As long as the personal ads were there, I always read them. I went through phases like the “what exactly do they think ‘height-weight proportionate’ really means?” phase and the “why are there so many desperate Jewish women in this city?” phase and the “this guy should just say he wants to be someone’s sugar daddy” phase. My single favorite ad ever, though, was the woman looking for marriage right out. She didn’t want a friend, she didn’t want to date, she didn’t want a long-term relationship. She wanted to get married, and she wanted “no freaks, please”.

Slowly, the personals disappeared. They’re not big moneymakers, I guess — not like the full-page strip club ads, at least. First they took out the Crossed Wires section. Then they whittled away at the non-heterosexual ones. Then they put the personals on their website (cross-indexed with all of them from The Onion and Salon and This and That) and replaced the entire section with a full-page ad showing some model and mentioning the web personals.

I don’t read the personal ads anymore.