Gizmodo, Magic, and the Bitter Taste of the Internet

http://gizmodo.com/5833787/my-brief-okcupid-affair-with-a-world-champion-magic-the-gathering-player

Yesterday evening, I was doing my typical internet scavenger hunt.  This usually takes place after homework, but before dinner.  The perfect transition that should realistically take 10 minutes, but typically takes an hour.  I came across the above mentioned link.  If you're too lazy to check it out (which you should), here's a brief synopsis.

A female Gizmodo writer posted a short article about her experience on an OK Cupid date.  To her surprise, her date ended up being a world-champion Magic: The Gathering player.  Upon this realization, she subsequently stopped seeing him and then proceeded to write a scathing article.  Particularly, she was angry that this MTG information was not included in his profile.  The article hits its high point with this passage:

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.

My initial feelings about this were muted at best, slightly disgusted at worst.  My impression was confusion as to why a person would go on a date, find out something they didn't like about the person, and then complain about it afterward.  I mean, that is the essence of dating after all.  No reason to be upset about not liking a person.  Stop dating the person and move on.  Moreover, I hardly consider it appropriate for a site such as Gizmodo to be the forum for bad date stories.  More so when the author identifies the name of her date and proceeds to insult him.

I walked away, made my depressing dinner of bread and oil, and moved on.  But the issue came back.

I have a Twitter app on my phone where I follow a number of technology journalists, and this story was being mentioned.  I was a bit surprised by this, as who cares about a single article by a journalist.  Yet, the Tweets were a stream of "This is why Gizmodo sucks" and so on.

Then, I came across this:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jpmoore/the-10-best-reactions-to-gizmodos-terrible-ok

Here's a little snippet of something written about the Gizmodo blogger:
"[She] Reminded us that Women can be Predators Online Too"

In what likely is not the end of this saga, the hailstorm of the internet has come down on the Gizmodo author, which makes me wonder if the criticizer is receiving worse than she gave out.

In a way, something feels good about the wrongdoer receiving a taste of her own medicine, but I honestly don't like to subscribe to that approach.  The internet is an amazing tool that I respect and love.  It's not only brought the accessibility of information to an unprecedented level, but more importantly has made the communication of ideas extremely easy.  If I have an idea, I can send that to the world with very few barriers.  Two Wheel Observer is living proof of that.

However, I find it disappointing when people decide to use this awesome communicative power to harass and abuse.  That's not what I want from the internet.  Unfortunately, it seems that expecting otherwise is naive, even from professionals.

Do you understand?
- Yes
- Not at all