Reverend William is looking for love.

I have no idea what he's a Reverend of, or if he's even ordained at all. In fact, as you progress through his "Republican Goddess" quiz, he doesn't seem to be a Christian of any kind, but more of a New Age Spiritualist Right Wing Conspiracy Theorist. I'm not sure what that ordination ceremony entails (but then, I am ordained in the Church of Latter-Day Dudes).

But either way: "Reverend William" has grown tired of those lonely LA nights, and has set up a website to help him find true happiness.

I'm a healthy 68. I'm looking for a woman born in any year from 1950–1995, who takes excellent care of herself.

I am a natural-born U.S. citizen residing in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. I will consider relocating within the United States but am unwilling to move to another country. If the woman I'm looking for lives outside the United States, she must be willing and legally able to move to the United States to marry me and to live with me here.

As you read through this website, you will notice that I'm an intense, complex man who thinks waaay "outside the box." If my intensity/complexity is too much for you, or if I think too far "outside the box" for you, well then, we are not a match. I seek a woman who is likewise intense and complex (not a mild or simple woman; nor a woman who thinks I wrote way too much here).

Read the rest

After swapping online dating disasters with friends for hours, writer and poet Erin Bealmear decided she didn't want to be the kind of woman who spends all her time "talking about boys."

She joked with these friends that she was going to create an OkCupid profile for Emily Dickinson, to see how she'd "fare in the world of online dating." She pondered, “Would a lovelorn poet, obsessed with death and privacy, be able to woo a modern man?”

Then Bealmear took it one step further and started humorously answering the dating site's questions, imagining how Dickinson herself would answer them. For an extra layer of authenticity, she included specific details from the 19th-century American poet's life:

What I’m doing with my life

Being a hermit. Overusing the dash.

I’m really good at

Breaking rules, specifically capitalization and punctuation.

Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food

Movies: What is a movie?

Books: Wordsworth, Browning, Keats, Emerson, Shakespeare (i.e. dead people)

Music: Yes, I do enjoy playing the piano on occasion. Thank you for asking.

Food: Baked goods, especially my famous gingerbread. I love making it for the neighborhood children, but I can’t leave the house. Instead, I stand at the window and lower it down to them in a basket. It’s so much easier that way.

Then, she decided to publish it. Once she did, "Emily's" inbox started filling with messages. Some men were amused, others were not. Many were just confused. Some curious responses came from men that Bealmear calls, "'Hi' guys." Read the rest

The sneering condescension and pearl-clutching panic about young people's relationship to sex and technology willfully misses the fruits of an impressive creative movement.