Personal Ad Submission

BEAR wouldn’t be complete without the classic Personal Ads section! But we’ve given them a 21st Century twist – they now link to your social media.

You could be looking for love, just friends or maybe you just want to shout a great big HELLO to your fellow bears in our pages.

Tell us your first name (or one you’ve made up, like a screen name), your rough location, one social media handle, and up to 75 words. List your personal ad for FREE in upcoming issues of BEAR by completing the form below.

Here’s some basic rules:

• No solicitation of any kind
• No business promotion or job offers
• Nothing about housing or roommates
• We read and manually review every ad, and whether one runs is our editorial decision
• Ads run in print only — never on our website or socials — but once printed they can’t be recalled
• Read the full Terms & Conditions at the bottom of this page before submitting

Personal Ad Submission

Terms & Conditions

BEAR Magazine is published by Beard & Bear LLC. In these terms, “we,” “us,” and “our” mean Beard & Bear LLC.

By submitting a personal ad through our online form, you agree to these terms. Please read them in full — some of them exist to keep you safe, and some exist to keep the magazine publishable.

1. You must be 18 or over

Personal ads are open only to people aged 18 or over. By submitting, you confirm you are 18 or over. We will refuse any ad where we have reason to doubt this, and we may refuse an ad without explaining why.

2. What we ask for

• A first name, or a name of your choosing
• A rough location — city and state, or region
• One social media handle
• Your message, up to 75 words
• An email address

The form won’t accept more than 75 words, so write to fit — the counter will stop you.

Your email address is never printed. We use it only to contact you about your ad — to check a detail, to tell you it’s running, or to raise a problem. Everything else in the list above is intended for publication.

Don’t include your full name, phone number, home address, workplace, or email address in the message itself.

3. Three things an ad must never do

Personal ads in BEAR are for people looking to meet people. They are not classifieds. These three rules are absolute, and an ad that breaks any of them will not be published:

1. No solicitation. No offer, request, or suggestion of paid sexual services or paid companionship of any kind — in any wording, however indirect, coded, or joking. This includes rates, “generous” arrangements, gifts in exchange for time, and links or handles that lead to that kind of arrangement.

2. No business promotion and no jobs. No advertising a business, brand, product, service, event, subscription, paid content platform, or fundraiser. No recruiting, hiring, job offers, or looking for work — paid or unpaid.

3. No housing. No offering or seeking a home, a room, a sublet, or a roommate. Not even informally.

We’ll decline any ad that tries. If you’re a business wanting to reach BEAR readers, we’d be glad to hear from you — email hello@thebearmag.com about display advertising. We don’t carry job or housing listings anywhere in the magazine.

Also not permitted

• Sexually explicit descriptions, or anything we judge unsuitable for a publication sold openly;
• Contact details other than the single social media handle you give us;
• Anyone else’s name, image, handle, or personal details;
• Anything unlawful, threatening, harassing, defamatory, or hateful;
• Anything involving anyone under 18.

This list isn’t exhaustive.

Every ad is read before it runs

We manually review every single submission. Nothing is published automatically.

Whether an ad runs is an editorial decision and it is ours alone. We may decline any ad, or decline to publish any person, for any reason or none — including reasons that have nothing to do with the rules above, such as space, balance, or tone. We don’t have to explain a decision, we don’t enter into correspondence about it, and a decision is final. Publishing you once doesn’t oblige us to publish you again.

Where an ad is nearly there, we may edit it — cutting or clarifying only. We won’t change what you’re saying.

4. Your social media handle

The handle you give us must be an account you personally own and control, and it must be a personal account rather than a business, brand, or paid-content one. It should be active, and it should be one you’re happy for strangers to see.

We print handles exactly as submitted, so please check the spelling. If we make a mistake, tell us and we’ll run a correction in the next issue, but we can’t do more than that.

5. Once it’s printed, it’s public — permanently

This is the most important thing on this page.

Personal ads run in print only. We never post them on our website or social media, so nothing we publish will make your handle searchable online.

That said: your name, location, message, and handle will appear in a magazine that anyone can buy, keep, photograph, scan, and share. It may be read by people you know. Someone else may put it online, and we can’t stop that or undo it. It cannot be recalled once it is printed.

You may receive contact you didn’t expect and don’t want, from people you’d rather not hear from. Only submit a handle you are genuinely comfortable making public, and consider whether your account shows more about you — your workplace, your neighbourhood, your face, your friends — than you want a stranger to know.

6. Permission to publish

By submitting, you grant Beard & Bear LLC a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual licence to publish, reproduce, edit, distribute, and archive your ad, in whole or in part, in the printed edition of BEAR Magazine only — including back issues and our own archive.

Personal ads are not published on our website, our newsletter, or our social media channels, and we will not post them there.

We will not license your ad to third parties, publish it under any other title, or use it in advertising or marketing material.

If BEAR Magazine is transferred to a new owner, this licence transfers with it on the same terms and stays limited to BEAR.

You keep ownership of what you wrote.

7. We don’t vet anybody

We are a magazine, not a dating service. We do not verify anyone’s identity, age, photographs, relationship status, or anything else they tell us or tell you. We run no background checks. Publishing an ad is not a recommendation, an endorsement, or a statement that we think the person is safe or truthful — including ads from people we know.

The same applies to you: nobody who contacts you has been checked by us either.

8. Meeting people is at your own risk

Any contact, conversation, meeting, or relationship that comes out of an ad is entirely between you and the other person. We are not part of it and we take no responsibility for it.

If you do arrange to meet someone: meet somewhere public the first time, tell a friend where you’re going and who with, and arrange your own way home. Trust your instincts about anyone who pressures you.

To the fullest extent the law allows, you release Beard & Bear LLC from any claim arising out of your contact with anyone through the personals section, and you accept that any such contact is at your own risk.

9. Pulling your ad

Email hello@thebearmag.com from the address you submitted with and we’ll pull your ad any time before the issue goes to print. Say so clearly and we’ll confirm.

After the issue is printed we cannot recall it — see section 5. Because ads run in print only, there is no online copy for us to take down, so the deadline is a real one. If you’re unsure, pull the ad and submit again another time.

Ads run for one issue. If you want to appear again, submit again.

10. If something goes wrong

If an ad breaks these rules, or if someone who contacted you through the magazine is harassing or frightening you, email hello@thebearmag.com and we will take it seriously. We can decline future submissions from that person, and cooperate with the police where appropriate.

If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first — 911 in the US, or whichever number applies where you are.

11. Your information

We keep submissions on file so we can produce and archive the magazine. Your email address is used only to contact you about your ad. We don’t sell it, we don’t share it outside our editorial team, and we won’t add you to a mailing list or send you marketing without asking you separately first.

12. Your assurances

By submitting, you confirm that: you are 18 or over; the ad is about you and written by you; the handle is yours; what you’ve said is true; and your ad complies with section 3.

You agree to indemnify Beard & Bear LLC against any claim arising from an ad that breaks these terms.

13. Liability

Personal ads are provided as they are. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Beard & Bear LLC is not liable for any loss or harm arising from an ad, from an error or omission in printing one, from a failure to publish one, or from anything anyone does after reading one.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The version in force is the one published when you submit.

15. Governing law

These terms form an agreement between you and Beard & Bear LLC, governed by the laws of the State of New York, USA, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state courts located in Queens County, New York, or in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.