AOL - a resource?

[Guest buttanovice]

Having read requests for escorts in NC and OK (in the Lounge), how reliable is the "Search AOL Member Directory?" By entering the word "escort" in the subject field along with the city and state, you can usually pull up a few links. Just browsing casually, I have noticed they are not always up to date. My work takes me to the major cities as well as some of our smaller hamlets and villages. Hooboy's site is great for surveying the offerings larger cities. Also, I have found it helpful to hang out in the "AOL Town Square/Created by Members" chat rooms to pick up on local climate and offerings. For those seeking in the more remote locations, is this a good resource?

[Boston Guy]

Absolutely -- not only to find lists of guys in an area, but also to find the ones looking to hook up right now. (Use the advanced features and select the Male and Online options.)

 

Other hints: don't put the city name in the Location field, because people can put it anywhere in their profile. Also try variants: for example NY, NYC, New York, Manhattan. Also, including the state is probably not helpful.

 

Since some escorts don't include the word "escort" in their profile, find the M4M room for the local city (or, in remote areas, the state or province) and check out the guys online. YOu may well find terms like "rent boy" or "for hire" that will tip you off.

 

It's also worth checking out the various escort rooms, which are generally in the Town Square: use Find a Chat and then select Created by AOL Members. You'll find a variety of names such as escorts m4m, m4m escorts, escort m4m, etc. In some cities, most notably NYC, you'll also find escort M4M NYC and it's variants.

 

Not all AOL profiles are up-to-date, of course, but guys who are online with escort profiles will probably be pretty much for real. But do read the profiles before IMing or emailing: I once almost contacted a member of the President's Secret Service escort by mistake! :-)

[Guest pj]

So guys, what do I do? give me an example of what to type in. I have AOL and others--what do I type in?

Thanks for helping this person with little experience :}

[Rod Hagen]

I have had my memebership pulled several times for using the word escort i my profile, leandream1. For some time I was able to full what I presume was their computerized search by spelling my profession "e" "s" "c" "ZERO" "R" "T", so that it still looked like "ESC0RT", but wasn't. Recently, they pulled it anyway, and so at the moment I do not have one. I hate that company.

 

The best advice is to cruise escortm4m chatroom in town square "public rooms". 99% of that room is escorts; non-escorts normally "lurk" to see who's chatting, so all you need to do is look for your region in the profiles of those in the room and assume they are an escort, stated as so or not.

 

It's a useful resource. It's also a horrible pain in the ass. Good Luck.

[Losgatan]

PJ:

(1) Click on the "People" button in the toolbar at the top of the AOL screen.

(2) Select "Find a Chat" from the drop-down menu.

(3) Make sure that "Town Square" is selected in the left-hand pane. Then click on the "Created by AOL Members" tab at the top of the pane.

(4) A new list of chats will appear in the right-hand pane and you can scroll through them to find one that interests you (i.e. "M4M Oklahoma" or "EscortsM4M" If the chatroom room is full (23 participants) you won't be able to join the chat. However, you can use the "Who's chatting" button on the lower left of the chat list to get a list of participants. From there, double-clicking on any screen name will automatically pull up that person's profile. If you find someone interesting, send him an instant message or email.

 

Hope this helps.

[Boston Guy]

Exactly!

 

And to find the search window, click once again on the "People" button in the toolbar on the top of the AOL window and then select "Search AOL Member Directory". That will bring up the search dialog window.

 

Fill in the fields you want to search on and either press the Enter key or the "Search" button.

 

When looking for escorts, it's almost always worthwhile to click on the "Advanced Search" tab after bringing up the search dialog window, since that allows you to select "Male" -- if you ever wondered if there are more male or female escorts, leave that option unchecked and see for yourself! :-)

 

Usually it's a good idea to put a small number of keywords in the first dialog field ("Search entire..."). For example, if you were looking for escorts in Philadelphia, you might type "Escort Philadelphia" (without the quotation marks) in that field. Then click Male and press the Search button.

 

This will list the first 20 people who's profile contains those words. On the window that pops up, you can continue pressing the "More" button to list a total of 100 profiles.

 

Since there are so very many profiles with the word escort in it, you will often want to see only the guys who are online at that time. To do this, simply check the "Return only members online" box (by clicking inside it) on the bottom of the search form and pressing "Search" again.

 

If you are searching in an area without a lot of escorts, leaving this unchecked might well show you all 35 guys who have the word escort in their profile as well as that city or state or whatever. If you try this in NY or LA or DC though you will see only a small part of the escorts and probably only a few of those who are currently online, simply because there are way more than 100 in each city.

 

If you are looking for a particular type of escorts, you can do some of that as well. For example, if you were really looking for a blond escort in LA who is at least 6' tall, you could enter "escort angeles blond 6".

 

I just did that and got seven guys. Since I didn't think there would be many of them, I left the "Return only members online" box unchecked and I can see that only one of the seven is currently online.

 

However, AOL's searching algorithms are very unsophisticated and you can't get too fancy. Multiple searches with fewer keywords will help you zoom in on what you might be looking for than trying to load up the keywords. Also be aware that people abbreviate constantly in their profiles, so if you search for "blond" you aren't going to get those blue-eyed blond guys who list themselves as bl/bl. Similarly, 6'0 won't get the guy who is bl/bl/6'/190.

 

You can double-click on any of the names listed to see the profile. DO THIS BEFORE CONTACTING PEOPLE!!! As you start to become more experienced at searching, you will find that a lot of people including something like "part-time male escort j/k ... in love with Stephanie... currently sophomore at South High School" in their profile. If you don't check, you might find yourself accidentally soliciting a 13-year old -- or an active-duty marine escort.

 

By the way, people often leave off states so searching for Los Angeles, CA will return fewer than just Los Angeles. Actually, when a city has two words, I usually just use the less common one. (Just try searching on Los to see what I mean.)

 

But I will also try variations like "LA", "hollywood", "weho", etc. And I generally search in lower case.

 

Good luck.

 

PS: These techniques can also be used to find people who share certain interests as well, not just escorts!

[seeker630]

Any suggestions for those of us who don't have AOL?

[Boston Guy]

Sure - get AOL! :-)

 

Actually, the cost per month is minimal compared to the cost of even a massage. And even if you are only looking to meet new friends or find a good place to eat or a place to go out to, getting online and asking the guys in the local chat rooms is hard to beat.

 

Even if the chat rooms are full, you can still use the "Who's Chatting?" button to list the guys in the room and then IM one or more of them. If you are pleasant in the way you approach them, most people respond in kind.

 

I don't think AOL is the be-all and end-all of the online world. But I find that if you use it correctly and sometimes imaginatively it can be an invaluable tool for guys who travel and sometimes even for those who don't.

[Guest gr8guy]

After you go to the various EscortM4M rooms,

you may find that a lot of the escorts are

not actually online at that time. So if you

IM (Immediate Message) them, you will only

get back a form response.

Also, be sure to emphasize that you are a

serious prospect. They get lots of lame

fakers merely looking for pictures.