Brow Beat

Follow Friday: If You Come at the King, You Best Love The Wire

Michael K. Williams as Omar Little on The Wire.

“I don’t read books. The Great American Novel has been written… and it’s called The Wire.”

And with that first tweet begins the timeline of @OKCLovesTheWire (or should I say, “The Great American Twitter Account”?). The feed is simply a compilation of things users on the dating website OK Cupid say about the HBO drama.

Such as:

But if she thinks no one watched, she clearly hasn’t read enough OK Cupid profiles. As @OKCLovesTheWire demonstrates, the show has had a long and prominent afterlife on DVD—and has become a go-to cultural reference in online efforts to attract potential romantic partners.

Others take a more sophisticated approach, comparing themselves to characters on the show—thus proving their intimate knowledge of the show as well as their considerable sex appeal.

There’s also a more modest version of this tack: aspiring to some day be like the show’s characters. Consider this OK Cupid user, 59 years young—and never too old to give up on love, or his dreams:

An even more alluring form of online mating call? Combining your love of The Wire with your love of dogs:

There are also a few self-profilers who resort to a kind of TV-watching blackmail:

@OKCLovesTheWire not only highlights our amusing efforts to craft romantically appealing online identities; it also demonstrates just how much we value shared cultural interests in potential mates. And at least one OK Cupid man actually cares more—or pretends to care more—about the shared interest than in the potential mating: