Response to Gizmodo’s Article “My Brief OkCupid Affair With a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player”

Today someone sent me this article from Gizmodo. At first glance I thought, “Wow, a fun article about dating a pro MTG player”. And then I thought, “Holy crap! She went out with Jon Finkel! How awesome!”. Even as a casual magic player, I had read about him at some point or another and even wiki’d him. But after reading this, I am pretty disappointed and appalled at “my kind”. How could a woman who lives such a tech driven world and writes for Gizmodo still think this way?Seeing as how being geeky is all “hip” these days and that even Hello Kitty can be seen wearing nerd glasses, it surprises me that some would treat Magic the Gathering like the plague. Maybe she still has the 1980s stereotypical view of geeks and expects that every geek out there is socially awkward and un-dateable.  Sure, I understand that he was not her type, that they probably didn’t have enough in common, and that obviously there was no love connection. I even understand that knowing that someone is a pro magic player, pro bowler, or even a pro beer pong player could be a turnoff. But for her to say that she should have mentioned playing MTG in his profile makes it sound like he should have warned her of this hobby/profession of his. Seriously? She makes it sound like he has a disease and he should be alerting the female dating community of it. “Be warned! I play MAGIC!”. Should someone mention in their profile they they like eating pickles with peanut butter just because it may be weird or you might be grossed out by it? I mean, if you want to be fair, maybe she should update her profile to let people know that she looks down upon anyone with nerdy interests.

I don’t expect everyone to get Magic. Even my husband used to stereotype Magic players from his high school as awkward trench-coat-wearing weird dudes, which I of course found offensive since I’ve played since I was 14! But after teaching him how to play, he realized how awesome the game is and how wrong he might have been about those stereotypes since he himself is now a Magic player (and does not wear a long black trench coat. haha). Its definitely pretty sad to still see people who are so closed minded to nerd culture and I would have really hoped that this author could have used this opportunity to learn a little about Magic rather than feeding her own stereotype of what Magic players are like.