Lonely singles all over the world can learn a lot about successful wooing from the witty types who place their personal ads with the London Review of Books.
This morning, CBC radio played an interview with Dave Rose, LBR advertising director and the editor of They Call Me Naughty Lola
Well, check out these examples, and see whether you think it’s a lonely hearts column you’d like to check out on your coffee break:
Man seeks woman:
Just once I’d like to date a woman whose home isn’t on Bitch Island, accessible only by Satan’s Hell Train into which is continuously piped the blood-curdling screams of her multitudinous previous victims. If you don’t think that’s too much to ask – and don’t have a long-running tab at your local pharmacist – then write to stupid man, 43. Box no. 05/08
Woman seeks man:
Woman, 37, tired of spending a fortune at the osteopath to satisfy her not-so-sublimated need for physical contact, WLTM single, solvent, sane by any reasonable standard M to 45. Box no. 04/01
Woman seeks…:
MOON ON A STICK? Writer/artist/filmmaker, 24, F, seeks sugarparent & freedom from cerebrum-rotting wage-slavery. No sex please, I’m almost British. lasttango…@gmail.com
Man seeks… uh…damned if I know!:
This is a terrifying world. I am the only worthy edifice in it. You are probably a tree. You know what I’m saying. Man, 35. Box no. 7213.
Also on the radio program, there was a guy (I didn’t catch his name) who has made a business out of helping people to rewrite their personal profiles to attract more attention on online dating sites (and how clever is that for a business idea?).
His main point was that the LRB ads work — they get noticed, read, and responded to — because they show the individuality of the single. Adjectives are pointless, he says, in a dating profile.
For example, anyone can say “good sense of humour” in describing themselves, whether or not it’s true. And a sense of humour is totally subjective (I never got the point of the Three Stooges, myself) — so it’s much better to demonstrate your sense of humour in the wording of your personals ad.
In short — Show, don’t tell.
It’s good advice for novice writers, and clearly it applies to Naughty Lola’s self-promotion, every bit as much as it does to crafting a novel.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Stevarino 03.07.07 at 2:54 pm
If you take the last one and substitute “orifice” for “edifice”, it almost makes sense, which I find terrifying.
domestika 03.07.07 at 2:58 pm
Terrifying indeed, Steve. Oh, and just FYI, in case you’re taking notes — “You are probably a tree” is probably not one of the world’s all-time great pick-up lines (though it certainly qualifies as, er, ‘different’)…