True Story: I Dated ‘Dating Brian’

When I first heard about Brian, a scrappy kid from Wisconsin who resolved to cure his fear of New York dating by crowdsourcing his personal life and going on 30 Twitter-suggested dates in 30 days, my interest was immediately piqued. The appeal of the Dating Brian Project is obvious: wholesome, endearingly geeky guy just wants to find a girl, and the whole Internet is gonna band together to help him find her. On the other hand, the huge media reaction to the project, as well as its association with a major advertising firm raised more than a few eyebrows. Is this kid sincere, or just another fameball? There was only one way to find out for sure. I had to date Brian.

I filled out a quick form on the Internet, linked to my Twitter account, and hoped for the best. It turns out that guys who pledge to date 30 strangers in 30 days aren’t that picky, because that very same day, Brian called.

You know how it’s sort of awkward to talk on the phone with a blind date before the actual date? Well, it’s worse when his opening line is “I’m recording this, is that OK?”

“Oh, that’s totally fine!” I self-consciously trilled, as if I was perfectly used to my dating life being Watergate-esque.

The phone conversation lasted about 10 minutes. Brian seemed sweet, and even a little nervous; this was, after all, in the early days of the project.

A few days later I got an email from “Valerie, Brian’s fellow intern and friend,” confirming a date for Wednesday at Brooklyn Bowl. Getting a fellow intern to write emails for him? I was impressed. Brian must be big-time.

When I arrived at Brooklyn Bowl, Brian was waiting for me outside. He recognized me because I was a girl and also the only person going to Brooklyn Bowl at 8 on a Wednesday night; I recognized him because I had obsessively studied all the videos he posted on the site. (I like to be prepared.)

You can usually judge whether or not a first date is off to a good start by how long you’re forced to make inane observations about the menu to each other until one of the two of you finally comes up with something else to talk about. Brian and I didn’t spend more than two minutes on the menu before we started talking about school, hometowns, and the perennial favorite: New York Real Estate.
I’m a little worried that my interest in Dating Brian, The Project, rather than, you know, actually dating Brian, might get the best of me and I’d grill him about press coverage and logistics. Brian the person, however, turned out to be personable, funny, and interesting.

I did ask him, a little, about the overwhelming attention the project has been receiving, but he said he was mostly just excited about the dates. For an overnight Internet Celebrity, this guy seemed to be surprisingly, refreshingly grounded. We decided to bowl for half an hour. The first game was a lot of fun – we both scored strikes, and after the initial 30 minutes were up, Brian suggested we extend and play another 30. Unfortunately, this is when Brian really started to hit his stride and I completely lost mine. Eventually, Brian started hitting every single pin, and I stopped hitting any at all. He was very patient, offering me tips, finding a “better ball” for me (it wasn’t the ball’s fault, sadly.), and high fiving me for effort. If he was embarrassed to be seen with someone who had the bowling talent of a parrot, he gallantly didn’t let it show.