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Advice With ATTITUDE Updated Weekly

Advice With ATTITUDE, from the Aalize.com advice desk

Aalize has been offering her Direct, IN YOUR FACE, Wake-Up and Smell the Java, Style of Advice on the Internet since 1995. She has been giving the REAL DEAL since the beginning, and has absolutely NO plans to start sugarcoating a damn thing.

Aalize dispenses Advice With ATTITUDE, meaning she does not sugar-coat a damn thing. If you want real advice, the type that a friend won't dispense for fear of hurting your feelings, and ruining the friendship, ask Aalize. Thousands have.

Readers completed the Advice Request Form and could receive a reply as early as the next day; the reply then ran in the weekday Daily Advice column and was collected afterwards into the numbered Advice Archives.

Read the advice desk
Diagram of the Advice Request desk listing its seven question categories
The Advice Request desk and the seven categories a reader chose between.

How the Secret Crush service worked

The worked example the site used, with a female reader named Karen and a male reader named Tony, as the service page set it out. Registration was free and was required before a message could be sent.

  1. 01

    Karen has a crush on Tony. Hmmm... does Tony like Karen also? Karen is dying to know, so she comes to Secret Crush to send Tony an anonymous e-mail message.

  2. 02

    Tony receives an anonymous e-mail notifying him that someone has a crush on him. He hasn't a clue as to who it may be, but he follows the instructions he received via e-mail and sends his own e-mail message to the person HE has a crush on. Lo and behold, Tony sends an e-mail message to Karen.

  3. 03

    Our database recognizes the match that has just occurred and sends them both an e-mail letting them know they have chosen each other.

  4. 04

    We can't tell you what to do from this point on, we've hooked you up, so whatever you do, don't blow it. Perhaps the two of you can exchange telephone numbers or set up an actual date.

Four-stage diagram of the Secret Crush matching sequence from anonymous message to mutual notification
The four stages of a Secret Crush match.

What ran on Aalize.com

Ask Aalize

The advice desk. Readers picked one of seven categories, Sex, Love, Dating, Marriage, Business, Life_Choices or Other, and sent a request in their own words.

/advice/7 request categories

Daily Advice

One request and one reply every weekday. 109 instalments survive, listed by the opening line of the question exactly as the original index listed them.

/advice/dailyarchives.htm109 weekday columns

Advice Archives

The collected run, numbered up to 45. Each number gathers several request-and-reply pairs, for readers looking for the question that mimicked their situation.

/advice/archives/43 numbered columns

Article Archives

22 signed features rather than correspondence, among them Why Women Cheat, Commandments of Dating, Relationship Resume and Definition of a... DIVA!

/archives/22 signed features

Post Office

A free Internet postcard sender. Readers chose a layout, a background image and a sound, could upload their own, and collected a card with a pick-up number.

/postoffice/layout, image, sound, pick-up number

Funky Forums

The message boards, where readers talked back about the current article. Every section of the site linked through to them.

/forum/message boards

Attitude Personals

A free classified directory for readers looking for long term, friendship, pen pal or occasional relationships, with its own database of profiles.

/relationships/free classified directory
Diagram of the weekday Daily Advice reading view with the reader request above the reply
The weekday reading view: the request as the reader sent it, then Aalize’s reply, then movement to the previous or next column.
Diagram of the Post Office postcard composer showing layout, background, sound and pick-up number fields
The Post Office composer and the pick-up number a reader kept ready.

Reference and reader pages

  • Resources — Toll-free help lines for drug, alcohol, teen, depression and abuse issues.
  • Submissions — Send in love poems, articles, stories and dating disasters to be featured.
  • Reader kudos — Letters readers wrote back to the columnist.
  • Dating do's and don'ts — First-date ideas and the do's and don'ts sheet.
  • Privacy Policy — How the site handled reader information.
  • Advertising — The information sheet for advertisers on the column.

Column activity

  • SEPTEMBER 2004
    Advice desk stamped “Updated: SEPTEMBER, 2004”, the latest date the desk carried.
  • Five most recent articles
    “I like a girl who is a friend of mine”, “Was she my first love, crush, or obsession?”, “I’ve never felt so screwed over”, “I had this awesome guy friend, then we slept together.” and “I met this guy through our local sports forum.”
  • Advice Archives
    The numbered run reaches Number 45.
  • 1999 Daily Advice Archives
    The weekday column archive opens with its 1999 block and month sections for January, February, March and April.