After the first meeting, it was more like regular dating where you saw each other again or you didn’t

There were two cases where the chatting led me to decide not to meet up with the person (tip for guys: don’t tell single Moms you’re angry at Bill Clinton because somehow it was his fault that you couldn’t see your daughter because of your failure to pay child support)

One basic question i have is, if you saw a personals ad that piqued your interest, how would you get ahold of the person? would you then talk on the phone for awhile the way people on apps text eachother forever without meeting up? How much did they cost? How often would you re-write them?

If you placed an ad, you got a dedicated voicemail box or a dedicated email address (there was a time when there was Internet but no World Wide Web), and interested parties would either call and leave you a voicemail or send you an email linkitetty tänne. As the ad-placer, you would then be able to review the emails or voicemails and follow up.

I did such a thing only once; I placed the add, and it was back in 1995 so I do not remember how much it cost. (I think costs varied depending on who owned the ad site; I used one in a free weekly indie newspaper in New York in the 90s.) I followed up on two guys‘ voice messages; in both cases, we had an initial conversation and made a date for a second phone call just in case, and then when that second call went well we went on to an in-person date. (With the second guy, our first phone call lasted 2 hours and the second one lasted 4 hours, and then our first date lasted 18 hours and on our second date he saved my life, so I stuck with him quite some time afterward, and by the time we’d broken up and I was ready to date again the online dating apps were kicking off so that was the one time I did the paper personals.) posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:27 AM on [30 favorites]

Continue reading →