Aspies and Personal Ads: The Sure Thing?

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Just last week, I put up a personal ad at Yahoo!'s personals site (http://personals.yahoo.com). Although I have gotten a good amount of responses, I do have some doubts about placing personal ads online. One doubt I have is whether or not this is a "front." Anyone care to cast these insecurities aside?

Hello NYAspie,

You are right to be a little nervous about posting personals online.

The biggest issue w/ meeting people online is that everybody is anonymous online and to enter into conversation w/ someone online means giving them a lot of trust - the cute girl you are talking to could actually be a 300-pound male sitting in his underwear at the computer...or it could be that nice cute girl.

It's a little easier on WrongPlanet.net because we are here to trust and support each other but the world outside it is alittle scarier. Aspies especially are vulnerable because of our willingness to trust and our 'gullibility' and ease of being deceived (even MSN Messenger w/ friends of your friends can be quite a shock and nasty).

Having said all that, as long as you are careful and taking things slowly and patiently enough that you can be very reassured that the person is who they say they are, you could indeed find somebody to love online.
Meeting online also allows you to more clearly state your feelings, thoughts, words etc because you have time to write them down and edit them for clarity and conciseness before the other person see them, as opposed to on-the-fly speech and conversation in real life.

Take all the usual precautions:
- don't give out personal information (i.e. address, full name, financial info, etc.), especially if the person seems insistent or strongly urges you to do so
- if/when you decide to meet each other in life, meet in a public place w/ other people around.
- expect the person to act differently in person than online if/when you meet, as that level of anonymity granted on the internet disappears in real life.

Good luck!

mentalman

i agree with everything mentalman said.

and, in case it gives you heart - i met my last three boyfriends through personal ads (shame none of them worked out, but they wouldn't have, even if i'd met them in "real life" first. at least it means you can cut through the obvious chaff first).

Be cautious, don't give out personal information. Also don't tell people what your not conformable with.

The personal service I used did feature ads with photos, but I'll still take you on your word. As soon as I figure out my work schedule, I'll see what I can do.

NYAspie,

The keyword is: Adobe Photoshop.

To elaborate a little bit, you cannot trust any of the pictures posted on those personals 100% because you can open any picture in Adobe Photoshop, or the GIMP, or any other photo-editing program and change it so dramatically that it does not look remotely like the original image.

Also, it would be very possible for me, a male, to set up an account at that website, do a Google search for a nice picture of an attractive girl, save it to my desktop, and then upload it as my ad photo. It may seem extreme, but it's not that extreme at all.

Apologies if the above comes across as scare tactics - it's just a reality check on the advances of digital technology today.

I have a book called "Love Lessons" that has stories of how people met and fell in love and are living happly ever after. One of them is about a couple that met online and eventually met in real life and married and live happily together. Also, look again to Vertivert's post above - she found partners that way as well (regardless of how they eventually ended).

You just have to tread the online waters very very carefully. Most people on the personals site probably are legitimate and are lonely just like you and hoping to find somebody to care for and be loved by, but there are also some very sick individuals out there who can harm you, and they also use online methods.

Again, good luck and I really hope I didn't shatter your hopes - it was not my intention to.

mentalman

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Last edited by Ante on 09 Nov 2005, 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would like to comment on this, and reaffirm the warnings, because I recently had a very scary experience with somebody I met online.

I decided to try this out, because I recently moved to a big city and was not meeting any people or coming close to having any friends.

I talked to one person through instant messaging for a little while, and then agreed to meet for a coffee. After this casual meeting, I knew right away that I had nothing in common with this person and that I did not want to continue having contact with him. He did not seem outwardly very disturbing, but we were too different and I knew nothing would work. I told him this, and then he started insulting me and sending me vulgar messages and emails, to the point where he was threatening to violently rape me. I blocked him from my messenger, and then he started using the phone to contact me. He would phone me around 4 times a week from a private number. I at first told him directly to leave me alone, but then started ignoring him but he would still leave messages on my machine. There would be times when he wouldn't phone for a period of 2 weeks at a time and I thought it was over, but then he would start up again. This has happened for a period of 3 months now.
I have contacted the police but I don't have his full name so that makes it more difficult to identify him.

That incident managed to really freak me out and I wanted to share it so that others may remember to be cautious.
But I would still recommend the use of the internet to find and meet up with others. There are some demented desperate individuals out there, but there are also some very interesting and kind people who have not found the right people either.
Since this "rotton apple", I have met a couple other people that I share with interests with, and who are now my friends. I still think it was a good idea that I decided to take the initiative and take that approach, because if I hadn't I still would not have met any new people in this city.

As long as you can safely weed out the nutters before meeting up with someone, it seems like a fairly decent way of meeting someone. My brother-in-law met his last two girlfriends through Yahoo Chat - he has been with his current partner three years and they have a little girl and their own home now, so that seems to have worked out well - but his previous girlfriend was a psycho hose beast, which took several months to make itself apparent unfortunately.

i am almost too hysterical to ask... but i'm afraid i have to...

what exactly is a psycho hose beast? (tries not to fall out of the window laughing).

I think I heard it on Wayne's World.

Yes, I wanted to know that as well!

Can you buy them at a pet shop? See I have this Norwegian Blue that I was thinking of trading in...

"This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!"
--John Cleese in the immortal "Dead Parrot" sketch, Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1969

LOVEly plumage...

It is a strange bit of regional slang used in the north of England and Scotland.

The psycho bit refers to the bit that she might have a few screws loose

The hose referees to a part of a gentleman’s anatomy

The beast refers to the fact that they might be reckless in finding hoses. And that they have a ravenous appetite for it.

Would a Norwegian Blue get a Norwegian Wood if confronted by a Blue Norwegian Hose Beast?

There's a tongue twister in there somewhere.......

Seeing as how we're wildly off topic again now, can I talk about longbows again? You see, the English actually originally got the longbow from the Welsh after kicking their bottoms and taking their country off them..... Interestingly, other Welsh weapons of the time such as the "Sheep Launcher", the "Talking spitefully behind people's backs in an unintelligible language they can't understand because noone else can be arsed to learn to speak it" and the "Max Boyce" were also considered for military use by the English, but rejected for reasons of practicality, politeness and sense of humour respectively....