There’s a reason this chick is single.

Usually, I will repost something with links, or credit, or whatever.  But I so dislike this article I have no desire to help you help her hit count.  

To be clear, it is a Gizmodo writer who wrote this - used a dating service to go out with somebody and then bashed him in her blog because he happened to have a hobby she deemed “unworthy of her.”  

Her words are in italics.  

My response… that’s in regular font.

If you want to, google it and head over to her article and find it.  Otherwise, read it here and feel free to seethe with me.

Here’s the piece:

My Brief OkCupid Affair With a World ChampionMagic: The GatheringPlayer

This story sounds mean. It’s about a girl judging a boy because he’s a nerd (like so many of us!) that she met on OkCupid. But that’s the point: Judging people on shallow stuff is human nature, and the magic and absurdity of online dating is how immediately and directly it throws that into relief. One person’s Magic is another person’s fingernail biting, and no profile in the world is deep enough to account for that.

Earlier this month, I came home drunk and made an OKCupid profile. What the hell, I thought. I’m busy, I’m single, andeverybody’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.”

I laughed. Oh that’s a funny joke! I thought. This guy is funny! But the earnest look on his face told me he wasn’t kidding.

I gulped my beer and thought about Magic, that strategic collectible card game involving wizards and spells and other detailed geekery. A long-forgotten fad, like pogs or something. But before I could dig deeper, we had to go. Jon had bought us tickets for a one-man show based on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s life story. It was not a particularly romantic evening.

The next day I Googled my date and a wealth of information flowed into my browser. A Wikipedia page! Competition videos! Fanboy forums comparing him to Chuck Norris! This guy isn’t just some professional who dabbled in card games at a tender age. He's Jonm********ing Finkel, the man who is so widely revered in the game of Magic that he’s been immortalized in his own playing card.

Just like you’re obligated to mention you’re divorced or have a kid in your online profile, shouldn’t someone also be required to disclose any indisputably geeky world championship titles? But maybe it was a long time ago? We met for round two later that week.

At dinner I got straight down to it. Did he still play? “Yes.” Strike one. How often? “I’m preparing for a tournament this weekend.” Strike two. Who did he hang out with? “I’ve met all my best friends through Magic.” Strike three. I smiled and nodded and listened. Eventually I even felt a little bit bad that I didn’t know shit about the game. Here was a guy who had dedicated a good chunk of his life to mastering Magic, on a date with a girl who can barely play Solitaire. This is what happens, I thought, when you leave things out of your online profile.

I later found out that Jon infiltrated his way into OKCupid dates with at least two other people I sort of know, including one of my co-workers. Mothers, warn your daughters! This could happen to you. You’ll think you’ve found a normal bearded guy with a job, only to end up sharing goat cheese with a guy who takes you to a one-man show based on Jeffrey Dahmer’s life story.

Maybe I’m an OKCupid a*****e 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.

So what did I learn? Google the shit out of your next online date. Like, hardcore.

Dear, you.

First:  Yes, you are a jerk for judging somebody for their hobby.  Had this been an article about how you didn’t want to see him again because he chose to bring you to a one-person show based on the life of Jeffrey Dahmer, chances are the whole world would have gone “Um, duh.”

However, here’s you, openly mocking somebody who is the best in the world at something.  Let me repeat that, because it’s important:

THE BEST IN THE WORLD AT SOMETHING.

Are you the best at the world at anything?  I’m not.  There are things I’m good at, things I hope I’m great at, things I hope I can be better at… but best in the world?  No.

The writer of this piece is so vapid - so sure the stuff she’s nerdy about makes her cooler than the stuff this other person is nerdy about -  that it’s okay to piss all over an ACTUAL PERSON who made the mistake of being kind to her via an online dating site.

She thinks he needed to disclose that he was still into “Magic The Gathering?”  Maybe she should have disclosed the fact that if she didn’t like the date, she’d write about it on a popular tech site like some kind of discount, dot-com-Carrie-Bradshaw-Wanna-be.

So, just to be clear… I’d like to dissect the mea culpa:

This story sounds mean.

No.  It is mean.  

It’s about a girl judging a boy because he’s a nerd (like so many of us!) that she met on OkCupid.

You don’t get to use the word “Nerd” anymore.  You aren’t a nerd.  You’re one of the people that openly mock and humiliate nerds because they are who they are.  You’re not a nerd.  You’re not a geek.  You’re the villain in every John Hughes movie.

But that’s the point: Judging people on shallow stuff is human nature,

No, it’s a choice.  

and the magic and absurdity of online dating is how immediately and directly it throws that into relief.

I don’t even know what this sentence means.  Is it code?

One person’s Magic is another person’s fingernail biting, and no profile in the world is deep enough to account for that.

Of that, we are in agreement.

For example, one person’s tech site is another person’s place to be petty.  

I don’t know this Magic The Gathering guy. I have never played the game.

However, I can probably recite every story from every comic book I have ever read since I was eight.   Tomorrow, after work, I will be at the comic store by where I live getting the very first edition of the reboot of “Justice League.”  And I will do it proudly.

Meanwhile, you’re saying you could use a deeper profile?

Maybe what you need is to be is a deeper person.