David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
The Blaire Bride Project
August 18, 2004 8:03 AM
By Bob Bankard
Welcome to the 21st Century in America - the landscape keeps getting weirder and weirder every day. Take, for example, North Jersey... unusual person, Blaire Allison. She's decided she's going to get engaged by the end of the year.
Now, all she has to do is figure out to whom.
So, she's done what any red-blooded 21st Century American girl would do: turned it into her very own game show on the Internet.
"It's time for Blaire To Get Married" features a different contestent every week, and the Internet intelligencia are invited to vote the fella off Blaire's island. If you don't get blackballed by the peanut gallery, Blaire goes on a date with you and either marries you or puts you on her trophy wall as "Not My Husband."
Well, not actually "date," as such. It's more like a 30-minute interview.
Alll things considered it's another bizzaroland freak show stop on the Internet sideshow, but for two intriguing questions:
1) What kind of idiot would fall for this?
Well, I guess a look at the trophy wall is a start. But how many cogs have to fall off the cognative engine for a guy to run for potential husband to a girl whose entire biography is comprised of age, weight, height and astrological sign?
Now, I'm not just talking about "dating;" if you've got a face that doesn't curdle milk and a figure that shows more salads than carbs, almost any guy is going to be willing to take a shot at "dating" you once or twice.
This is about marriage, for crying out loud. In three months. The backwash of testosterone into the brain has to be gargantuan before some lonely boy decides, "Ooh! She's a Cancer, and considers herself passionate, witty and honest! She's my soul mate! I'll bring a book of silverware patterns to our 30-minute date so we won't have to waste any time when we register!"
Sadly, it appears that reporters are not immune to idiocy. Matt Katz of the Courier Post went looking for love and got shot down, his head now hanging on Blaire's trophy wall. Those poor, sad Gannett boys. Let me be the first to say, "BWAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAAAA!!"
(Ok, Maybe he just did it for the story. Maybe. Suuure...)
Anyway, my colleague across the county notwithstanding (if we accept his dubious excuse...) how desperate or disingenuous would a guy have to be to want to slap a ring on Blaire's claw based on a cheesebag website strewn with the bones of those who have gone before? Pre-fab pedestals should be a sailor's warning; lash yourself to the mast, and ignore the siren's calling, you sad little weirdo.
2) Is she kidding, psyching, or selling?
One of the things Blair does on her site is trumpet her past achievements in the matchmaking field. However, if you really get down to brass tacks, her site is practically the antithesis of anything practical matchmaking would consider sound. So, barring the possibility the girl is completely psycho, I personally can only see three possibilities:
A) She's yanking desperate boys chains. Some kind of weird power/control/monomaniacal man-hate thing. Dinks write in, she plays 'em off and holds 'em up for redicule.
B) She's stated on her site she's starting on her Masters in psychology: maybe she's playing at a thesis; "Response to marital stimulae on poorly socialized Internet-dependent males," or something.
C) She's trying to parlay this into some kind of FOX entertainment career. With her resume of "Love" related jobs more detailed than her personal profile and a prominent "Press" page, something here is definitely not screaming "Poor widdle me desperately wants to find my darlin' hubby."
As one wit exclaimed on Metafilter, "If this was a guy it would be creepy and scary." As for me, it's just one more reason to really really love people. The world is just one big open-air lunatic asylum/petting zoo.
August 18, 2004 8:03 AM
By Bob Bankard
Welcome to the 21st Century in America - the landscape keeps getting weirder and weirder every day. Take, for example, North Jersey... unusual person, Blaire Allison. She's decided she's going to get engaged by the end of the year.
Now, all she has to do is figure out to whom.
So, she's done what any red-blooded 21st Century American girl would do: turned it into her very own game show on the Internet.
"It's time for Blaire To Get Married" features a different contestent every week, and the Internet intelligencia are invited to vote the fella off Blaire's island. If you don't get blackballed by the peanut gallery, Blaire goes on a date with you and either marries you or puts you on her trophy wall as "Not My Husband."
Well, not actually "date," as such. It's more like a 30-minute interview.
Alll things considered it's another bizzaroland freak show stop on the Internet sideshow, but for two intriguing questions:
1) What kind of idiot would fall for this?
Well, I guess a look at the trophy wall is a start. But how many cogs have to fall off the cognative engine for a guy to run for potential husband to a girl whose entire biography is comprised of age, weight, height and astrological sign?
Now, I'm not just talking about "dating;" if you've got a face that doesn't curdle milk and a figure that shows more salads than carbs, almost any guy is going to be willing to take a shot at "dating" you once or twice.
This is about marriage, for crying out loud. In three months. The backwash of testosterone into the brain has to be gargantuan before some lonely boy decides, "Ooh! She's a Cancer, and considers herself passionate, witty and honest! She's my soul mate! I'll bring a book of silverware patterns to our 30-minute date so we won't have to waste any time when we register!"
Sadly, it appears that reporters are not immune to idiocy. Matt Katz of the Courier Post went looking for love and got shot down, his head now hanging on Blaire's trophy wall. Those poor, sad Gannett boys. Let me be the first to say, "BWAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAAAA!!"
(Ok, Maybe he just did it for the story. Maybe. Suuure...)
Anyway, my colleague across the county notwithstanding (if we accept his dubious excuse...) how desperate or disingenuous would a guy have to be to want to slap a ring on Blaire's claw based on a cheesebag website strewn with the bones of those who have gone before? Pre-fab pedestals should be a sailor's warning; lash yourself to the mast, and ignore the siren's calling, you sad little weirdo.
2) Is she kidding, psyching, or selling?
One of the things Blair does on her site is trumpet her past achievements in the matchmaking field. However, if you really get down to brass tacks, her site is practically the antithesis of anything practical matchmaking would consider sound. So, barring the possibility the girl is completely psycho, I personally can only see three possibilities:
A) She's yanking desperate boys chains. Some kind of weird power/control/monomaniacal man-hate thing. Dinks write in, she plays 'em off and holds 'em up for redicule.
B) She's stated on her site she's starting on her Masters in psychology: maybe she's playing at a thesis; "Response to marital stimulae on poorly socialized Internet-dependent males," or something.
C) She's trying to parlay this into some kind of FOX entertainment career. With her resume of "Love" related jobs more detailed than her personal profile and a prominent "Press" page, something here is definitely not screaming "Poor widdle me desperately wants to find my darlin' hubby."
As one wit exclaimed on Metafilter, "If this was a guy it would be creepy and scary." As for me, it's just one more reason to really really love people. The world is just one big open-air lunatic asylum/petting zoo.
