Personals/Personal Ads

Personals are advertisements placed by individuals in print or online media to signal their availability and desire to meet with others for romantic encounters or relationships. Historically, their growth has paralleled that of the print media. For example, in the Northwest United States in the 1800s, advertisements in newspapers were common for mail-order brides. In eighteenth-century Britain, personal ads were a feature of matrimonial columns in national newspapers. Their popularity really mushroomed in the second half of the twentieth century in Western societies. Studies have looked at their usage in print form in North and South America, eastern and western Europe, and in Australia and New Zealand. However, since the mid-1990s, online personals have overtaken their printed forerunners as a global facility for engineering social encounters. There has been a mass exodus away from print formats and, according to Anna Mulrine, currently, over half the single U.S. adult population visits such sites each month. As a result, many prominent newspapers are seeking to establish partnerships with online sites.

Personal ads can be viewed as a subcategory of classified ads. They typically contain a range of fields or categories covering personal, demographic, and physical information coupled with leisure and lifestyle preferences. The online versions have the added advantage of carrying more information, including photographic and video materials, as well as allowing advertisers to update and edit their profiles. In theory, this should lead to a greater “fit” between advertiser and respondent. Most print and online ads require payment. In the case of print, it is usually the respondent who pays to leave a voice mail. Online sites typically charge membership fees to both advertisers and respondents for a fixed time period, although trial periods and browsing facilities are not uncommon. They often offer premium priced membership for supplemental features such as advanced searching and matching functions. There are a variety of response modes for online audiences. These range from selecting one of a range of avatars signaling level of interest in the advertiser to writing an e-mail to online chatting.

Online personals sites are being increasingly targeted at specific subpopulations based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, or special interest. Their remit now extends from identifying potential marriage partners, through friendship, to facilitating casual recreational encounters, and their popularity underscores the growing numbers of singles and formerly married adults in Western societies. They also signal that transferring the private search for a partner to the public domain has come of age.

[Page 1082]Personals have developed into a distinct textual genre. Euphemisms and hyperbole abound. So too do abbreviations and acronyms (ISO = in search of, WSF = white single female); a modicum of personals literacy is therefore needed to decode and decipher them correctly. Profiles are typically phrased in the third person singular, and there is considerable intertextuality—use of song lyrics, catch phrases from movies and TV programs—in both profile names and text. The tone of the open profile section tends to be humorous and upbeat with an admixture of self-aggrandizement and self-deprecation. Most sites and printed versions either allow or encourage anonymity for both advertisers and responders. This anonymity, coupled with more liberal social attitudes, may explain why the content of personals has become significantly more explicit over the past three decades.

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