‘Magic: The Gathering’ Champion Spurned in Mean Gizmodo Post Reacts on Reddit

The Internet is abuzz about this Gizmodo post from yesterday, in which writer Alyssa Bereznak went out on an OkCupid date with a guy who, horror of horrors, turned out to be a “Magic: The Gathering” player. And not just any player, but former world champion Jon Finkel. (For those of you who don’t know, Magic is the game that the kids who weren’t into Dungeons & Dragons but seemed like they would have been were playing in high school. It has wizards and stuff.).

Bereznak was horrified. “This guy isn’t just some professional who dabbled in card games at a tender age. He’s Jon motherfucking Finkel, the man who is so widely revered in the game of Magic that he’s been immortalized in his own playing card.” (Emphasis hers). And everyone else is horrified that she would humiliate some dude from OkCupid on the Internet for all to see; as of right now, the post has over 1300 comments, most of them indignant.

As for Finkel himself? He’s taking it pretty well, having started a question-and-answer session on Reddit.

It begins: “Hi people, I’m Jon Finkel. I went out uneventfully with a girl a couple weeks ago and we never spoke again. Then she posts about how she cant believe I didn’t warn her I was an ex magic world champion, and the internet had issues with that. Somehow, I’m the top IAMA request on reddit, so here I am. Ask me Anything.”

Finkel writes that he “felt a little, I dunno, violated.” Rightly so, considering the less-than-charitable treatment Bereznak gave him and the fact that she never made it clear she was using the dates as fodder for an article.

“I later found out that Jon infiltrated his way into OKCupid dates with at least two other people I sort of know, including one of my co-workers,” she writes. “Mothers, warn your daughters! This could happen to you. You’ll think you’ve found a normal bearded guy with a job, only to end up sharing goat cheese with a guy who takes you to a one-man show based on Jeffrey Dahmer’s life story.”

We get that the one-man show based on Jeffrey Dahmer’s life is a little intense for a first date, but other than that it really looks like these two had an awkward-but-OK time and Bereznak milked the guy for all he’s worth, pageview-baiting-wise. Not too classy.

At least Finkel’s got a sense of humor about it. “I think it’s kind of funny,” he writes on his Reddit IAMA. “I mean really the article coulda been a lot worse.”