Love in the personals

An interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald Archives by Catherine Keenan
(January 3, 2004):

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/02/1072908885008.html

This story is about personal ads in literary magazines like the London Review of Books and New York Review of Books - but goes into the use of emails and personas people are able to create for themselves on line.

This is a very interesting development in how people meet and interact. My kids seem to find half (if not more) of their friends via the internet discussion groups/chat rooms. The trouble is (from a parent's point of view) is that they stay up way too late at night chatting to their mates in the USA or Denmark or other far flung places from Australia! (hey, parents are supposed to tell their kids to go to bed and get enough sleep aren't they?)

What is interesting is the way you can create some particular version of yourself on line - via a blog, or even just email conversations.

After a discussion of her research on people who place personals in literary magazines, the articles author, Catherine Keenan, concludes with this:

"I did a quick Google search of the name he gave me, but this yielded only a musician affiliated with Philip Glass, a ballet dancer and a lumber salesman in Louisiana, none of whom seemed likely. I emailed Paul, saying as much, and asked him to tell me more about himself.

He replied: "Why do people always make such sweeping assumptions about those of us who work in the lumber business? Is it really so odd that I should mix an interest in postfeminism with the care and storage of hardwoods?" He continues to write to me in the guise of a southern lumber salesman, talking about his special Creole recipe for a chicken-based Christmas cake, and assuring me that "when you specify cypress, you've made the choice of kings!"

Once started, some of these correspondences are hard to end. But in true LRB fashion, I still know absolutely nothing concrete about him. He may be 18 or 80, cruel or kind, ugly or gorgeous, a respected academic or an inmate at an internet-enabled asylum. But I am intrigued. And that - whether you are an intellectual, a writer or a timber expert - is the goal of all advertising. "