At first it's sort of cute. But then she attacks him on Gizmodo--which is read by millions--just for playing Magic the Gathering. Apparently that makes him undateable?
The commenters excoriate her for being such an asshole. Which is probably the point of her article? Gawker Media writers get paid more when they get more pagehits and comments, and posting a troll-ish post on a nerd site about how nerds aren't worth dating is probably a great way to get more pageviews and comments, right up to the point where people stop reading Gizmodo because it's troll-baiting garbage.
My Brief OkCupid Affair With a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player
Earlier this month, I came home drunk and made an OKCupid profile. What the hell, I thought. I'm busy, I'm single, and everybody's doing it. Sure, I'd heard some stories, but what was the worst that could happen?
Two weeks into my online dating experiment, OKCupid had broken me down. It was like the online equivalent to hanging out alone in a dark, date-rapey bar. Every time I signed on, I was hit by a barrage of creepy messages. "Dem gurl u so foine, iwud lik veru much for me nd u to be marry n procreate." Or "your legs do look strong." So when I saw an IM from a guy named Jon that said, "You should go out with me :)" I was relieved. He seemed normal. I gave him my name. "Google away," I said. Then dinner was ready, and I signed off without remembering to do the same.
We met for a drink later that week. Jon was thin and tall, dressed in a hedge fund uniform with pale skin and pierced ears. We started talking about normal stuff—family, work, college. I told him my brother was a gamer. And then he casually mentioned that he played Magic: The Gathering when he was younger.
"Actually," he paused. "I'm the world champion."
. . .
Maybe I'm an OKCupid asshole for calling it that way. Maybe I'm shallow for not being able to see past Jon's world title. I'll own that. But there's a larger point here: that judging people on shallow stuff is human nature; one person's Magic is another person's fingernail biting, or sports obsession, or verbal tic. No online dating profile in the world is comprehensive enough to highlight every person's peccadillo, or anticipate the inane biases that each of us lugs around. There's no snapshot in the world that can account for our snap judgments.
. . .
