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

For an 18-year-old clothed as a Pok

é

mon personality hitting on an adult woman, the little one is actually amazingly suave. “this really is my 3rd Comic-Con, but it’s the very first season I happened to be of sufficient age to work on this,” Ash Ketchum claims, gesturing on 82 people sitting in sets in a conference area inside cellar from the Javits Center. Lamenting the tyranny of basketball at his high-school, the guy proposes to show me his Pok

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all, but a Jedi knight with spiked hair yells, “Time’s upwards!” our very own three-minute rate day is finished.

Weekend Jedi warrior Ryan Glitch could be the 27-year-old manager of
Sci-Fi Speed Dating
, that 36 months has actually structured hundreds of speed-dating occasions at dozens of super-fan exhibitions. Glitch’s sessions have led to five marriages, two babies, nineteen involvements, “as well as over numerous partners online dating severely,” the guy tells me at certainly one of ny Comic-Con’s eight Sci-Fi increase Dating sessions. “And that’s what we understand from people advising us on our very own Twitter page!”

A “big old nerd” from a family of NASCAR enthusiasts in upstate ny, Glitch is a gleeful one-man program of motion picture rates, ridiculous sounds, and fart jokes. The guy very first tried speed dating five years back, at Atlanta’s Dragon Con. “it absolutely was like twenty guys and five girls,” he recalls. The guy kept ahead of the program finished.

Later that year, he emailed the organizers of

Movie Stars Battles

Celebration V to
suggest they take to speed matchmaking
. “i obtained an e-mail back inquiring, ‘How does speed matchmaking work?’ Thus I revealed it in their eyes. They requested easily’d run one. We informed them I had. But I’d not.” Every session sold-out.

“following that it really blew right up,” Glitch continues. “We got happy, we hit on recommended, and now we ran with it.” Subsequently, he and a rotating personnel of pals have actually structured speed-dating activities around twenty disadvantages per year;
Sci-Fi Speed-Dating truth show

Geek Really Love



broadcast
quickly on TLC
,
next relocated
to gaming site IGN. “Next year i’ll try to force it to 35 [conventions],” Glitch states. “I currently make sufficient to live off it. Well, stay meagerly, i ought to say.”

Between cons, Glitch works from inside the rear area of an area Walmart, assembling flooring product shows. The guy estimates he could be the third or 4th quickest assembler of bicycles during the Walmart enterprise. He states their pal and speed-dating collaborator Jeff Hubbard is best assembler worldwide. “you are aware, aces within locations,” Glitch claims.

Hubbard was helping Sci-Fi Speed-Dating setup and citation sales since the start. A single day I came across him, he had been putting on an Indiana Jones costume outfit rigged to try out the movie theme song as he wandered. He doesn’t imagine he is the quickest Walmart assembler around, but acknowledges that in twenty five years he’s gotten decent. “I like to work with my personal arms,” Hubbard clarifies. Within the art economy of

Star Wars

costuming, their specialty is actually fabricating armor. His Darth Vader costume deserves around $10,000.

Glitch’s many valuable outfit is actually an

Episode III

Anakin Skywalker worth $4,000, but gaining weight currently prevents him from sporting it. The guy lately devoted their fb web page to recording his journey to shed weight for the next

Star Wars

Celebration. “62 days soft drink and take out free. 13 times in a row of exercising. 556 times till party. Starting body weight, 367, current weight 346.2,” the guy blogged the other day.

Glitch’s speed time hosting style is component stand-up comedy, component soups Nazi. The guy packs as many performance daters into their sessions as is actually possible; to stop 82-person pile-ups, performance day rotations need to be organized and quick. For heterosexual sessions, the guy pre-registers a lot more women than guys, after that merely admits as numerous males since there can be found ladies. (LGBT rate matchmaking typically happens in split periods.) They are tight about outlines. “In Denver we’d larger traces than their particular A-listers. In Salt Lake City, we’d bigger outlines than A-listers.” He describes a Sci-Fi Speed-Dating line that once overshadowed a William Shatner panel.

My performance times include a Peruvian film buff, a Wall Street financier in last Fantasy armour, and a cosplay photographer from Hong-Kong. Males are looking for girlfriends, but the majority say they’d be pleased despite the dreaded pal region. “simply a person who takes me,” an electric Ranger with a Long Island feature says, gesturing to their spandex-clad body. “Because people which fulfill me right here, they see every thing.”

36 months back, Keri Brugge was outfitted as a Jedi knight whenever she sat down before future husband Matt Brugge at Glitch’s basic

Superstar Wars

Celebration V speed-dating session. Four several months afterwards, they certainly were marching down a marriage aisle with the

Superstar Wars

theme track. Matt proposed by arranging their

Star Wars

figurines in a diorama form of a Sci-Fi Speed-Dating place. Keri’s engagement ring was concealed underneath Padmé Amidala of Naboo.

The two live in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with Matt’s 7-year-old girl, who Keri is helping make a Princess Leia outfit for Halloween. Stopping by the Sci-Fi Speed-Dating area at Chicago Comic Con this year, “I found myself similar,

awww

,” Keri recalls. “And then I happened to be like, every person repeat this! It struggled to obtain you!”

“discover a few individuals from the very first treatment exactly who I’ve already viewed walking on holding hands,” Glitch tells me following the program. “It really is sorts of an unwordable experience. When Keri and Matt labeled as to say, hey, we are marriage, I was like—” He falls their chin and pantomimes speechless excitement, arms flapping in the hand. “During My agreements for a time, underneath for which you indication, it can say ‘Ryan Glitch, Geek Pimp.’ They use it the state agreements! I imagined it actually was hilarious. Its a very good experience and that I think its great.”

The geek pimp himself, however, is solitary. Glitch’s most recent relationship started at his first-ever

Star Wars

speed-dating session; he had been merely internet hosting, but she found him on Facebook and they dated for quite a while. “i recently wish to have a wife and children. That is my only objective in life. If rate relationship failed to take place once again, if we never ever filmed once again, i’dn’t care and attention basically had a wife and kids.” But they aren’t positive whether he’s going to mix business with enjoyment again.

“i might like to fulfill some body,” Glitch sighs, “but i do believe it’s unethical to make use of my abilities for evil or self-gain.”