2008's been an exciting year for Hooksexup, with new blogs, new columns and new friends. But for all the changes, we've still aimed to emphasize the scandalous, silly, poignant and sexy essays that have always been our core. The aforementioned new friends surprised us with their dirty secrets, but our old friends had some stories they'd never told us, too. You've voted on your ten favorites, and we'll unveil them here, one a day, through January 2 — when we'll celebrate the big winner, then get to work on all the exciting stuff we've got scheduled for 2009. Cheers to all our readers and contributors! And thanks for making 2008 a great year of Hooksexup.

The flip side of Ryan Britt's experience dating an artist is Mike Young's experience pretending to be an artist for sex. As he discovered, it often works, but once your sexy audience member has proven receptive, you may find you've promised more than you can deliver. In its honesty and humor, and in its sharp take on the dynamics of intimacy, this is classic Hooksexup.

The spirit was hesitant, but twenty-three-year-old Alice Bradley's flesh was endlessly willing. So in a last-ditch bid for self-control on a first date, she threw on the rattiest pair of underwear she owned. Did they prevent the seemingly inevitable? Read on.

Hooksexup professor emeritus Jen Miller went through a number of out-there sexperiments for our readerly amusement. In this essay, she became a test subject of a different and more affecting sort.

Rachel Shukert might be the funniest writer Hooksexup has, which we like to think is really saying something. Even as we cringed at the depths of depravity to which this story brought her, we were kind of glad it happened, just for producing writing this hilarious. Sorry, Rachel.

Sarah Hepola's love life might be the closest thing Hooksexup has to a serial, giving this piece — about a budding relationship flattened by the collapsing economy — a particular resonance. It helps that Sarah brought her usual dazzling wit and instinctive empathy to pick through the rubble.

If you come from an ethnic or religious majority, you're probably not used to being stereotyped. Stuffwhitepeoplelike.com turns the tables, and Joey Rubin found it captured his love life a little too well.

Hooksexup has published some edgy stuff over the years — that notorious Peter Singer piece springs to mind — and Angela Conner's startling personal essay fits that tradition. Some found it misogynistic; others found it arousing. Either way: a harrowing read.

When her boyfriend handed her a small gift box on her birthday, Janice Erlbaum expected a ring. What she found inside was a perfect objective correlative for the end of the relationship, with results both funny and poignant.

Porn in the woods is a well-documented phenomenon, but few have ever documented it as hilariously as Sean Murphy. Sad — with ready access to online porn, today's horny teenagers may never know the thrill of spotting a flash of hot pink nestled in the greenery.

Artists can certainly be sexy — unpredictable, driven, possessed of some authentic life-force that we office types find magnetic. That said, dating an artist has its liabilities, as Ryan Britt found out when his girlfriend started painting him.