Oh Snap, Judgments

SEATTLE, Wash.—It’s neither easy nor productive to judge people at first glance—most of the time, anyway.

A few nights ago, I was involved in coordinating Cheezburger Night at Safeco Field, one of many micro events orchestrated and conducted by the Seattle Mariners.

That’s cheezburger, as in “I can haz cheezburger,” not cheeseburger, as in the classic staple of a true American diet.

It was among the larger nerd collections I had ever seen, and that includes a number of high school quiz bowl tournaments. Lolcatz were there in the flesh at the pre-game event at the stadium. People introduced themselves as much by username as by given name.

The group was strikingly easy to spot; I have to assume that the event was the highest concentration of xkcd T-shirts outside of Randall Munroe’s living room.

Which is why I was so confused when two men in their mid-twenties, decked out in the latest Mariners gear and each double-fisting Bud Lights, showed up for the event. I was prepared to give them directions to another part of the stadium when, much to my surprise, they presented the correct ticket, and went in to join a sizeable and growing group of individuals who could name Chewbacca’s home planet (Kashyyyk, of course).

Ten minutes later, the same two men—each at least a beer down—came back to the sign-in table ready to leave. Alas, they were looking for an all-you-can-eat cheeseburger bar, or at least some discounted grub, not the largest collection of Failblog commenters in the Northwest.

From a young age, we’re all taught that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But in this case, that’s just inaccurate.

I could have saved those two men a solid ten minutes of fruitful beer-consumption time.

E. Benjamin Samuels ’13, an operations manager and associate sports editor, is a Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations concentrator in Lowell House.