Your friendly neighborhood Noisecast is here at Dragon Con this weekend. Hi from Atlanta! While we were here, we heard that Magic the Gathering creator Richard Garfield was going to be taking questions so we decided to drop by and see what he thought of the recent brouhaha over Jon Finkel and his date with Gizmodo writer Alyssa Bereznak.
We asked him how he felt about the response to the game, as well as the person who’d earned the title of world champion of his game. In his own words:
“It certainly kind of sucks. That hurts. But the thing is that the culture has become, you know the ‘nerd culture’ in general has become so mainstream that the follow up to this Jon Finkel thing almost entirely favored him, and sort of blasting the person who blasted [Jon].”
He’s right! While it was certainly far from uniting the internet, the response was largely in Jon’s favor. In Garfield’s view, this is a good thing for nerds:
“So, I heard about that and felt bad for Jon, thought it was terrible, but then the sort of outcry against it, was pretty strong and that’s what I’ve seen more and more of these days. And I think you’re always gonna see that reaction against that kind of pressure, and I think we’re in a pretty good place.”
While not everyone agrees on whether or not the article should’ve been published, he does certainly make one point we should all be able to get behind: nerds expressing solidarity is definitely a positive cultural change. You’re not alone geeks!
We’ll be at Dragon Con all weekend, so stay tuned this weekend for new stories, contests, and features. And don’t forget to follow @ocentertainment to keep up to date on all the goings-on live from Dragon Con.
Well it is called “The Gathering”, after all.
The only REAL negative thing I can see as a result of this is Denton’s page view count got higher.
Jon Finkel did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit over this whole thing. He comes off as a pretty cool guy.