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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

The Sexerati Guide to Unpersonals

filed under: Dating 2.0, Web Sex Index, Unpersonals by Lux Nightmare

Once upon a time, meeting people on the Internet meant one of two things:

1) You joined a personals site
2) You somehow managed to start talking to someone through a message board/a chatroom/their email on a website, and then managed to convince them you were noncreepy enough to meet in person

Back then, meeting people on the Internet carried an air of desperation. It was something you didn’t really want to admit to, something you made a story to hide.

Then came Friendster.

Ostensibly a way to meet your friends’ friends, Friendster made the Internet “safe” for people too secure in their social skills to sign up for a personals site. On Friendster, you weren’t trolling for a date: you were demonstrating how popular you were! You were showing off your cute photos! You were making witty comments about your friends!

With the rise of Friendster came a whole new wave of “unpersonals” sites. You know them. You probably even have an account on one of them, complete with sassy photos, lots of comments, and a multipage friends list. And of course, you’d never, ever use that site to meet someone. Or stalk someone. Right?

Of course right.

And so, without further ado, here is your first installment in the Sexerati Guide to Unpersonals:

Site Name: MySpace

Ostensible Purpose: Why, it’s a place for friends! And bands! And projects put out by companies owned by Rupert Murdoch!

What It’s Really Used For: The beauty of MySpace is that everyone you know has a MySpace page. Really. Your mom probably even has a MySpace page. Searching for someone’s MySpace is like looking them up in the phonebook: only you’ll get way more information about their ability to spell, their taste in music, and what they look like while drunk.

Target Demographic: Everyone, their mother, their shitty band, and Twentieth Century Fox.

Who Really Uses It: See above.

Good For Meeting People? Say you meet someone at a party, and somehow manage to remember their name the day after. Want to reconnect without looking like too much of a creepy weirdo? Look them up on MySpace, and send them a message. Preferably a funny one.

Want to reconnect with someone from high school? Do the same thing.

Want to troll the Internet looking for dates? MySpace is probably not the place for you. People tend to look askance at messages from random strangers (though chances are high that they’ll respond to a random friending! Everyone wants more friends!).

Good For Stalking People? If your stalkee of choice has only recently discovered the Internet, chances are they’ll be all up in the MySpace, with tons of comments on their profile enabling you to figure out where they went last night, who they went with, what they did, how drunk they got, who they’re banging, where they’re doing it, and how good it was.

If you’re lucky, they’ll make a blog (one you can subscribe to!) and give you all this information right upfront in one bite-sized, easy-to-access package.

Site Name: Dodgeball

Ostensible Purpose: Going out to a bar? A party? Brunch? Anywhere? Why not send a text to fifty of your closest friends so they’ll know to meet you there? Check in with Dodgeball via text message, and it’ll do all the broadcasting for you.

What It’s Really Used For: Telling people where you are, finding out where other people are, having “chance” meetings with your latest crush, stalking all your friends.

Target Demographic: Tech savvy hip kids who go out all the time and want you to know it.

Who Really Uses It: Hip kids who go out all the time and really, really want you to know it.

Good For Meeting People? Though the primary purpose of Dodgeball is for friends to passive aggressively tell other friends to come hang out with them, users are also given the ability to connect with friends-of-friends and other Dodgeball users marked as “crushes.” Within 10 blocks of a friend of a friend or a crush? They’ll be notified of your location in case they want to party.

(Ed.: let me just say, how utterly disappointing it was to learn that dodgeball limits users to having only 5 crushes? How pessimistic! Also, and maybe this only happened to me, but when I went and tried to add a new crush once, I think dodgeball laid it on a wee bit thick with this message:

Is dodgeball deigning to judge me for my love life? Aren’t I being oh-so-2.0 anyway with it so multi-citied and multi-personed? You’d think that would spell TARGET MARKET, not SLUT USER ALERT. - mg)

Good For Stalking People? Are you kidding? Signing up for Dodgeball screams, “Stalk me, PLEASE.” (Though if you have a creepy ex lurking in the background, Dodgeball does allow you to filter who, exactly, gets to see where you’re going.)

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