Do you fancy a younger guy? I’m 27 and willing and ready to please you,” said the first message.

“I would be perfectly happy going down on you for hours,” offered the second, who sent a picture of himself in his boxers. He had a long, rangy torso with a six-pack and smattering of hair across his chest.
The third was less, shall we say, enthusiastic. “I’m a little interested,” he wrote. “Do you have a pic?”
I turned in my desk chair to Mr H who was working behind me. “There’s sixty four messages already! No wait, sixty five.” As I was clicking on the responses, my new email account kept filling up.
Like my third respondent, Mr H was dispassionate. “What did you expect?” he asked.
Responses, yes, just not that many. After all, it had only been an hour. I’d always assumed that the personals were a place for desperate people and dick pics, but I was only half right. I clicked on the next response. He was nineteen, and sent a photo of himself – curly hair, big smile, handsome in a young, puppy dog sort of way.
Now, I hate to disappoint you, like the men who answered my ad, but I had no intention on following up on any of these messages. Instead this was an experiment, and I do love a little experiment. I was curious about what kind of people used personal ads.
There were a few things I wanted to know – how many would respond; what would they be like; and would it be better to under-sell yourself or flaunt your attractions? With this in mind I created two new email accounts and placed two different ads, both looking for casual sex.
In the first I described myself as an “average looking” woman in her late thirties with brown hair and a body that “could be fitter.” We’ll call her Ms Average. In the second I claimed to be a “fun, flirty, fit and attractive” blonde in her mid-thirties. We’ll name her Ms Fit. Both ads ran for 24 hours and neither were accompanied by a photo. I opened my second email account. Ms Fit had twenty six messages, most of which seemed suspicious.
“Are you genuine?” asked the first message. “If you’re genuine, and you like sensual play, I’m very much in the mood tonight,” said the second.
“Is this a real ad?” asked the third. “I’m good looking and discreet.”
“Fake!” declared the fourth, but he sent me a photo of a raging erection nonetheless. “How much?” enquired the next, assuming Ms Fit was a sex worker but one too bashful to say so.
I suspected that underrating your charms would work better than exaggerating them – and it seems I was right. Within the allotted 24-hour period, Ms Average received 243 responses; Ms Fit garnered less at 159. If you’re looking for casual sex, self-deprecation seems to go a long way.
Not only did Ms Average get more replies, the responses differed in significant ways too. For one thing, overall they were “nicer” – the messages were longer, more enthusiastic and more likely to include offers of sensual play, oral sex and willingness to please. Ms Fit’s email responses were shorter, far more aggressive and much more likely to demand a photo.
One thing that surprised me, although perhaps it shouldn’t have, was that Ms Average attracted a wider demographic. She received messages from men as young as eighteen to widowers in their late fifties, while blokes in their thirties and forties preferred the blonde.
It is impossible to know if anyone was telling the truth, of course. One man who responded to both ads told Ms Average he was thirty, and Ms Fit that he was thirty-three. Interestingly, he also sent Ms Average some pictures, while Ms Fit got nothing.
Talking of pictures, as I expected, the personals are a writhing, seething mass of penis portraiture. Between the two ads, I received so many that I could do a range of postcards called Dicks of Dublin. Some of these were, er, impressive; others were just weird. One guy sent me a photo of his penis propped up against a can of shaving cream, to give me a sense of scale I suppose. Another must have been overexcited doing his selfie because he sent a photo featuring the underside of his balls. Sexy!
A number of these photographs were not accompanied by any message, which makes me suspect that many of these guys were not necessarily interested in meeting either of my two fake ladies. Instead they just enjoyed sending women pictures of their genitals. In a sense, they seemed to be using the personals as a kind of interactive fantasy, which is a harmless – and safe – way of getting your sexual kicks with a complete stranger.
Others sent pictures of their faces, and some – presumably experienced with online hook-ups – sent pictures of their faces, bodies and erections so you could see exactly what was on offer. This was another thing that surprised me. If the photos were genuine, and since a lot of them were selfies I think many of them were – a number of these guys were fit and attractive and some were downright handsome.
If I learnt anything from my experiment it was a reminder that being a heterosexual female, in itself, stacks the deck in my favour sexually. Social convention gives men the better hand when it comes to pursuing long-term relationships and marriage, but for sex, women hold the aces.
On the day I placed my ads, I had a look at what other women were posting. Some of the ads were from escorts because euro symbols were included in the subject line, indicating that sex was for sale; others seemed to be looking for a sugar daddy.
A good deal of them, like mine, must have been fake – hence all the enquires whether or not my ad was “genuine.” Like the men who enjoy sending photos of their erections, I suspect a number of women use the personals as a form of fantasy. However, there were a few which seemed real and included photographs of very attractive young women – and yet Ms Average, in her late thirties with a body that “could be fitter” still managed to get 243 responses in 24 hours.
On the one hand this was an oddly cheering thought – that no matter what I looked like, somebody, and quite a lot of somebodies at that, would be happy to oblige me sexually. On the other hand, it was a bit worrying – if I was in a supposedly committed monogamous relationship, how would I ever know that my partner wouldn’t be willing to meet up with horny housewives whenever I wasn’t around? I wouldn’t. But then, he wouldn’t know whether or not I was meeting young men with fantasies of thirtysomething women either, so I suppose that’s fair enough.
Personal ads are the uncivilized cousin of internet dating. Online dating, with its veneer of love and romance, is respectable while the personal ads looking for no-strings-attached sex are not.
I had expected to receive messages from ugly men with poor social skills and strange perversions, and while there were a few of these, most of the respondents, particularly those messaging Ms Average, seemed like normal men who just weren’t getting as much sex as they’d like; a good few of them sounded lonely.
“You sound like a nice, warm person,” said one man. “Perhaps we could meet for a coffee and take it from there.”
I closed the fake email account feeling something I hadn’t expected to feel: guilty and ashamed of myself.