I guess I’m horny for Pokémon now (it’s not what you think, I promise)

Yet again, a man on Reddit is insisting that “women are shallow” and that “women only want to date Chads with six-packs,” and yet again, I am laughing my ass off.

Let me be clear: it’s not that I take issue with this man feeling insecure about his physique; appearance-based strictures affect us all in this culture, and an unfortunate one for men is the proliferation of muscly bodies and the widespread sense that those bodies are what (straight and bi) women want.

But I can’t help laughing at this particular sentiment on this particular day, because 1) women are not a hive mind, and 2) I’ve just spent a solid hour getting horny over a gangly Twitch streamer because of his encyclopedic knowledge of Pokémon games.

This has been a hardcore quarantine hobby of mine – playing these games, which I’ve loved since childhood but hadn’t touched in several years, and watching other people play these games. Horniness is not habitually part of my gaming experience (I don’t play the porn games that people like Ana Valens write about), but intelligence and nerdiness are habitually part of my attractions, so it makes sense that I develop smouldering crushes on everyone from home improvement YouTubers to Jeopardy champions to, yes, Twitch streamers.