personal perversion.
Why 5 out of 5 PRESSonals advertisers prefer the Press
Probably the one thing I heard most from the respondents was gratitude that someone in town would support their needs with the personals. Almost all of them had tried to advertise in the Daily News but been rejected because their ads were too controversial. If you've noticed, ADN doesn't even break the categories down to eliminate controversy - it's just `Ads from women,' and `Ads from men.'
"I never knew you could put anything like that in the paper before I read the Press," says Andrew, "And I didn't know who I was going to meet or how I was going to meet anyone until I started reading the PRESSonals. It's truly a valuable community service."
Barbara agreed, especially after the Daily News turned her down and told her to call us with her ad (thanks, ADN.) "The PRESSonals are a valuable service for all of us who don't have 2.5 kids and drive a station wagon. I'm Christian, and I still go to Church, but for God's sake, I'm not dead yet!"
Edward concurred wholeheartedly, feeling that, when he responded to the Daily News' personals, "I wasn't comfortable with the people I was meeting - the gentlemen sounded like spiritually unhealthy individuals. The Press reaches a more eclectic and broad population - your readers are spiritual, open-minded, and think for themselves and I plan to keep using your personals."
Some of us Aren't Well-Connected Alcoholics
So I know what you're thinking: this is weird, abnormal, and why can't these people just meet the way normal people do and go from there. But this is the 90s, and what is "normal" anyway? And what do you do if your tastes run a little left of center? If you're a gay Christian trying to find a man who'll tolerate your faith, or a woman trying to find a `discreet' extramarital affair, or just someone who doesn't go to traditional meeting places. Or don't like who you're meeting there.
I know we've all been there, but for many people the personals are really an effective method, especially with a little tweaking of your ad until it brings in the `right' people on a consistent basis.
Another thing the respondents had in common - most of them don't drink and aren't into the bar/meet market scene. "You could go to a bar and make all the friends in the world - until you quit drinking..." says Calvin.
Have you ever wanted love, sex, romance, or just friendship but been unfulfilled for one reason or another? Of course you have! The subjects I interviewed for this article were all in that space when they placed ads in the PRESSonals, and for some of them, it paid off handsomely.
Sure, the personals are great reading if you're just out to marvel at the strange sexual desires of your fellow Anchorage residents. But think about those unfortunate people whose dating requirements are such that only a few like-minded people in town would go out with them, or with a situation that makes it very difficult to meet people. For them, the PRESSonals are more than a valuable service - they're a crucial lifeline to love.