An Apology to Jon Finkel

[Zulnam]

Who the hell is Alyssa Bereznak?? And why is her date with some nerd 'news'?

Pretty much this, along with:
"Who the hell is Jon Finkel? And why is a blog making fun of him 'news'?"

No seriously, I'm trying to be nice here. I can respect the whole MTG world champion thing (impressive, as any world championship title), and the fact that someone made fun of him online, but I have just four words to say (without any irony):

And?_yeah,_so_what?

 

[gallaetha_matt]

I don't have to add that hasn't been said already. I just wanna say that Susan Arendt is a legend for the way she wrote about this situation. She scorched that wannabe blogger chick away in a righteous storm of proffesional conduct. It was awesome!

Mr. Finkel seems to be handling this much better than I would. I've just spent the best part of five years recovering from a disastrous relationship. I'm only just taking my first cautious steps back into the dating world now thanks to therapy and support from good family and friends. If somebody did this to me it would absolutely destroy me. No illusions, I simply would be able to take being made it into a laughing stock like this. Because I know that as soon as blogger lady used the term 'date from hell' I'd start to believe it myself. At least Finkel seems emotionally stable enough just laugh it off and take the high road.

Can you imagine what it'd be like if she picked a weaker person as her victim? There are a lot of people that just don't seem to realise the damage that their mean spirited gossip can do.

I'm just grateful for people like Susan Arendt, all the people who added their twitter names to the list and the commentators on the article itself (the blogger chick is universally blasted by everybody that commented on there, even her own editor distances themselves from it). It proves that there are good people out there who will take a stand against stuff like this when it happens.

If I was wearing a hat it would be off to the lot of you. You've made this old bastards day, and I mean that.

 

[Formica Archonis]

There are such things as knitting machines? I had no idea...

The sad thing? I knew about them, and completely forgot they existed until they were mentioned. Perhaps I just wanted to believe in some sort of knitting superhero cranking out unfeasibly long scarves at breakneck pace.

Would make a hell of a lot more sense than doing it by hand, I'll admit....

My greatest discovery has been: thick yarn, big needles.

That'll do it. I remember when my mom switched from smaller needles to larger ones because of problems with her hands. The next pair of wool slippers I got didn't fit so well!

 

[Infernai]

I don't even know who Jon Finkel is and i still think what happened to him is pretty damned shameful. I wish him all the best for the future and know things will turn out well for him. I also wish for Karma to come back and bite the ***** that did this hard.

 

[PerfectEnemy]

Stuff like this makes me unbelievably happy. It was a very classy way to shut down a pathetic woman, so thank you. Why? Because you ladies deserve it.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Well this makes me certain. Gawker media must be hard up for viewer numbers.

They've pulled these stunts a lot in the last few months.
The one I remember most clearly was some inarticulate woman (again?) on Kotaku - a gaming site (not writing that for clarification but more to highlight the placement of the article, to make it evident as a "troll") writing an "article" [http://kotaku.com/5818213/professional-gaming-on-the-downturn-cheesy-tv-to-blame] about how E-spots and such like are invalid and how people who play them are more-or-less geeks and lame and pretty much discrediting the value of all E-sports as whole.

Besides it being just a poorly written and badly thought out article by someone with little to no idea on the subject matter, it obviously caused a ton of rebuttals seeing as it was on a gaming website, so it just stank to high heaven of trolling.
I just couldn't help but feel the only reason that poor excuse of an "article" was up there was to generate traffic. I couldn't be sure at the time... it could have just been a terrible author spouting rubbish after all. But now after reading a bunch of similar articles it's all to evident to me that they are using this tactic to attract traffic.

It's time consuming and requires effort to write something eloquent and of interest and so Gawker has instead resorted to churning out badly written and ignorant trash which attracts a lot of flies and attention instead. They just need page hits and that can be achieved a lot easier with stories like this than true well thought out journalism (something which Gawker sites have lacked in recent times).
It's the same with article headers on Kotaku which bait. So rather than it being a description of a story the headlines will try and dramatise something that will turn out to be really mundane. Again, all for hits.

It's been ages since I last visited a Gawker site. Truly turning in to the pits of the internet.

So, I don't even know that I have a thought or comment on the content of the article as to me it's pretty much unimportant. It was probably only written to get the attention it is getting now. Sensationalism for the sake of quick and cheap viewer numbers.

Gawker sites are nothing but bad tabloid journalism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid_journalism] and I don't read that kind of trash in a printed format so I'm not about to read that sort of rubbish, or take it's contents seriously online either.

 

[SyphonX]

This is sad on many levels, not least of all the fact that this "Alyssa" probably has pretty potent self-esteem issues, probably stemming from similar circumstances once aimed at her. However, this is just... something you don't do, and even the most emotionally scarred person would know better.

I've said it once (in a more vulgar manner) and I'll say it again. The whole Gawker network is just bad, I mean real bad. It's just the kind of cesspool the internet doesn't need. It is literally a network made about gossip, with the rather dubious problem of trying to appeal to the intelligentsia of the internet.. when it couldn't be further from the truth.

Not to mention, it's a "community-based network" where everyone is censored and put into invisible categories, so even if you had something to say, chances are the screening process or various mods will never allow it. Yea, it's one 'those' sites. One of those creepy networks that seem to be popping up with disappointing regularity, and this article represents what it's really about, and it's just apathy. A lot of it.

 

[The Diabolical Biz]

His good to be shot of her, after all her true colours are shining through now. An maybe other men will notice that name and dismiss her as a blog writing hack. Can only hope.

Also, i love nerd girls, nothing will change that. One bad apple and all that.

Must...resist...urge to make Magic 'colours' joke.

Hey, I play that game - I appreciate the sentiment of this letter; go you, nerd chicks!

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I hope the next guy she goes on a date with says "Wait, your THAT Alyssa?" And walks out on the check.

I second that! I'd laugh if that happened

 

[Safaia]

Add me to this as well. @safaiagem is my twitter. What a *****.

 

[DocMcCray]

Very classy, ladies! This is why nerd girls rock the universe and why I am so happy and proud to be dating a nerd girl myself!

 

[Doc Theta Sigma]

Well. I have only one thing to say to Alyssa Bereznak. Fuck you, whore.

Seriously. It's women like her that crush the confidence of a guy with interests beyond drinking and watching football. I've spent four years getting over a psychotic ***** that openly laughed in my face when I asked her out because I'm "too geeky to be loved". Seriously. What an absolute fuck stick she is.

In closing...

SusanArendt, CrowChick, inkycats, trixie360, sarahthebeef, Hertzey, Kathleen_Lrr, kweenie, RaeBeta, Stephanieschopp, Joygirl007, Stefaniefogel, nosolemoo, HMarieYoung, kjaphet, EeveeHearts, SigmaMorrigan, s0osleepie, lkhiggi, ouroboring, yuki_hime, TallysTreasury, caeliat, Kitty11Chan, conventioneerin, AngelBlackChaos, april_marie, cavaticat

Thank you. Stay classy ladies o>

 

[Samurai Goomba]

Dear Ms Susan Arendt & Signatories,

Snip,

Gunboat

Lighten up Francis. You don't speak for womenkind either, and certainly not this woman.

Good to know you gave this complex and highly intelligent post the consideration it deserved.

The problem isn't that neither of you speak for womankind, the problem is what this article is saying, is that staff at the escapist who happen to be female believe they should apologize on behalf of all women, everywhere, to a bunch of men for the actions of ONE woman. You really don't see how you're enabling sexist, passive-aggressive "internet nice guy" behavior by supporting this idea that women have an obligation to apologize over one stupid person? I sure feel no such sense of obligation to say "sorry" to womankind when Bob Chipman is drooling over female movie stars or slapping up cheesecake pictures in an out-of-place way.

What I'm trying to say, is I don't care what your opinion is about the actual issue. I just feel we're already living in a regressive state of society for women in terms of basic rights and how they are perceived by men (check some the new shows coming out in the fall if you don't believe sexism is making a mainstream return in the 'States in a big way), and this article is enabling sexist behavior because of a) who the readership is (primarily young males, including some who already have sexist biases against women) and b) how this article is presented (that this is somehow the problem of all women.)

Thanks for your time, everybody, hopefully we'll get some discussion out of this topic somewhere down the road. I've already seen several fairly blatantly anti-female posts come out of this article thanks to flimsy rationalizations and "oh this woman is a jerk, and I remember some woman from my past broke my heart, so all women=bad" nonsense, so I think my point is well-supported by circumstantial evidence.

 

[Formica Archonis]

Very classy, ladies! This is why nerd girls rock the universe and why I am so happy and proud to be dating a nerd girl myself!

Hear, hear. I'm always nervous about admitting that my "night out with the boys" involves not beer and poker, but takeout and boardgames. It's always reassuring to see that there a chance I'll meet a lady who wouldn't think that's weird and might even like to join in for a round of Catan or Pandemic.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

The reaction to this incident reminds me of a similar incident in the atheist/skeptical community, "elevatorgate": http://skepchick.org/2011/07/the-privilege-delusion/

You mean the incident where a single woman's exaggerated fears over a clumsy proposal lead to hysterical condemnation of an entire community of people ("the atheist/skeptical community")

Yet the idea of a single woman's exaggerated account of a clumsy proposal lead to the condemnatio... Oh, I see.

We're already guilty before you've even looked at the facts, aren't we?

If she wanted to be really mean theres about a million ways she could have done so far more effectively.

And yet you don't condemn her for her meanness, just say there are better ways to "get back" at someone.

A guy whose only "crime" was he liked something she didn't?

What disgusts me most is you're now attacking your own "sistas" because they believe differently to you. I thought, somewhere in that crazy dream, that the most important thing in all of this was the right to choose.

You defend a woman publicly humiliating a man on the basis of "it wasn't that bad", and then take the opposite end of the spectrum to validate your own little knot of hatred.

There are people in the world today who suffer violent beatings for all sorts of reasons, Ms. Gunboat. Some of them are men, some of them are women. They are beaten and abused for all sorts of reasons, and yet they are invisible to people like yourself. People who believe that they have found the "right" and "wrong" side of the argument, and condemn - without hesitation - anyone who dares to think differently.

Personally, I think you should apologise to Susan and the others for your venomous insinuations that they took part in this in some way to raise their own resources, where it's obvious to the most jaded of reviewer that the only "winner" in all this is Gawker getting a load of extra hits.

Then I think you should head off to somewhere like Africa/Arabia and see how your concerns about first world balance trail into insignificance against the level of destitution some women (and men) live in daily. And then, I can only hope, that you will see the rest of us for the people that we are. And not as a community of women haters.

Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.

In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

 

[Badwolf14]

It's nice of you to apologize, but in all honesty... why should you have to? By now it's plainly obvious to all what sort of woman Alyssa Bereznak is, and this fine demonstration of her (sorely lacking) class and style have ensured that the future will bring her "men" as shallow and self-serving as she is. The universe has this funny way of evening things out.

[small]Besides, nerd girls rock.[/small]

I don't see it as much as them apologizing for her as more as them saying that what the girl did was uncalled for and that not all the girls with similar likes out there are like that.

 

[IkeGreil29]

Thank you, Susan! You pretty much explained why she's such an a-hole and at the same time defended yourself, which is admirable!

 

[Badwolf14]

I understand what she did was wrong, but I've met more guys who made fun of girls for being nerdy to (like me and my friends), so it's a two way street. She did what she did and that's the end of that. Luckily, Jon is a mature enough guy to laugh it off and just get on with his life.

Susan did say that she doesn't support both sides of the spectrum (which i agree with) its that guys are mainly stereotyped in this role (of being jerks online and what not). What she is saying is that she isn't going to stand for this type of behavior regardless of who it is and especially from a paid journalist who is calling somebody out.

OT: And don't mind people making fun of you....I'm a nerd, i know girls who are nerds and i have seen people who aren't "nerds" and think they are cool do really idiotic things that just make me shake my head because there are no words to describe them....so you shouldn't worry about those guys and keep doing what u like

 

[Ninja Tank]

Just now read this i had this happen too, but not in the same way that it did to Jon. I hit it off great with this girl, we were dating for about a week. Then she found out i played video games with a passion and played magic, she went and dumped me, she didn't go to the lengths that Alyssa did to Jon but she hurt me. I'm actual scared to date anyone now.

edit*
I'm not looking for sympathy, just stating that it can happen to other people.

 

[CK76]

This is awful. I personally have the exact opposite problem what with trying to find a guy who doesn't run for the hills when I proclaim my love for gaming and other such nerdy habits...

...

This makes my brain hurt. Nerdy women are the greatest thing to happen in the modern era.