OK, here's something really depressing you can do in the space of ten minutes or so: go sign up for an account on Nerve and make two profiles - an honest one (that says you live in Melbourne) and a dishonest one (that says you live in New York). Make the New York one the active profile and then click Match Me. Read the profiles for a bit. Then make the Melbourne one the active one and click Match Me. Read the profiles. Take your time. This latter experience is perhaps best savoured with a room-temperature triple scotch and several handfuls of prescription tranquillizers.

Well, OK, it's probably not that bad. But I tried this the other day for fun, and, well, it was disconcerting to say the least. I read the Nerve personals as light entertainment, which means ignoring geography and hence reading mainly profiles of people from San Francisco, Boston or New York. And it's fun because by and large the profiles are literate and the people are relatively interesting. But then you go click a button that says Match Me because you've finally gotten curious enough to actually try it and see what it does, and the system goes away and churns a bit and then comes back to you with the supporting cast of Kath and Kim.

If you want to represent yourself as a resident of New York, you need to supply coherent residential details; the following should work - city: New York, Province/State: New York, ZIP: 10451, Area Code: 212. It's a matter of personal taste, of course, but red flags for me in personals ads include but are not limited to: any mention of fairies/faeries, dragons or magic/magick/whatever; cats; candles; Australian Rules football; "play" (in the context of the Nerve personals, this is a polite euphemism for fucking); the words 'prince' and 'princess'; mention of bedroom 'toys' (nothing wrong with having them, but are they really apposite?); irregular punctuation; approximate spelling; cliche, particularly inspirational or empowered cliche.