I'm sure there are some real hotties who frequent this blog. I am aware of the effect I have on women. All the Jennies love a Star Trek fan who spends his days listening to MF Doom, playing WoW, and bragging about having a kid when he was 24 (making me practically a teen parent) and not marrying the mother. Teh Sexah, indeed.
But even if it wasn't locked down, I can't see myself going where Ann Althouse has gone. I don't disapprove (who cares if I do?) but I'd be too scared.
It's funny because I've actually seen relationships come out of online gaming. When I used to play Everquest back in the day, I ran with two Wood Elves (I was a Euridite wizard. Even when I'm fantasizing, I'm a black nerd) who were hooked up in real life. I only figured this out as I hung out with them more. Whenever we'd go to Karnor's or the City Of Mist, this dude would follow us. Later the couple told me the dude was the girl's ex--in real life. They used to game together, but she met this other dude (the other Wood Elf) and left her man to move in with him. That just blew me away--but it really shouldn't. Virtual communication is a lot like real communication.
Anyway, if teh ladies weren't sweating me before this post, having heard me hold forth on Wood Elf mating rituals should do the trick. You may now mob me. I'm all yours.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Since you mentioned DOOM in this post, I can finally ask you when you're gonna say something about the new album.
1) This post is hilarious, I think you should have it bronzed.
2) I'm really wary about the whole on line dating scene. Probably too much Lifetime Television, where Melissa Gilbert meets the perfect guy on line who turns out to be the same serial killer who offed her best friend in high school.
Nooooo! Not Melissa Gilbert!!!!
Speaking from the dude side of the equation, it's actually been pretty O.K. It may help that I live in Portland where the ratio of sketchy people to decent people is lower than average, but I've never been on a date that was set up online that went horribly, horribly wrong. Plenty of them where we didn't really click, but at worst I had a few hours of decent conversation that didn't encourage me to take it any further. I've also had some stellar (albeit mixed) experiences, so overall I'd say that it's been positive.
With all that said, all of my female friends have at one time or another had more dubious meetings. No permanent damage or anything like that, just some pretty messed up guys. Sadly, there is a good reason why trawling the Craigslist MFW section is a way to seriously put a damper on your faith in humanity.
LOL, you have hit upon another of my objections to online dating, which is that visiting those sites depresses the hell out of me.
As a nerd-loving sci-fi and gaming fan and 6'2" hottie, I have to say that your disdain for Battlestar means there will never be anything between us. But we'll always have Trek.
"You may now mob me. I'm all yours."
But I'm sayin though...you got a cousin?
This post is full of awesome and win.
My wife and I met online.
When I was in an online RPG, three couples hooked up while I was playing, and two are still together.
Peggy and I met on Mindvox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindVox
I met my husband in a Muse, back in 1994 (that's a text-based online world for those who never did such things). We've been married since '95. Played EQ together, still play WoW. Don't knock it til you've tried it!
LOL. What else can one do after reading this?
You are a funny, funny man. If I lived in NY, I'd might have to stalk you. ;)
As for Althouse, good for her. You know, where ever you can find love. In the 19th century people wrote letters, is internet communication all that different?
You know, I'd never really understood just how important letters were a hundred years ago until I started this side project transcribing my great-great grandmother's diary from 1895. I'm doing a post a day, and have been at it for just over a month, and I'm forcing myself not to read ahead so it can unfold for me slowly.
Anyway, my point is that I know some bare bones of the story: she's going to marry this man she's exchanging letters with--he's the widow of her best friend--and they'll move out west at some point, where she'll die relatively young--mid 40's. But it seems that every other entry, if not more often, she's either getting or receiving a letter, and apparently they're lengthy ones. Makes me wish I had access to them as well as this one diary, so I could see more of her life, because they were obviously an important part of it.
I didn't get to read all of the entries yet, but what a great way to get to know one of your ancestors. And an interesting view of a life at that time.
Nice. :)
I've never started anything with anyone through gaming, but during my last relationship, my ex and I lived 2000 miles apart for about 18 months in total over seven years due to work-related geography. We played EQ and WoW together through most of those times apart, and doing something together helped ease the loneliness during those times.
Hmm. Now that I think about it, my two most recent relationships were with fellow MMO players.
This may be the funniest post of yours I've ever read. For the record, I think of you more as a play cousin.
As someone who actually saw that vlog where she guzzled red wine and critiqued Sanjaya as he sang on American Idol, I can say without a hint of snark that I am glad she found somebody. I don't wish that kind of life on my worst enemy.
If you liked it you should have put a +5 Ring of Charming on it.
Call the thread, Andrew wins.
I found one of my best friends online -- she happened to live in the same city, we met in person, and now both our families hang out together.
I'm trying to figure out why reading this post made me feel vaguely unclean.
Now I can't get the image of you out of my head - of you wandering the streets of New York as Blackwolf the DragonMaster, wizard staff in one hand, McDonald's Fillet of Fish in the other.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugk37TvIR8E
Well played, Jamakama! Coffee all over my keyboard...
God, I love this blog.
I ran with a few wood elves, some of whom were in a relationship. Turns out that over a year another two (2!) pairs moved in and one of those two got married. I was 18 at the time and so this was a little mind boggling. In retrospect I think it is just as healthy as marrying someone from college, work or a pub crawl, if not more.
There's a lot of Ann Landers kind of advice out there for folks who are looking for a relationship. Lots of analogies, provisos and tripwires. The truth is something of a corollary to the Anna Karenina principle. Happy families are all alike--the rest of us have to engage our quirks and freaks in our own way. Sometimes we need to get acclimated, discover over months and years that we can love someone. Sometimes we have to follow that spark down the rabbit hole.
It probably helps if you and your wife are watching the running of the bulls and you shout "TRAIN!!!" that she knows what you mean.
:)
A relative met her husband online, in a Star Trek forum. I'm pretty sure it took them more than 10 days to get engaged, though.
But I do remember an online community deciding to post when a member went off to jail for attempted murder--this person was smart and coherent and the only off thing was how much free time she had to post during the day; turned out she was on leave from her job while awaiting trial. I'm reeeeaaaally glad I never did a "hey if you're in the area come by my house" thing with her. One truly does miss contextual cues online--usually at the risk of a bad date, but freakiness doesn't always translate. (Alternatively people you know as normal souls in real life might sound scarily obsessed and Wrong About Cuddy when posting on the House forum.)
When I saw the title, I immediately thought "get funky" followed by cowbells. I guess that's what Ann Althouse is doing! (hopefully w/o the cowbells.
I thought for sure the next line was gonna be, " . . . in the place I'm callin' out to ya!"
And I just heard Jerry Lewis's voice...
Being the leader of a World of Warcraft raiding guild does have certain...perks. You might want to look into that, being level 80 and all.
Seriously... We need a post about the new DOOM!
I'm already 'married' to Idris Elba. The offer of friendship still stands. :)
My significant other and I met playing online trivia on the old MSN trivia site 13 years ago. After a year of online back and forth, we moved to real life back and forth, and now a move across country, a house and many children later we're happier and more devoted to each other than any "traditionally introduced" couple we know. So it does happen.
The truth is, we never would have connected offline: we were separated by geography, politics and religion. We would never have been in the same place at the same time. The scariest thing I can think of is that it would have been so easy for us to miss each other.
I have a friend who married a man she met at alt.sex.fetish.hair. They have two kids and seem quite happy. The thing is, she's really, really, really hairy- she shaves twice a day, 'cause she'd grow a full beard otherwise, and looking for people who aren't turned off by women that hairy, much less turned on by them, has got to be pretty thankless in real life.
"Hey baby. Come here often?"
"... um... maybe I should show you my belly before we take this any further."
And being majorly into WoW, or blogging, isn't so specialized, and I think it's less of a turnoff for non-blogging non-WoWers (I *think*) but still both of those strike me as interests you're most likely to find a companion in online. If you show dogs, dog shows might be a good place to look for dates.
*wonders what server you played on*
I met my wife when she started an RPG on LiveJournal. We wrote porn together, and eventually we decided to meet in person.
That was six years ago this April.
I met my wife via the "random" button on the crappy old Opendiary journalling site. I would hit that button repeatedly when bored; the pages it brought up generally reminded me of how glad I was not to be an angsty teenager. But one day, it pulled up the journal of this brainily hot-sounding chick who was working in a township in South Africa. I was working in India at the time, and my observations of the slums there formed an interesting counterpoint to her observations of the townships. So I left a comment on her journal, then she left a comment on mine, and when we both moved back to the States a few months later, we immediately moved in together.
I still maintain that this was probably one of the stupidest things that either of us had ever done. Yet somehow it worked -- that was seven years ago, and our lives have gone fabulously ever since.
You know, I don't really care how Ann Althouse, who I happen to loathe, finds a husband. But I was annoyed that Bloggingheads decided to devote the better part of an episode to the "news." What a waste of cyberspace...
BTW since it has gone unremarked upon, nice allusion to Charles, Idris Elba's character from The Office. (Wow, and I thought Stringer Bell was a bit of a prick--he makes tight-ass String look like Poot!)
I met my partner in a reptile chat room on msn before msn chatrooms got shut down by british pedo scares. That was Sept of 2002, and after two false starts and two years not on speaking terms, we finally seem to be on the same page, and deeply in love. I'm trying to get a job in the Burgh to be closer to him asap.
Seriously though, I out-nerd you all. A reptile chat room.
I met my wife through a plain old Internet personal ad. The old Spring Street personals network which used to run on all kinds of interesting sites like Salon, The Onion and The Village Voice. There pool of potential matches was much more literate and liberal than your generic personals site. I met a lot of interesting women through that before I found my beloved.
I've had friends who met and married through all manner of internet forums. More than a couple have met through the Ny Giants board that I frequent. My wife knows married couples who met through a listserv, in the pre-web days.
On the other hand, I believe my ex-wife met the man she eventually left me for on a World Of Darkness MUSH. But ya know, what goes around comes around.