My Brief Affair With Reading A Gizmodo Article About OK Cupid

I should preface this by saying I don’t generally read Gizmodo. It seems cool enough and all – I like gadgets and all. I just have about a hundred other blogs on my Google Reader I never catch up on first. Still, one would think that a blog about Gadgets would attract a certain clientele that would make a derisive article titled “My Brief OKCupid Affair With A World Champions ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Player” seem like a misstep.

Apparently not.  It ends on this cheery note:

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.

Well, yes. You are an asshole, that much is clear. If the date had been comically awful, it might have merited writing about (I’ve done it, before, except with names redacted because, you know, I’m not an asshole). But they weren’t. Jon Finkel sounds like a very successful dude who just happens to like a card game and be exceptionally good at it, and this was something the author couldn’t get over.  If the author’s point was to prove she is shallow and gets hung up on someone’s favorite hobby, and to sound like a ditzy asshole, then: Mission Accomplished!

It brings me back to my own tale. A few months ago I myself went back into the world of OKC. I was talked into it on the well-intentioned advice of a friend, and I wrote what I thought was a pretty genuine, funny profile about me and what I like to do, like play softball on weekends (in retrospect, perhaps it was a mistake to mention that in first paragraph). I got very little notice, once again, and got responses to my messages at a very impressive 0% rate (and I’m no creep in writing messages, in case you think I write “HEY NICE BEWBS WANNA BOEN?!).

As I’m apt to do, I once again swore it off, but instead of deleting the profile, I went ahead and turned my profile into a parody of what people want to notice about me instead of what I actually do, FOR THE LULZ. So I mentioned the fact I’m very tall three or four times as if it’s an accomplishment to be proud of, and also added in gems like this:

Favorite is such a limiting word – I take all life as to offer for its own, individual beauty. But I’m totally a fucking snob, so don’t push any of that pop shit on me.

And:

Pondering the complexities of life, finding myself as a 20-something New Yorker and making the most of it. I also used to tell everyone I played softball, but they didn’t get that by “playing softball” I meant “playing in a Fleet Foxes cover band”, so I should clarify that right now.

To my amusement and horror, I’ve gotten more views and more unsolicited messages since turning my profile into this awful, dickish parody, primarily from the crowd that loves tall guys (listing it isn’t enough, you have to also mention it repeatedly like a broken robot). Obviously, I don’t pursue any of them, because obviously the point’s been missed, because I hate the fact it took doing that to get any messages, and because everytime I’ve dated anyone with that fetish it’s ended terribly. God forbid someone likes another quality!

So, I suppose what I’m saying is, if you want to go into this with any hope of success, don’t mention that you play Magic, or slow-pitch softball, or that you get up on weekend morning to watch EPL soccer. Instead mention what everyone wants to hear, instead. At least, that’s the lesson this cynic takes out of this.

Or, just swear it all off altogether, and keep your Fridays open for all the Dungeon and Dragons you want!