Makeout Club

Friday, October 5, 2001

I have mixed feelings about makeoutclub.com, a sort of online personals listing for indie kids, emo kids, straightedge kids, and the like. The listings tend to be kind of similar, and fall into certain distinctions.

First off is a name, which inexplicably has a lot of extraneous Xs in it, e.g. ‘xgarden_of_beatricex’, or ‘xpurplishtrudyx’; those which do not have extra Xs are still often semicryptic, as in ‘eyelinerhearts.’ Often they will also have the word ‘plastic’ included: ‘plasticheartstuff,’ ‘plasticassie.’* AOL Instant Messenger names are included and similar, and website links, ICQ numbers, etc. are listed when applicable.

*All names,descriptions, and accounts reproduced in this review are fictitious, but would not be out of place, unless otherwise specifically stated.

Next, a picture. Usually a webcam shot, almost always grainy, filtered, or otherwise a combination of arty intention and low self-esteem fuzziness; there are a good number of pictures of people looking away from the camera, a kind of anti-picture, which somehow isn’t too at odds, given the context, with the idea that technically you probably don’t have to include a picture at all. Of course, one girl has a picture of Milk from Milk & Cheese, and that’s okay by me. Another has several bottles of prescription drugs and an unopened can of Crystal Pepsi, which who has an unopened can of Crystal Pepsi?

Then there is a profile, which falls onto one of these simple sides:

-Wordy

These tell about the person, the general idea of a personal ad. Most common by far is the musical list, which is usually something like this:

"Dashboard Confessional, The Faint, Jimmy Eat World, Pedro the Lion, Modest Mouse, Juliana Theory, Weezer, Poison the Well, Elliott Smith, Braid, Bright Eyes, Le Tigre, Promise Ring, Jets To Brazil, Ataris, Belle and Sebastian, Alkaline Trio, Saves the Day, Ultimate Fakebook, Moz, American Nightmare."

[Different musical types condensed into one list for simplicity, but this is fairly accurate.]

-Brief

These one- or two-sentence descriptions are the most bipolar. Some are aggressively unhelpful, like "Why do you care?" or the like, which seem to be very much at odds with the principle of posting a listing in the first place, though at times makeoutclub.com seems as much a badge of inclusion as much as an attempt to interact. Tangentially here, many people do post their profiles without romantic intent, as evidenced by their indignant statements that they are spoken for and will not suffer any approach by suitors.

Other brief listings are somewhat nonsequitous ("Hiya cheeseeeeeaters!"; "I am going to watch cartoons all day today."), though many are merely song lyrics or movie quotations of varying inside jokiness. At least two I have seen so far include only an extended quotation from a John Hughes film. Close to my heart is one girl whose profile reads only: "My son’s name is also bort"

Overall the personals are as varied as regular personals, only with a decidedly indie slant. There is occasional brilliance to be found ("emo is the abercrombie of the ‘underground’"), as well as a decent amount of unpleasant poetry-ish stuff. One can get lucky if one is patient and willing to endure some repetition; for every five girls claiming to like tall sexy emo boys, there are a couple who do not, and there is one girl whose profile includes a reference to the long-dead MTV sketch comedy farce The State, and one State reference out of twenty-four hundred girls isn’t bad.

Makeoutclub.com is a club, a somewhat elitist one, and chances are a lot of its congregation are scenester kids who aren’t particularly great, but for the kind of kids who are into this kind of kids, it’s a pretty amusing place, and if you’re a boy who’s into the kind of girl who would have the whole little speech about fear from Dune in her personal profile, you’re a good deal more likely to find her on makeoutclub.com than on Yahoo! personals.

"Is that your face or did an ugly baby eat your face and make it ugly" - some girl on makeoutclub.com

"I wish my neighbors were robots. I would call them neighbots." - some other girl on MOC, the accepted acronym.

It should be noted that, while I checked a couple pages of boy listings, I perused the girls’ pages in more depth. Also, the girls, in their little blurry, fuzzy-duck, I’m-out-of-the-frame way, are cute.

Rating: B (compared to regular personals)

Reviewed by Matthew Abrams
Contents
The Hills Have Eyes 2

Hostel Part II

Six Degrees

Shark

Jericho

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Justice

The Hills Have Eyes

Love Monkey

Out of Practice

Head Cases

Crunchwrap Supreme

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Batman Begins

Garden State

Hero

13 Going On 30

LAX

Starman

quirkyalone.net

Kill Bill, Vol. 2

Line of Fire

We Shall All Be Healed

Happy Family

Arrested Development

Love Actually

A Minute with Stan Hooper

Tarzan

Karen Sisco

Stop All the World Now

Cold Case

Skin

10-8

Joan of Arcadia

Eve

Luis

Lost In Translation

House of 1000 Corpses

Bubba Ho-Tep

Darkness Falls

Pirates of the Caribbean

The Amazing Race

Treasure Island

FearDotCom

Adaptation

To Hit Armor Class Zero

Without A Trace

8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter

Life With Bonnie

Jalapeño Cheeseburger

The Mothman Prophecies

Happy Campers

The Man Who Wasn't There

Kiss of the Dragon

Josie & the Pussycats

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Dr. Pepper

Know By Heart

Waking Life

L.I.E.

Thirteen Ghosts

Earthlink presents Chang and Eng

New York and Country Bar

Change

Motivation and Water Tower Grammar

Crossing Philly

Makeout Club

Undeclared

The Gap

The Abolition of Work

3000 Miles to Graceland

Kolobos

Duets

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Diesel Sweeties

The Cold Six Thousand

The Grilled Stuft Burrito (Rebuttal)

60 Second Wipeout

The Patriot

Grilled Stuft Burrito

Cowgirls

Crystalline

Frankenfinger E.P.

One Force Down

Shake

Both Our Secrets

Happy Birthday Captain Columbus!

Fight Club

Whatever It Takes

Committed

That Skinny Motherfucker with the High Voice?

Joe Dirt

The Veggie Whopper

Taco Bell Nachos

Palmetto

Godzilla vs. Monster Zero

The Terror of Mechagodzilla

To The Center

Infiniti+Infiniti

American Psycho

The Del Shredder

What Lies Beneath

The Cheesy Gordita Crunch

Bring It On

Chill Factor

Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars

Bad Company

The Blair Witch Project

Hyacinths and Thistles

Lake of Dracula

We'll Have a Time

Home Depot

Snow Day

The Virgin Suicides