Plentyoffish dating forums are a place to meet singles and get dating advice or share dating experiences etc. Hopefully you will all have fun meeting singles and try out this online dating thing... Remember that we are the largest free online dating service, so you will never have to pay a dime to meet your soulmate. Back then you were charged per word and you couldn't post a pic like you can nowadays. I know some of you are going to say that online dating is better because you can see a picture of the person you're going to go on a date with or just meet. I suppose that back in the old days someone who placed an ad in a newspaper personals had to be concise and 2 people could meet without having preconceived notions about how the other person is going to be. Has anybody here ever posted an ad to newspaper personals or answered one? I answered an ad and we stayed together for, um, 13 years. I think it was 13. Anyway, the ads were a lot better than these online profiles. You had to pay for the words so you chose them carefully. That suited me because I was looking for someone who could think well enough to write well enough to place a short ad that let me know what I needed to know. It's like poetry that way, where you convey an image using the effects of words rather than like I am doing here, explaining it using prose. I read that ad and knew that no matter what I really wanted to at least meet her. So I wrote her a letter and she called and we went out a few times then fell in love and moved in together and were happy for all but the last year which I won't go into but had nothing to do with newspaper. Has anybody here ever posted an ad to newspaper personals or answered one? It was GREAT receiving phone calls at 1 a. NOTHING like trying to convince your parents at 16 that you're not gay, and reassure them they are open minded, and I know they love me. And funny looks at Christmas. So I'm glad there is an alternative killing the newspapers, because online ads don't allow calls to my home. Not that I'm living with my parents. And not that there is anything wrong with that. Living with your parents or being gay. I always got a creep out factor from newspaper personal ads. In my own mind it smacked a lot more of desperation than online dating does today. Part of my distaste might just be from the name - personal AD. I don't like the idea of advertising myself. I'm not a product. I'm not interested in a woman who thinks of herself as a product - or service for that matter! I know there are people on this site who refer to profiles as ads, and that gives me the same feeling. Profile has a much better frame, IMO. When it became common knowledge that my sister had been using personals, there was a lot of nodding and snickering. My sister had been married four times, so it seemed like a last refuge. I want to do something, I get it done. The faster and the most efficiently, the better. I'm chomping at the bit now because I've been doing this for a week and haven't met my next girlfriend.. It takes longer and there's just as much if not more opportunity to deceive. I met one woman in this fashion.. I sent her a photo.. I was so looking forward to meet this southern hottie I got there early. I was walking around the bar working off nervous energy and chuckled for a moment at an obese woman falling all over a bar stool... I turned for the door.. I recall her saying this happens to her all the time. I looked closer and you had to go online and pay to use their service, so it wasn't a true newspaper personal section after all. And if I were going to pay to use an online dating site, I'd use one where I could meet foreign ladies because I've had more luck meeting those than American women, at least ones I would want to date, whether I meet foreign women online or offline offline meetings happen a lot at colleges and in big cities. There wasn't any instant, superficial rejection based only on a posted picture; I know I looked for clever, sometimes humorous, and always well-written ads much like I still do with profiles online and hoped that their description was at least honest. From there you quickly moved on to a phone conversation. I must say I do miss the opportunity to hear a voice initially, where inflection, nuance, sense of humor, so much of a person's personality, come thru loud and clear, and aren't lost as they so often are in an email. Then a meeting sooner than later typically, rather than an endless stream of messages back and forth. Sure you took your chances in that regard too, and often ended up meeting people who didn't quite match the image they had painted for you while you were talking on the phone, but that happens with online dating quite often as well. It seemed like you met more people, and if they weren't what you expected, or you just weren't a good match, you politely went your separate ways. Now people sit attached to their keyboards, hide behind the anonymity the internet affords and take a lot fewer chances putting themselves out there. Classifieds cost money, so people didn't run ads just out of curiosity or for bored kicks, which I think explains a certain number of profiles posted on POF and other sites which are rarely logged into after they are posted. That was a substantial investment for me at that time. Running the ad additional weeks was somewhat cheaper per appearance. For example 2 weeks was less than twice what 1 week cost. The conventional wisdom back then was that a man would get better results running his own ad rather than responding to a woman's ad, and I found that to be true, unlike POF, where relatively few women make initial contact. My guess is that women prefer to remain as anonymous as possible in these matters, and responding to a newspaper ad is more anonymous than making the necessary arrangements to run an ad, whereas posting an online profile is no less anonymous than responding to a profile. I always got at least one response to every ad I ran. Most of the women who responded to my ads sent photos of themselves , as well as phone numbers,and expected to meet in person within a fairly short time. I think the stigma attached to personal ads was, in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy: because it was said that only someone who was desperate would take out a personal ad, only those who really were desperate would do so. Nowadays, it seems like online dating sites are some kind of popularity contest, to see how many e-mail messages you can get. He had no trouble getting dates he was a good-looking, friendly lead guitar player in his 20s, so... As far as I know he was honest with everyone about not wanting anything exclusive. So if that's any indication, they were certainly at least as good! Read one or another sometimes more, religiously, lol! Met about half the guys, including one clear across the country. Nothing special, but no bummers, and no Mr. I never put an ad in -- too expensive. Several fellas mistook that for wanting to meet a Quaker, and although they weren't, they were good God-fearing men. Did NOT meet any of these fellas. An ensuing phone conversation was likely to lead to an intial meetup with little difficulty if that went more or less okay. Over the couple of years before the I-Net came along I met maybe as many as 15-20 women this way. I recall getting discouraged with the lack of decent results and giving it up for 4-6 months before jumping back in and giving it another try, because there they were every week in the local indy paper. But, as with the I-Net, there were many messages which just disappeared into a black hole, men who placed ads got many fewer responses than women, and it was more or less the same sort of population of singles as are now on the I-Net i. So in some senses it was slightly better or not that much different than online personals. Back then you couldn't just post an ad and expect it to be posted without paying for it like you can with dating sites which will let you join and post a profile for free but your credit card is required for everything else. I think people had better luck with newspaper personal ads overall than they're currently having with online dating profiles. My mother met my step father this way. My god, some of the beautiful letters she received were almost poetic and soooooo romantic. They were married for 21 years until he passed away. Maintained a long distance relationship for three years, prior to that. The person reading your ad can't just sit back and wait for you to write something directly to them... And it's a good letter, too... I think you were meant to include a photo with the letter. And then the person would write back and enclose their photo with a phone number, you call, you set up a meeting. Photos are photos, they are of little more help now than they were then. In fact, some people are probably still using the same photos from back then! My experience: One night, about a month after breaking up with a boyfriend, I got out a pen and some nice, well, cute anyway, stationary and I sat down and, in my own naive fashion, responded to, I don't know, probably 5 to 7 ads and sent my letters out. I received letters back from most of them--no surprise, I put a lot of effort into those letters--and met all of them. I remember one man was a little heavier than I would have liked but still quite nice. Other than that, they were all just fine. One I dated for a while, another I dated for awhile and then we were friends after that. You know, one plus, you didn't have to worry about being out with them and they'd pull in front of a post office and run in and check their mail! I sometimes see the only difference being that a picture can be put on the profile to get the attention. I've noticed far too many women who put about the same amount of words in their profile as they might have done in the old 'personal ads' days when a pic couldn't be used. And the ads actually read about the same. So, their choice to use as few words as possible in a 'free' site means that they were able to rely on their pic to get three hundred people listing them as a favorite, gobs of emails, and remain on the site for three years, while they still list 'are there any decent men still around' as their headline.... Personally, me and the word 'succinct' are rarely found in the same sentence. So I never utilized the personals ads in the papers to begin with...... The non-serious ones would be weeded out altogether because they'd have to create an ad and pay to place it or take the time to write someone a real letter, go to the post office and mail it. I def had more success with the old school personals than this online stuff. My relationships lasted a lot longer and I went out on a ton of fun and interesting dates. You weren't judged on looks alone. It was still a risk, but for some reason it seemed to work better. Of course when I did it times were a lot different and there was very little internet in those days.
