The Cupid of Nerds: Ryan Glitch’s Comic-Con Speed-Dating Empire

For an 18-year-old outfitted as a Pok

é

mon fictional character striking on an older woman, the little one is amazingly suave. “this can be my personal third Comic-Con, but it’s one year I was old enough for this,” Ash Ketchum states, gesturing to the 82 women and men placed in sets in a conference space within the cellar on the Javits Center. Lamenting the tyranny of baseball at their highschool, he offers to show me his Pok

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all, but a Jedi knight with spiked locks yells, “energy’s upwards!” our very own three-minute performance go out has ended.

Weekend Jedi warrior Ryan Glitch may be the 27-year-old holder of
Sci-Fi Increase Dating
, which in three years features structured numerous speed-dating occasions at a large number of super-fan conventions. Glitch’s sessions have actually triggered five marriages, two infants, nineteen involvements, “as well as over a hundred lovers online dating severely,” he informs me at one of ny Comic-Con’s eight Sci-Fi increase Dating sessions. “And that’s what we all know from folks informing united states on our very own Twitter page!”

A “big old geek” from children of NASCAR lovers in upstate nyc, Glitch is actually a gleeful one-man program of motion picture estimates, foolish sounds, and fart jokes. He initially tried speed online dating five years in the past, at Atlanta’s Dragon Con. “it had been like twenty dudes and five ladies,” he recalls. The guy remaining before the session completed.

Later on that year, he emailed the organizers of

Movie Stars Battles

Party V to
recommend they attempt speed matchmaking
. “i obtained an email right back asking, ‘How really does speed matchmaking work?’ And so I explained it to them. They questioned if I’d work one. I told them I got. But I had maybe not.” Every session sold-out.

“from that point it really blew right up,” Glitch continues. “We had gotten lucky, we hit on recommended, and we ran along with it.” Since that time, the guy and a rotating personnel of buddies have actually structured speed-dating events at about twenty drawbacks each year;
Sci-Fi Speed-Dating reality show

Geek Love



broadcast
shortly on TLC
,
subsequently relocated
to gaming web site IGN. “next season I’m going to attempt to press it to 35 [conventions],” Glitch says. “I presently make adequate to stay off it. Well, stay meagerly, I should say.”

Between cons, Glitch works inside the rear room of a local Walmart, building floor design exhibits. He estimates he’s the third or fourth fastest assembler of bicycles during the Walmart corporation. He states his friend and speed-dating collaborator Jeff Hubbard is the best assembler in the arena. “you realize, aces inside their spots,” Glitch claims.

Hubbard was assisting Sci-Fi Speed-Dating setup and solution income because the beginning. The day I met him, he was sporting an Indiana Jones costume outfit rigged to tackle the film theme tune when he stepped. The guy does not consider he is the fastest Walmart assembler on earth, but admits that in 25 years he’s obtained very good. “i enjoy assist my personal hands,” Hubbard describes. During the art economy of

Star Wars

costuming, their specialization is actually fabricating armor. Their Darth Vader costume outfit will probably be worth approximately $10,000.

Glitch’s many prized costume is actually an

Episode III

Anakin Skywalker worth $4,000, but weight gain at this time stops him from sporting it. The guy recently dedicated his Facebook page to recording his pursuit to slim down for the next

Star Wars

Party. “62 times soda and fast food free of charge. 13 days consecutively of running. 556 times till celebration. Beginning body weight, 367, recent body weight 346.2,” he blogged the other day.

Glitch’s speed time web hosting looks are component stand-up comedy, part Soup Nazi. He packs as numerous speed daters into his classes as well as physically possible; to avoid 82-person pile-ups, performance day rotations must certanly be orderly and rapid. For heterosexual periods, he pre-registers more ladies than guys, then merely acknowledges as many men because there are available females. (LGBT speed online dating normally takes place in different periods.) He could be rigorous about lines. “In Denver we had bigger contours than their unique A-listers. In Salt Lake City, we’d bigger traces than A-listers.” He describes a Sci-Fi Speed-Dating range that when overshadowed a William Shatner section.

My personal rate times include a Peruvian motion picture enthusiast, a Wall Street financier in Final Fantasy armor, and a cosplay professional photographer from Hong Kong. Some men seek girlfriends, but most state they’d be happy despite having the dreaded friend zone. “simply a person who accepts myself,” an electrical Ranger with a Long isle accent says, gesturing to his spandex-clad body. “because individuals which satisfy me here, they see everything.”

36 months back, Keri Brugge was actually dressed as a Jedi knight when she sat down in front of future husband Matt Brugge at Glitch’s very first

Celebrity Wars

Celebration V speed-dating program. Four months afterwards, they were marching down a marriage section for the

Celebrity Wars

motif track. Matt suggested by arranging his

Star Wars

figurines in a diorama type of a Sci-Fi Speed-Dating room. Keri’s gemstone had been hidden underneath Padmé Amidala of Naboo.

The two live in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with Matt’s 7-year-old child, who Keri is assisting generate a Princess Leia costume outfit for Halloween. Stopping by the Sci-Fi Speed-Dating room at Chicago Comic Con this current year, “I was want,

awww

,” Keri recalls. “and I happened to be like, everyone do that! It struggled to obtain us!”

“There are a few people from initial program which I currently observed perambulating keeping hands,” Glitch informs me following the treatment. “It is form of an unwordable feeling. When Keri and Matt called to say, hey, we are getting married, I was like—” He falls his chin and pantomimes speechless exhilaration, fingers flapping at wrist. “In my agreements for a time, underneath where you signal, it might state ‘Ryan Glitch, Geek Pimp.’ They use it the official agreements! I thought it had been humorous. It really is a cool sensation and that I think its great.”

The nerd pimp himself, however, is actually single. Glitch’s most recent relationship began at their first-ever

Celebrity Wars

speed-dating period; he was just web hosting, but she found him on Twitter in addition they dated for a long time. “i simply wish to have a wife and young ones. That is my only purpose in daily life. If performance matchmaking don’t occur again, if we never ever filmed once again, I would personallyn’t proper care if I had a wife and young ones.” But he’sn’t certain whether he’s going to combine company with satisfaction once more.

“I would like to satisfy some one,” Glitch sighs, “but i do believe it really is dishonest to utilize my forces for evil or self-gain.”