THE END OF LOVE, LIT-ERALLY
This past year, n+1 got in your space. We cried foul on prisons and banks and higher education. Hey, reader! Raise the crime rate! Occupy! Burn that degree! We yanked you out of your cubicle to socialize with Juggalos and J.H. Prynne fanatics and one very sweaty Gordon Lish. (Then we let you slink back, if only to Gchat.) A few readers even woke up to find us between the sheets, when the interns launched this classifieds site to close out one long, hot summer.
“Welcome to the golden age of internet dating!” the press release quipped, (darkly?) foreshadowing the histrionics to come. Strange bedfellows an n+1 readership does make. (Sample internal email during this time: I am ready to wield my digital pen like a mighty sword, castrating any and all weirdos that threaten to ruin our bastion of love!) But we came to forgive—or at least allowed ourselves to be entertained by—those whose psychic space our city feeds with an endless deluge of people to, well, fuck, marry, or kill.
At the best of times, an n+personals mixer was even entertained—dance me to the end of love, etc—but who are we to externalize our readers’ discontent? At this rate (responses average 5-6 a week; more than 50% of ads get one contact request), we could continue the personals into perpetuity. If, well, we had some perpetuity.
Instead, we’re opting to kill this site, and a little more than half of what it stands for. We’d like to thank n+1, the New York Review of Books, and all our readers. You have until September 30th to submit or respond to existing ads!
Readers are encouraged to get your daily dose of n+1 in a more n+1y format: the issue!
—Kaitlin Phillips
