Today I would like to write a little post about something I came across. It will talk about two people Alyssa Bereznak and Jon Finkel. You guys reading my blog probably know one of these names.
I hope Jon Finkel will be fine with me posting this and as for Alyssa I don't care if she cares. I know that this means writing about a personal matter yet once more, but I was horrified with this so much that I just can't let this go unnoticed.
In her article Alyssa Bereznak accused a former Magic: The Gathering World Champion of lying and being a creep. The article is pretty much about the pitfalls of online dating but you will also find out that the author of the article FAILED at both writing the article and the date itself.
Alyssa wrote about her experience on OKCupid - an online dating service. Personally I think that people sign up for something like this for one of the three following reasons: some people might try it as a last resort. Some people might abuse it and some people can try to see what happens if they try it. No matter the reason both of these people signed up for this site and ended up on a date. I personally think that doing a little research about dating sites would be a nice article but something like what Alyssa wrote and published is really unacceptable .
In the first paragraph Alyssa stated that she was drunk when creating her profile on OKCupid. This already was a WTF moment for me. How on a site that seemed serious something like this could be written and posted? Anyway the last sentence of the paragraph says: "Sure, I’d heard horror stories, but what was the worst that could happen?" (talking about online date)
One would expect that what would follow would be really terrible. In my head the word 'rape' appeared. It could be far worse I guess, but even this would be a horror story for me. What followed is something I did not expect at all and the whole point of the story is 'google something?'.
It seems that after receiving tons of very creepy message one, sounding completely normal arrived. Alyssa then gave Jon her name so he could google it but she forgot to do it herself. Now tell me, how can a journalist and a researcher forget to do something like this??! Not to mention this fact - Alyssa for sure was already sober and stayed on OKCupid for two weeks at least. Huh? Why? Was she so desperate looking for someone?
Anyway these two people met and had a dinner together. Here Alyssa found out that Jon managed to be a World Champion in Magic: The Gathering. I personally don't know how I would react but certainly I would not laugh. I guess most people would be curious no matter if they knew what Magic: The Gathering is. It deserves some kind of respect and it is not something that is bad for a relationship. Ok, it might show the fact that certain person dedicated a part of their life to become good at something and achieve to come to the top. But all of us have some hobbies. There are ones that you share with your boyfriend/girlfriend and some that you don't. You need to find a balance there. But only after some time you find the balance and find your preferences.
That's where Alyssa accuses Finkel of lying in the article. She thinks that 'nerdy titles' such as this deserve to be written in the profile and should be mandatory. I highly disagree with that. Isn't online dating about well first talking to the person and in the meantime search some information about that person? I noted that all the people that talked to me via instant messaging services searched information about me and read my posts at certain forums. All of the people admitted this. I consider it normal.
Personally I have some titles myself and good standings at that level in certain games but I won't be typing that anywhere. Google is good enough. Just type my name and you get it. But unfortunately Alyssa forgot to google him and thus was surprised. If she would have found this out earlier what she would do? Never respond to Jon? Or tell him 'sorry, you are active magic player and a nerd, good bye?' Certainly she would not go on a second date with him as she well did.
Hope she was fired for this (seems it happened) and I hope that no poor guy happens to be dating her in the future because for sure he does not deserve someone who can't get over one World Champion title and can't figure out 1 + 1.
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