Oh boy, where do I begin on this one? I have enough aggression towards females in general to go around the world a few times, but articles like this really just push me over the edge. Yes, there are stereotypes in this world. One longstanding one is that women don’t use the internet. Although now it is thought to be a joke, the fact is, there is a stereotype that women in technology/gaming don’t belong there, or do it to meet guys, or a dozen other reasons other than the truth, which is that maybe they just like techy stuff. So when I see the article on Gizmodo, a site that is supposedly based on “Technologies that change the way we live, work, love, play, think and feel.”, it enrages me. What better way to acknowledge and appreciate the tech culture and the ones who love it (male and female) than to post a vapid retelling of a few dates with a World Champion of Magic: The Gathering and turn it into a “brief affair”.

The italicized message in front of the article is meant to explain away her bitchiness. “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.” So her excuse is that everyone does it, okay, got that. Fortunately for the Internet, not everyone feels compelled to write about it.

In her first paragraph, she blames her creation of an OKCupid account on coming home drunk. Maybe WE the audience should start drawing our own conclusions. Coming home drunk from a bar, feeling lonely and unattractive, she creates a profile on an online dating site that she would be WAY too good for if she was sober. Oh, and “everybody’s doing it”, she says, which again explains why she might partake in such an endeavor.

I won’t dissect the entire article because frankly, it just doesn’t deserve that much time wasted on it. This is a girl who found out that the guy she went on a few dates with was famous in the “geek” realm, and decided to write a very shallow post about the experience to an audience she knew would eat it up, for better or worse. The fact is, he wasn’t a creep or an asshole to her, and the only thing she really found out is that she perceives that she has nothing in common with him. She wouldn’t have written a post about any old date she had gone on, she wrote about this one because this guy has a Wiki page and tournament videos and Gizmodo has a large enough audience to care.

My point in all of this is that there was no reason for the article to be written except to get buzz. Believe it or not, Alyssa, but the majority of the internet doesn’t care about your dating life. Also, a large majority of people your age could be considered “geeks” or “nerds” or whatever derivative you can come up with. The fact is, the world is full of technology and there are a lot stranger things that you should be worried about in a potential mate than super stardom from a card game. If you were really that bothered by it, why go on a second date? You probably knew it would make for a GREAT Gizmodo article, but writing about just one date wouldn’t have packed the punch.

Articles like this are a great reminder of why the tech industry is dominated by men. I am not a feminist in the slightest, but when I look around my office at work and I’m the only female, I know it is true. I don’t mind it though, if it means that self-important, shallow women like this are not given a voice.