Alyssa Bereznak and Jon Finkel: When Online Dating Articles Fail

Alyssa Bereznak's Jezebel Article about Dating a Magic: The Gathering Champion Blows Up in Her Face

Alyssa Bereznak wrote an article for Gizmodo about how she ended up going on a few dates with Jon Finkel, who is the former Magic: The Gathering world champion. We're not entirely sure what the point of the article was, but the effect was all to clear: Bereznak ended up sounding mean and shallow.

Here is the article in question: My Brief OkCupid Affair with a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player. If you start your article with "This story sounds mean", then your first warning is coming from you, and perhaps a rewrite is in order. Basically, Alyssa Bereznak is trying to write about the pitfalls of online dating, and how not everyone discloses everything about themselves when trying to meet strangers on the internet. A few points about that:

1. Duh.
   
2. Would Bereznak have had a problem with Jon Finkel's (lucrative) hobby had it been something less nerdy? We virtually guarantee you that Finkel's "three strikes" would not have been strikes if he were a striker for a soccer team. If his nerdiness bugged her so much, there shouldn't have been a date #2.
   
3. Shouldn't Bereznak be happy that the guy she's meeting has something going on in his life?
4. How often do you get a chance to even meet someone who's been the best in the world at anything?
   
5. Didn't she google him before meeting him? Not even once? That's what you do in online dating, right?

Alyssa Bereznak Vilified by the Internet

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Unfortunately for Alyssa Bereznak, her article reached plenty of folks sympathetic to Jon Finkel. Funny enough, it turns out that lots of nerds and geeks are online. Who'd'a thunk?

The Gizmodo comment thread is, predictably, not sympathetic to Alyssa Bereznak's point of view (who did she think was reading Giz?). The Jezebel comment thread is even more judgmental. ON Gizmodo Australia, Elly Hart blasts Alyzza Bereznak,as Giz Oz distances itself from the original article.

Then, inevitably, Reddit got hold of the story, and the gloves came off. A parody article was not far behind. Then, of course, came the Alyssa Bereznak meme (well, image macros, really).

At the moment, Jon Finkel, who doesn't look like a Rick Moranis character, is doing an AMA on Reddit. He wrote that, more than anything, he felt violated when he read the article; not because it was insulting, but because it was making some ostensibly-private moments public.

Other media outlets (like this one) are noticing the story, since it has ceased to be about whether or not a guy plays Magic: the Gathering and more about double standards in online dating: Bereznak failed to mention that she was writing about her date with Jon Finkel, after all, so she can't really accuse him of lies of omission. That she went out with him again is the smoking gun for her intention to use him for article fodder.

The other problem is that Bereznak's article was too vague in its main point, a point which has been made about ten thousand times in other articles: dating profiles don't always match the reality, blah blah blah. Using his real name was also bad form, since, by the writer's own account, he wasn't unpleasant in any way. Finkel described the move as "uncool".

Look, when you meet someone in real life, you learn about them by talking to them. Even knowing their occupation in advance is a step up. In NYC, that's often a deal-maker or -breaker anyway.

This is why we can't have nice things. You should read Jon Finkel's AMA, though, for the other side of the dating story. He describes Bereznak as a "nice, nerdy girl". Hmm.

Meanwhile, someone else saw fit to commemorate Alyssa Bereznak her very own Magic: The Gathering card.