Overly Self-Aware and World Weary Seeks Same

Did you know that the London Review of Books has a singles classified section? Neither did I, until happening upon this article in which an intrepid reporter crashes an LRB singles night event. British self-deprecation from the cynically hyper-educated set with hilarious, if perhaps pathetic results. Some examples of singles ads from the article:

"I’ll see you at the singles night. I’ll be the one breathing heavily and stroking my thighs by the ‘art’ books. Asthmatic, varicosed F (93) seeks M to 30 with enough puff in him to push me uphill to the post office. This is not a euphemism."

"Monocled, plaid-festooned gadabout, out of place in any relationship, or century. Please help me . . . ”

Looking in the current listings, who could possibly resist:

"Librarian-looking punk, 34, seeks punkette-looking librarian"

"...me, bitter publishing marketing exec (F, 33), too drunk at the office party to keep all my slobber behind my teeth."

"Lecturer in Linguistics and Philosophy (M, 38) seeks F to 35 with interests in the subfield of morphosyntax and theories of distributed morphology. Replies, and details of major published works, please, to Jive Bunny, J-J-J-Jive Bunny, box no. 24/08"

The singles event described in the article sounds about as excrutiating as you'd expect. I can see how this sort of thing might become annoying upon mass repetition, but if you just read them all in your head with a Hugh Grant accent then it's all very cute and foppish, you know, like those funny Brits.