that "unappealing personal ad" meme

[piranha]

(copied from a comment elsewhere).

i didn't participate because most people seemed to take this task seriously, instead of viewing it as a writing exercise. and if taken seriously, well, i am not interested. i already know that the mainstream views many traits i have as flaws, while i and those who love me don't give a damn (eg. fat, geekiness, strong opinions, bluntness). i already know that what i care about in people is never a summation of a laundry list of traits, but always an aggregate gestalt that's formed by, uh, magic. :) and i already know that one person's abominable flaw is another's attractor (and that weirds me out when applied to myself). also vice versa; things i view as positive traits in myself aren't always seen that way by others. it's all very subjective.

as a writing exercise it is tempting, and i might do it some time, but only if that is clear to the readers (so i'll probably do it long after the lj-meme has disappeared). one person out of the many i read did an amazing job (i really did find the ad thoroughly unappealing, even though i adore the person), all the others sounded quite appealing, and resulted in lots of people saying "i'd do you" or similar stuff, some of which was no doubt also meant reassuringly. the main reason why they sounded appealing to me is that they were refreshingly honest and rather different from a run of the mill personal ad. but as writing exercises the lot of them except for that one didn't achieve the objective IMO.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I saw it as a writing exercise, and specifically as an exercise in a kind of honesty I want to bring into my personal writing. I do understand why people are having the "I'd do you" reaction, and I agree with you that that's not what I was looking for or wanting.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

I was tempted, but I figured it wouldn't be easily distinguished from any other post I've made lately. And it would have to contain some things I'm not too keen on being upfront with right now. None of which involve being intelligent, polyamorous, hairy, geeky, or otherwise "different".

And: yeah.

But now ...

Mm.

No, probably not.

that "unappealing personal ad" meme

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

I figured it wouldn't be easily distinguished from any other post I've made lately

*nod*. yes. you do make a fair number of posts that fit the rules of this exercise.

which at the same time makes me uncomfortable, and comfortable, if that makes any sense at all. i like people who're in touch with their smelly underbelly. but it's still smelly, and maybe should be more private because otherwise i might slip and say something wrong. (that's how i feel about my own, sorta protective because the work in progress can't always bear third party commentary.) or maybe not. honesty shall set you free and all that. it usually works for me, but not always, sometimes it just hurts and hurts.

it could be profoundly depressing to write such an ad. i think i could only do it as a writing exercise, and now that i think about it some more, would i get enough out of it?

I think I'm one of the ones who flunked the exercise

[saluqi.livejournal.com]

I got a comment on the one I did basically saying "you got these two sentences wrong because they broke the third rule of the meme". He might be right about that, but I was confused about it because I had not intended to sound deliberately unappealing, to me they were truthful.

I'm feeling a bit dense about it, but is that what you mean by "a writing exercise" - that is, write something that readers will find unappealing even if you don't, necessarily?

Re: I think I'm one of the ones who flunked the exercise

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

*urm*, i am not sure one could flunk it. :) this is just my take on it. it might not be anyone else's. and i thought yours was pretty good, though i agree with that poster about terms you used. oh, i should write that in your LJ. :) off i go...

i don't think it matters whether i find it unappealing or not, as long as the target audience doesn't take to it. the problem, in terms of this exercise, lies -- as i see it -- in people writing these ads for some imaginary target audience that isn't watching them on LJ, people who'd not like whichever things about them their friends actually do like. and that's why it's mostly turned into a support meme, into "we love you even if the idiots out there might not".

i think the hard part of the exercise lies in writing it so that even your friends don't take to it (since that's to whom the ad is presented), and that's where i see the challenge. i feel it's relatively easy to write an honest ad about myself that will make me unattractive to the average mainstream personal ad purveyor (old, fat, geeky, asexual will do). but i think it is incredibly hard to write a personal ad your friends won't like. which is why it'd be a good writing exercise. but maybe also quite depressing (the person to whom i left the comment found it so).

one person managed to leave almost everything about zirself out that zir LJ audience would like; that was a good start. there was still stuff in there the LJ audience found interesting though (except i didn't because i am atypical when it comes to sex). so that set me to wondering whether i could write one that would really be a turn-off to nearly everyone who knows me.

for example, not just "fat" but "fat, and is letting zirself go without much care for zir health", not merely "geeky", but "monomaniacally obsessed with new interests to the point of ignoring everything else in life". from the truth of myself, and without trying to make things sound worse than they are. and if possible, make it flow -- beauty in the writing, not in the qualities advertised. :)

Re: I think I'm one of the ones who flunked the exercise

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I don't remember necessarily thinking that of yours, although I'd have to go back and look at it, but I remember thinking that "you broke the third rule" thing about other people's. What triggered that for me was that even though their statements might have been honest, I couldn't picture any reason why someone sitting down to write a personal ad hoping to find / attract someone would have included that information in the ad. Since "deliberately unappealing" and "honest" aren't non-overlapping sets, that was mostly how I took the third rule: That you had to write a plausible ad that sounds like something someone might write if they were sitting down to write an ad without knowin how it might read to others.

I failed horribly at that, myself, though. I went through and I think managed in some parts, but many of the things I couldn't think of a good way to transform them. But that was the part that I thought made a challenging writing exercise; I don't know if pleonastic was thinking the same.

Re: I think I'm one of the ones who flunked the exercise

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i was thinking along lines a bit tangential to yours.

What triggered that for me was that even though their statements might have been honest, I couldn't picture any reason why someone sitting down to write a personal ad hoping to find / attract someone would have included that information in the ad.

contrary to most advertising, i view personal ads not as a means to sell to as many as possible, but to sell only to a tiny, very select group.

i should probably say that i've never actually written a real personal ad, just a few joke ones during discussions such as this. but if i were to write one, i'd write it not solely to attract people, but also to deter. i'd want it to do a reasonably good job weeding the wrong people out. i would think quite a bit about how it might read to others. and i might quite explicitly write something deliberately unappealing to people i perceive as being the wrong match for me. maybe also in part because i am blunt, and i feel that ought to come through in my personal ad so i am not selling a more refined product than the slightly grubby one that's actually lolling about on the shelf.

for example, i wouldn't use a euphemism like "chubby" or "rubenesque" or "i take after my sturdy european ancestors" to make my fat seem less of an issue, i'd shove that right in people's faces by saying "i'm fat. i don't just have an extra 10 lbs which i am constantly dieting to take off. think 300 lbs fat, and i like my chips fried, not baked."

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could make it clear that it was a writing style if you wrote it about someone else. It might be hurtful or mean-spirited to write it about a real other person, but you could, say, write it about a popular fictional character. You could even do a few in a row that way, for different characters.

I didn't see any that I felt made the person sound unappealing to me, but also didn't sound like they were trying to make themselves sound unappealing. Probably the closest that I saw was that kalmn made herself sound like an appealing person but wrote an ad that I wouldn't have responded to (because she mentioned her criteria in a mate and I didn't feel that I fit them). I saw some where the person managed to make themselves sound unappealing but where had I read it somewhere, I would have thought, "Wow. This person is really *trying* to make themselves sound unappealing." Like, it seemed deliberate. Mostly, they put in a lot of things that I didn't see any reason why somebody actually trying to attract people through a personal ad would have put in.

I was doing it as a writing exercise, and I got a number of the responses that you mentioned. (That's why the LJ-cut for mine said that bits of it didn't come out the way I'd wanted and it didn't quite strike the lyricism that I saw in some others.) The challenge was exactly that thing of finding a trait that seems negative and putting a positive spin on it. That's why I put in things like, "I have a lot to say, and I'm never at a loss for words." -- I started with, "I tend to interrupt and dominate conversations, even when I'm trying not to," and then said, "Okay, now obviously you wouldn't write that in a personal ad if you weren't trying to make yourself look negative, so how can I spin this so it not only sounds positive, but sounds like something that someone would have chosen to put in an ad." That was the approach for me.

I think that part of the reason behind the "You didn't manage to make yourself sound unappealing," responses are that our reading of the ads are tempered by what we know about the person. The first couple that I read were well-written but were by people who I find really appealing already and it was impossible to eliminate their person from my mind and have that temper the things that they were saying. In a way it's kind of like trying to read Orson Scott Card novels and not colour everything with what I know about his personal and political views. Some people can do it, but it's not my forte.

subject lines win canadian dollar prizes this week

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

*heh*. well, part of the exercise is about the writing, but another part is about honesty. so it has to be about myself. it should be easy to forestall people giving support by just saying that i don't want that -- it's just that it's easier to get that through to people when they're not already swimming in a sea of being supportive to people who seem down on themselves.

i found that i enjoyed the ads most that didn't put a positive spin on things, but said them straight out. i disdain most personal ads because they do the positive spin thing to the hilt (if they don't outright lie, or are so vague as to be meaningless). i liked the honesty, it was so unusual for personal ads. i'd love to read that sentence you edited in its raw form in an ad -- because frankly, that's how i'd be translating your edited version anyway if i were in a snarky mood (and i am always in a snarky mood when i read personal ads). you could make it a little funnier by saying "... and dominate conversations, but i get the hint when you hit me over the head with the 'talking stick'" (maybe that's too esoteric, i could throw the compact OED at you instead).

yeah, knowing people also colours my reading to some degree, though not sufficiently to want to become their BDSM slave and do their household chores, *snicker*. though i found out some things i hadn't known about people, which was interesting. and as i said, one person i *heart* came across very unappealing, which was quite the feat, but also realistic -- we would in fact make a bad romantic match.

(i stopped reading orson scott card because of what he did to his young characters in order to manipulate the reader; i can ignore his politics in as far as they don't come through in what he writes. i also don't automatically like books just because i like the writer's LJ. there are some connections, but they're tenuous.)

Re: subject lines win canadian dollar prizes this week

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure where I stand on liking people's writing because I like them or their LJ. I don't actually have that many samples to work from there. I did buy one of Lyda Morehouse's books because I thought she was a fascinating speaker at Wiscon, but I haven't read it yet. In some cases I *read* the work because I like them, though. Like, darkmagess is actually quite a talented writer, and I also think she completely rocks. However, she writes in a genre that don't like. I tend to read all of her work and give her feedback on it, but I have to kind of push myself to do it and wouldn't read it if it wasn't by her.

wild_irises touched on the "attractive honesty" thing in some of her responses to the meme, especially when I was trying to find out what I found so appealing about so many of the ads that I saw. I think that there are some people who really do that in real personals, or at least on OKCupid, and my impression is that people like their ads/profiles, but I've never tried to find out if they do well in actually getting responses, which would be interesting to know.

[selki.livejournal.com]

I thought about really trying to follow the exercise, but I couldn't think of a way to talk about dating hot-buttons/trouble spots without posting stuff I'd only talk with my intimates about. I think some folks like me responded to the meme just for fun or because it was an excuse to actually post a personal ad. But I tried to make mine entertaining, with as much disclosure as seemed reasonable to me, and a hint that there's other stuff that would need to be addressed. To some folks, of course, hinting at without spelling out issues would set off all kinds of alarm bells.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

The meme in question has not reached me. If you don't mind explaining, what is it?

the "unappealing personal ad" meme

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

sorry for the delay. i had to go looking for an example, and i got distracted while doing so, and 3 days later in ulaanbataar...

The rules: Write yourself a dating ad.

1) It has to make you sound as unappealing as possible
2) It has to be honest - you can't lie at all
3) It can't sound as though you're deliberately making yourself sound unappealing.

Re: the "unappealing personal ad" meme

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It has managed to reach me in the meantime.

I tried to toss together a one-paragraph blurb, and promptly came to the conclusion that if I were writing a regular garden-variety personal, I'd want to include the very same data, so as to eliminate early anyone who'd be scared off by such things, except maybe I'd throw in a random "gorgeous" into the mix somewhere between "geeky" and "control freak".

[liv]

In as far as this comment includes me... yeah. I intended to do the meme as a writing exercise, and I didn't do it very well. Making words say what I want them to is something that only happens sporadically for me. I wasn't asking for support, but I'm rather touched that I got it.

My aim was to list positive traits anyway, but to couch them in ooky language. I really don't expect my friends to have a problem with the fact that I'm intelligent, overweight or attached to my independence! And I most certainly am not ashamed of these things. But I didn't hit the note I was aiming for. Ah well, I do think my writing has improved over four and a half years of regular blogging, so I'll keep working at it.

[firecat]

I've been working on one privately but haven't seen fit to post it yet. I have to admit, writing it has felt freeing to me. Because in a sense I kind of like about myself all of those things that probably aren't terribly appealing to other people.