This matchmaker went viral when her $35,000 client took a date to a soft pretzel restaurant—but he wasn’t subject to the ‘bald tax’ or the ‘short tax’

People bemoan the death of the monoculture, but on X, the everything app, it seems like there’s still a character of the day — or, at minimum, a discourse of the day, one that you can go around the office and ask people about.

On Tuesday, that character was matchmaker Blaine Anderson; or, more precisely, one of her jilted clients.

In a post with more than seven million views on X, Anderson recounted a matchmaking attempt gone wrong.

Her male client — 32, jewish, finance, “medium handsome — had suggested a first date at a restaurant whose signature offering appeared to be a giant soft pretzel.

The woman — 26, “amazing family, sexy + refined” — bailed; she had wanted something more upscale.

The post shot to virality, and the internet immediately convened a struggle session.

The woman was shallow, the man had dodged a bullet, he should die alone, Anderson had scammed him.

One replier even proposed taking women to the city dump to shoot rats.

But for Anderson, it was just another day at work.

Economists who like to see the world as an amalgamation of markets have long described marriage and dating as a matching market.

But it is a peculiar one; having more money does not simply let you buy a better product, because the product usually has preferences of their own.

A man can pay Anderson $100,000 to search harder, vet more women and make better introductions; he cannot pay $100,000 to make the woman he wants want him back.

That leaves Anderson actually operating in two markets at once.

In one, she is paid to discover what men and women actually want from one another.