True dat. Though if anything, I’m taller than I generally claim to be in personal ads, at least perceptually. I’m 6’2", and when I give my height, I say I’m 6’2" – but people seem to expect 6’2" to be shorter than it really is, I find. Maybe it’s that both my brothers are taller than me, but I don’t tend to make a big deal about my height at all. (Unlike a former roommate of mine who, despite being three inches shorter than me, swore up and down that he was 6’1".)
Gadarene, if I were single, lived near you and looking for someone to have fun with, I’d totally send you an email and ask you out for espresso or coffee.
I made that decision, by the way, three sentences in to your ‘ad’. I had to go back and read the rest to make sure I still would have.
If you’re not going to include a recent photo, I think you should find a way to mention your age. Or your age range. Or the age/age range of the women you’d like to meet. The “tons of student loan debt from my too-expensive degrees” bit makes me think that you’re in your early-to-mid 20s, but there’s no reason to assume that to be the case. Even if I liked your self-description and were willing to respond to an ad that didn’t have a photo, I wouldn’t write without a better idea of how old you are.
Some nitpicking proofing points: strike the first comma, the third-to-last “too,” and the fragment “So I don’t.”.
Otherwise, it’s well-written, interesting, and has a certain novelty value. Good luck with the ad… but why are you doing all this the month of your bar exam?
Thanks for the proofing. I’m keeping the fragment, though; I love me some judicious use of fragments.
(As a completely unrelated observation: I got to use the phrase “scrivener’s error” in an opinion a couple of weeks ago, and I’m really, really pleased about that.)
Misnomer: It’s the ‘30’ in the title; that’s where the age goes in Craigslist ads.
Nope, no " :smack: " moment for me, because I’ve (obviously) never seen another craigslist ad: when I saw the “30” the first time, I thought it was part of the title and indicated that there were 30 bad points in the ad (sorry that I didn’t bother to count them)!
Perhaps if the title and ad hadn’t lent themselves to enumeration I would have been able to guess that the number at the end was, in fact, an age … at least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I think you might attract Europeans. It’s a bit of a cliche but from personal experience I would say that it generally holds true that Americans like to sell themselves whereas Europeans are more into self-deprecation and are therefore more likely to think well of your add.
Aw. Thanks. And you might be right regarding the American/European thing; I’d never considered that.
Minor update: I’ve gotten a fair number of responses so far, around eight or so. Which is actually pretty good for a male-for-female personal ad on Craigslist, although a woman could get eight responses in an hour by posting an ad that said, in its entirety, “Me girl.”
Several of the responses seemed to really enjoy the approach, as well. I’ll let y’all know if anything develops.
Okay, that made me laugh–as a chick who’s put a few personals posts on Craig’s List and gotten pretty much exactly that magnitude of response… What’s really funny, though, is how many repeaters you get no matter how wildly divergent the text of two ads may be the exact same guys will post back to you with the same pictures and pretty much the same stale email.
After a while I started posting really random ads that had as little in common as possible just to see who shook loose for each approach–it was pretty interesting. I might get a book out of it someday…
One guy was really scary and creepy–I got as far as talking to him on the phone and he started making these sweeping statements about what he thought I believed and thought and he was very passively-aggressively angry about expressing his views–I assigned the “Death March” as his ringtone so I know not to answer if he ever decides to call again… :eek:
I was quite intrigued by your ad. I like a man who has spent some time doing some introspection into his faults! It didn’t reveal enough of your humor, but I would have resonded to it. Of course, you are way too young for me, but that’s a good thing for you…you’re still young enough that a woman might think you could be transformed by the power of love!
Heh. I admit I gilded the lily a little bit on that one. I fall in love very easily and naturally, when I meet someone to whom I’m attracted and with whom I feel genuinely compatible and comfortable. It’s just that I really, really rarely meet someone like that, and when I do they tend not to feel the same way about me.
But thanks.
