New York Run-Off
![[jp's living room]](http://unglued.org/nucleus/media/2/20020902-livingroom.jpg)
the apartment
I’m breaking the lease on my apartment to move to Argentina. It turns out that my landlord has no problem with this since he gets to increase the rent by $80 a month, and he agreed to give me my deposit back if I found him a replacement tenant to sign a new lease. No problem, I told him. I asked around for somebody interested in the place, thinking that I must know somebody wanting a $1000 1BR in Boerum Hill. But since my departure plans hadn’t yet be outed at work, I couldn’t really spread the word. I realized that I would have to recruit a stranger. This sounded like an unpleasant task and I wasn’t sure how to begin, so naturally I put it off. Time passed, and the task started to hang over me.
Then a friend told me I was crazy to worry about finding a new tenant: just put an ad on Craig’s List, he said, and your worries will be over. I gave it a try.
Bam. I checked my email less than an hour later and had 20 responses. Two days went by before I composed a response email, and by that time I had 150 interested parties. No joke: I counted. I could hardly believe it, but the number of responses dwarfed even the amount of junk mail accumulating in my Hotmail account.
I was thrilled. Not only would finding a new tenant be easy, but suddenly half the world wanted to talk to me! Ha. I felt so popular. I wanted to talk to them all, although I worried what would happen if I invited them all to a showing. Would my floor break? Would the super freak out? I couldn’t even send them all a single email – Hotmail limits the number of addressees at around 50. So I invited 40 at first, then later on another 20 that I just couldn’t bear to ignore.
The showings were great fun. Among other topics, I had conversations about the Chinatown Express bus, newscasting, Bushwick lofts, and Guatemala. I wondered: could you post a fake sublet ad just to bring people to your apartment to break up the boredom of city life, and maybe make some friends? That might be a bit too deceitful, but I had another idea.
The Personals Ad
I couldn’t help but think anybody would be set if they could get the kind of response I got from the apartment posting from a personals ad. I was pretty sure I couldn’t get such a response; when it comes down to it my apartment is more attractive than me. Still, I found myself wondering if any personals ad could get this much reaction. I’d heard that pretty young women with online personals ads got mobbed by responses, but was it this crazy? I had to find out.
The first step was creating an attractive personals ad. It was pretty clear the ad should be for a girl, but I needed a girl everybody could agree on, somebody who lots of people would write to. And where to find that but on Hot Or Not?
I clicked through picture after picture on this site, pulling out the photos of every girl I came across rating over 9.5. I was really hoping to find somebody who came in at 9.8 or 9.9. This plan didn’t work out, though. All the near-10s were people I’d rated lower – girls in way-too-tight-fitting dresses or cheerleader uniforms, but otherwise not much to write home about.
I didn’t think these photos would fly so well in nyc. I got the sense that a lot of Hot Or Not’s usership comes from the middle-america, big-truck scene. I finally picked a 9.5 that seemed both attractive and believable, and she became lady_love on Nerve.com.
Next I had to give her life. What was the last great book she read? Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton. What does she keep in her bedroom? A piano, among other things. What does my lady_love do? She’s a guru. How tall is she? According to modelexpanse.com, which gives “free advice about modeling,” “the most successful models are usually 5′ 8″ or taller.” But a too-tall woman might intimidate some shorter men, I thought. So I made her 5’8” exactly.
I posted the ad and let the magic start to work.
The Verdict
After 2 days, when the apartment had received 150 responses, lady_love had gotten a measely 25 messages. Since she was only looking to meet men, this ad was only accessible to half the market, so to be fair the number of responses should be doubled. Still, she drew in only a third as much as the apartment. Things evened up a bit during the next few days; it seems lady_love had a bit more staying power. She eventually brought in 40 unique responses in 5 days, not counting the guy that sent 3 collect calls. But still, she drew in less than half the number of interested parties than did the apartment. The conclusion was clear: a good, cheap apartment is the hottest thing in town.
previously there was jodido pero contento
afterwards you have ex-patria
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