ABSTRACT
Ten years ago, a reader of any mainstream national publication or local weekly could not have helped but notice the ubiquitous personal advertisements that saturated their back pages. Today, these same personal advertisements have migrated to the virtual pages of the World Wide Web. A casual glance at the content of online personal advertisements suggests that their writers solicit readers for a variety of reasons, including friendship, a long-term relationship, and casual sex; however, dating dominates the virtual landscape. The vast majority of online personal ads are written by people who want to date as a prelude to a satisfying long-term relationship (Brym and Lenton 2001). With an estimated 2,500 dating websites in operation entertaining approximately 40 million visitors each month (Sullivan 2002), internet dating is now a popular and vital part of the process by which people seek and find intimate partners.
