Gizmodo mean girl bashes OKCupid date for no reason

Flickr/GilbertoFilho

(CBS) - Let's agree that there are differences between nerds, geeks and dorks. But just like Selena Gomez has to tolerate Miley Cyrus for being one of her cohorts, the un-cool should also attempt to band together somehow.

That's why we're a little surprised at a recent post we read over at the tech blog Gizmodo. Intern Alyssa Bereznak tells of a recent OKCupid date that ended up being horrific.

We started to love it, but then her story took a turn for the unexpected.

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To her revulsion, the guy was a major player of Magic: The Gathering, which is a collectible card game. "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?" Bereznak pondered.

We wonder, isn't there some type of faux pas related to bashing an innocent guy online just for having a unique hobby? Don't we all have a freak flag that we fly on occasion?

Then what really caught our attention was when she began to identify her date with links to his Wikipedia page and a YouTube video. (No. We will not be reposting those links.) For all we know his anonymous OKCupid dating life just became public to a major tech audience.

This story rubbed us the wrong way. It's already bad enough to expose your quirks to another person that you're attempting to date. Being vulnerable to a stranger is hard. Add to that, the anxiety of knowing that your identity could be exposed to tens of thousands of online readers. Why bother?

"Tekzilla" video host Veronica Belmont was spot on when she tweeted, "I guess attempting to publicly shame a pretty awesome-sounding guy now constitutes tech journalism."

No. It should not be considered the new voice of tech journalism. There are plenty of women out there who would appreciate that guy and perhaps even join him for a game.

Just because he's not your flavor of freak, doesn't mean he deserves to be publicly humiliated to an online audience.

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[daniele7ster]

Some traits are dealbreakers, plain and simple.

[CLWord77]

Wasn't enough of a deal breaker to stop her from going on a second date- even after she found out his nerdy tendencies.

1) She said he "infiltrated" his way into dates with women online. This makes him come across as a predator.

2) She said he should have disclosed that he was a huge nerd on his profile. Uh, what?

In retrospect, to close her article, she said to "google the ****" out of online dates.

Now, when people do that to her, what are they going to find? A woman whose career took off after demeaning an innocent man after an unsuccessful couple of dates... who happens to be a self-made millionaire off of Magic, Poker, and Blackjack that now is the managing partner of a hedge fund.

Regardless of whether he was not a "match made in heaven", unless he did something awful, she was in the wrong.

All he did was not disclose that he had made a few hundred thousand dollars playing a geeky card game as a teenager.

She should go over real well in the dating world from this point forward. I can't imagine anyone with internet access giving her a shot at a date without some serious reservations. After all, unless things go swell, they may find themselves at the butt end of an article ripping them to shreds.

[Bojax39]

"Then what really caught our attention was when she began to identify her date with links to his Wikipedia page and a YouTube video."

Thoughtless, ignorant cow. Entitled to her opinion but not to post links to another person's ID. She's lucky the guy didn't respond in kind. Still, can't help but wonder how she'd feel if he had?

Probably with brain dead indignation.

[CLWord77]

He actually reponsed in a reddit AMA today, and he was pretty classy about the whole thing. Didn't take near the level of potshot that many people would. When people tried to bash their perceptions of her shallowness, he just said there was no chemistry. When people tried to bash her looks, he noted that the pictures of her on the internet were not flattering in the least.

Kudos to "Jonny Magic" for staying above the fray... He's been very careful not to stoop to her level.

[CLWord77]

So the guy's got a few nerdy tendencies. So? Having read "Johnny Magic and the Cardshark Kids" by David Kushner, which was a book published about the guy she dated, I can say he had made $250,000 or more as a teenager as part of his "geeky hobby", became a card counter (a la 21) and poker player, and went on to get a job (hedge fund manager) that most people would consider more "real life" than cards.

I fail to see the problem here. What exactly is wrong with the guy to the point where she had to engage character assassination?

The saddest aspect of it is that she "googled" him after their first date, was obviously repulsed by what she saw, and agreed to a second. That makes me think that she was trying her hand at gold digging, but couldn't even do THAT right.

[Scimajor]

You have to love it when grown men and women mentally revert back to their preteens by making childish and mean spirited posts.