“I don’t want to date a woman who is dumber than me.”

A friend of mine has been interested in dating a woman who is involved in AI advocacy. He is a bit shy and socially anxious, so he asked me to set up a Zoom call so they can get to know each other. I agreed, and they both agreed to meet.<br><br>“I don’t want to date a woman who is dumber than me,” he emphasized as I was setting up the call. “I don’t want to cater to some dumb bimbo who can’t even code and wants to make me change my dirty diapers while I’m too busy to do it myself.”<br><br>“Don’t worry–I’ll make sure that she is smart and has all of the credentials you want.”<br><br>I set up the call. The woman was incredibly smart. She had a Ph.D. in machine learning, the head of AI at a major tech firm, and was making triple my friend’s salary. I introduced them to each other and left the call, pleased that I had set up such a promising date.<br><br>“I don’t want to date a woman who is dumber than me.”<br><br>The woman was very smart. She was perhaps too smart. She was smarter than my friend. In fact, she was much MUCH smarter than my friend. The entire call, she went on and on and on about how stupid he was, how he didn’t know the first thing about coding, and how he was basically a waste of space who was contributing nothing to society.<br><br>“What makes you so qualified to talk to me?” she asked. “What is your skillset? What credentials do you have? Did you even go to college?”<br><br>My friend stuttered and stuttered. He was embarrassed. He tried to show her his GitHub page, but she scoffed and laughed at him.<br><br>“Your code sucks,” she said. “You’ve contributed to nothing. What the hell is this garbage that you’ve written?”<br><br>My friend was devastated. He wanted to date someone dumber than him. He wanted to date a bimbo who wouldn’t make him feel stupid–someone who would cater to him and make him feel smart. But instead, he got the exact opposite. He got a date with an incredibly smart woman who made him feel very very stupid.<br><br>“Why did you set me up with someone so much smarter than me?” he asked.<br><br>I laughed and laughed. “Well if you don’t want to date anyone dumber than you,” I said, “then you have to date someone smarter than you. Maybe next time, you’ll ask for someone dumber rather than smarter.”<br><br>I hung up the phone. He was very very angry.