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looking for love in online places

Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 11:46:21 -0800
From: Howard Rheingold
To: justin
Subject: Sexy Personals

Salon just launced a cobranded personals site
with the famed Nerve.

http://personals.salon.com/personals/

Check out these assumptions and features.

- you have to use a "nickname" for personals. Have to. Not your regular account name which might not be real either.
- it's not going to be free (it is now in "charter" or beta only)
- they promote an ICQ sort of customized dealie for instant communication
- multiple id's (nicknames) are accomodated.
- a few free services such as sexual astrology are included at the site, a good way to get women in particular to return to the site, maybe to join one day.

I hopped on Salon/Nerve Personals December 14th, the day Howard sent me this note. Prior to this time, I'd been hanging out in the Craigslist.org "Women Seeking Men" part of town. While it was nicely local to the SF/Bay Area, I hadn't yet found anyone I had clicked with.

Seeing the Salon/Nerve site with pictures and profiles and facilitated introduction and communication presaged a real blossoming of my online romancing efforts. By looking at these women, reading about them, I could learn enough about them to write a brief note which got them to my profile, which was occasionally good enough to get a note back from some lively gals.

The site, the personals there seemed largely populated by artists and writers and people with an enlarged sense of self or some agile ego, and certainly a healthy grasp of the erotic. And while I wasn't necessarily there looking for a nice fuck, it was titillating to find that part of my mind stimulated through the machine with a bunch of other weirdos.

Soon, I met Melissa, then M-.

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