UPDATE: The lawsuit has been dropped! Details at the end of the post.
A brave hero in Austin Texas has taken his fight against the evils of misandry to the courts, filing a suit against a woman who skipped out on a date with him after he criticized what he saw as her excessive texting.
He is asking for S17.31 in damages, the cost of a ticket to a showing of the 3-D version of Guardians of the Galaxy 2: Galactic Boogaloo, or whatever it’s called, I don’t have time for fact checking.
Let’s go to KVUE.com to hear his side of the story:
Brandon Vezmar met the Round Rock woman on Bumble, a dating app. They went on a first date to a movie theater to see “Guardians of the Galaxy.” During the movie, Vezmar claims that she opened her phone between 10 and 20 times to read and send text messages.
This, Vezmar claims, is in “direct violation of the theater’s police” and adversely affected “the viewing experience of Plaintiff and others.”
“I said ‘listen, your texting is driving me a little nuts’ and she said ‘I can’t not text my friend.’ I said ‘maybe you can take it outside to the lobby, I’ve seen people get kicked out movies for this,” Vezmar explained.
The woman took his advice and left the theater, but did not come back.
According to Vezmer, he is less interested in getting his 17 bucks back than he is in the “principle” at stake here, “as Defendant’s behavior is a threat to civilized society.” He thinks her behavior represented some sort of civilization-threatening abdication of “personal responsibility.”
Needless to say, the woman’s version of events is a little different. She told KVUE she deserted her date because he was creeping her the hell out. And he still is.
I did have a very brief date with Brandon, that I chose to end prematurely. His behavior made me extremely uncomfortable, and I felt I needed to remove myself from the situation for my own safety. He has escalated the situation far past what any mentally healthy person would. I feel sorry that I hurt his feelings badly enough that he felt he needed to commit so much time and effort into seeking revenge. I hope one day he can move past this and find peace in his life.
Somehow I don’t think that will ever happen. Especially since this may be Vezmer’s last date for a very long time.
Check out the video on KVUE.com to see the literally neckbearded (not that there’s anything wrong with that) Vezmer explain his crusade in a little more detail. The odds that he’s a Redditor seem extremely high.
UPDATE: Check out this interview, where he explains how he’s fighting for men who are being “exploited” by women on dates. The article makes even more clear what a creepy stalker he is.
UPDATE 2: The lawsuit has been dropped! She basically paid him off so he’d leave her alone. Here’s the AV Club on how this all shook out:
We’re saved everyone: By Inside Edition, of all things. Apparently as sick of this story as the rest of us, IE set up a meeting between Vezmar and his date, so that she could give him the $17.31 back. In return, she asked for him to please god, “just leave this alone.” Vezmar carefully counted out all the money, and agreed to drop his lawsuit. We’d like to say that this will be the last we hear of this, but we would undoubtedly be wrong.
H/T — @RemingtonWild and @ami_angelwings on Twitter
@cornychips:
Good for her! I only wish, for her sake, that she’d done it as soon as he started complaining about it instead of after all this kerfuffle (not that the kerfuffle is in any way her fault, of course).
Then it would have been 100% obvious that she was instantly and disdainfully disqualifying him from the category of People Who Might Even Remotely Deserve the Privilege of Taking Me Out, instead of looking as though she was possibly just scared of a lawsuit.
The only upside to this saga is that now every woman will be able to do a quick google search to know why she should not go anywhere near a date with trash pile Brandon Vezmar.
If it’s not about a woman being nice, then how come the word etiquette keeps coming up?
And why are you obsessing over how other people react to bad dates? If you want to pay back the cost of a dinner, that’s fine but why care if other people don’t? Why is this the first time I’m even hearing about this etiquette principal if it’s so damn important.
This conversation is confusing me.
Anyway, I think that this is just another way of putting the burden on women to read men’s emotions and respond to them whether it’s about being nice or not.
This is incredibly vague and opens up the door for women taking all the blame if they judge the resentment factor incorrectly.
@WWTH
That’s…a fair point. I hadn’t considered how strange it was that they’ve been arguing until their face is blue that they’re right no matter how often we show that they aren’t.
@Kimstu
Fuck. You. Seriously. Fuck you. A terrified woman being creeped out and forced to bow before some shithead’s ego due to fear of internet harassment is never anything to be happy about. This isn’t a fucking Jane Austen novel, we don’t live in a world of ritualized etiquette engrained into all of us since childhood.
I am seriously angry enough that I can’t articulate just how much disgust I have for the way you’ve responded to this woman doing what she had to do to be safe.
What a singularly ungracious way of putting it. I do not believe you are nearly a big a proponent of etiquette as you would like to portray.
She definitely should’ve stayed in the creepy and potentially dangerous situation long enough to fish out loose change from her purse (in the dark) and add it up to equal the exact price of a movie ticket and a pizza, because Both Sides!
@ kimstu
I think it’s interesting that you never address the fact that you find people like her “greedy and undignified”. That’s what is fucking disgusting. You are calling a woman greedy for ignoring a creeper!!! What the fuck!
And don’t think i forgot your shitty excuse for his stalking “he already had her number and info so it’s totes ok to send her messages after she bailed”
THAT’S NOT FOR YOU TO DECIDE WHAT IS A SAFETY ISSUE FOR A WOMAN WHO HAD TO LEAVE A DATE TO ESCAPE A CREEPY AND VENGEFUL GUY.
That is fucking gross!
This miss manners bullshit is what keeps women down. Fuck that fucking shit.
@ kimstu
Last one. You keep explaining yourself this concept of etiquette thinking WE don’t understand YOU. But I do realize what you are trying to say regarding gifts and taking the high road etc. In a different situation, I believe that you would be correct. But not in this one. Not this one where a woman literally fled a date in which she felt unsafe.
That’s why people are arguing with you. That’s why people are getting pissed at your lack of empathy to her and your scathing judgment towards a “greedy undignified ” woman.
It doesn’t matter what her reason was for “not paying off the creeper who started stalking her”. You have a seriously weird idea of etiquette. At this point, the reason she paid him off is because he was a serious creep out to destroy her life in every way he could, and even involved her family. “Greedy and undignified” does not apply to her. It applies to him.
I hope Inside Edition paid appearance fees to both, though I suspect they didn’t.
@Kimitsu
If you think someone is entitled to a date despite being a creepy, unpleasant shit just because they paid money, you are confusing dating with hiring an escort.
@Betrayer
Past a certain level of creepiness, escorts will kick you to the curb too.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
Huh? Who says etiquette is just about “being nice”? For women or for anybody else?
Etiquette is about getting across what you mean, in the context of all the cultural norms, customs and expectations that make “just saying what you mean” impossible in any context-independent way.
Like it or not, in our deeply capitalist society buying something for somebody else is perceived as giving them a benefit, for which they somehow “owe” you something.
In situations such as social dating, where we want to explicitly contradict that default perception (because dating’s not supposed to be a commercial transaction), we need an explicit etiquette rule for that purpose. That’s why we have the etiquette rule that “The person who initiates the date pays all the expenses of the date with nothing expected in exchange”.
Accepting a date invitation in accordance with that rule is an expression of social trust. When the inviter deliberately violates that rule by complaining about paying for the date, they are betraying that trust.
Repaying the complainer’s money is how you get across the message that they have betrayed your trust. They are no longer worthy of being trusted even to the tiny extent of accepting a minor favor from them as a social gesture. You rightly refuse to accept from them anything that could be construed as any kind of a favor or benefit in accordance with the default “transactional” expectation that you “owe” them something in exchange.
By the way, this is also known as the “Take Back Your Mink” principle. Namely, if somebody gives you a present that appears to be merely a gesture of social nicety, and later you find out that they expected to get something from you as “payment” for it, you don’t hang on to the present and say “Too bad loser, it was a gift so I’m keeping it!” Nope, you show your disgust and disdain for their betrayal of social trust by contemptuously telling them to Take Back Their Mink.
@Kimstu
You know what the first rule of etiquette is?
Not correcting other people’s etiquette.
You’re not the etiquette deity you seem to think you are. Miss Manners answers etiquette questions that other people ask her. She doesn’t jump in out of nowhere to scold other people for their etiquette. I am 100% certain that she would not approve because she has said as much, in words, multiple times when people write in to her bragging about how they ambushed someone else’s etiquette.
Just fucking stop. What you’re doing has been bad etiquette from the start and it certainly isn’t smoothing over any social situations, which is the primary and only purpose of etiquette.
@Kimstu
When I used to read The Washington Post (print edition) years ago, I consistently enjoyed the Miss Manners column. Her dry sense of humor, and her custom of addressing any and all advice seekers (regardless of temperament or civility) as “Gentle Reader”, amused me to no end. She is also from my mother’s generation, and in many ways she reminded me of her. My mom was very proper in many ways, but she was brilliant, had a wicked sense of humor, and was the kindest person I’ve ever known.
So…I may be wrong (it happens sometimes) but I don’t think that Kimstu is representing Miss Manner’s advice properly. Maybe because I could never imagine my mother counseling me or my three sisters to do what she suggests.
This is how Kimstu put it in her first post (apologies – I don’t know how to blockquote):
“If your date acts like you owe them a “return” for what they spent on you or complains about your “exploiting” them for it, just hand them the money (Miss Manners suggests flinging it down on the table before disdainfully exiting the restaurant), and you need never speak to them again.”
Kimstu – Can you please provide a link to that advice? I’m happy to admit I’m wrong, but if I’m not, I think the record should be corrected so as not to besmirch my mother. I mean Miss Manners.
@IgnoreSandra:
Nobody here is happy about her being creeped out or fearful, as far as I know: certainly not me. But the fact that she did the right thing, to stand up for her independence and call out the asshole’s betrayal of social trust, is something to be happy about. She told the creepy shithead to Take Back His Mink, so I say again, good for her.
@cornychips:
Whoa, I never said that I thought she actually is greedy or undignified. Not in the least. What I said is that failing to punish somebody’s violation of social trust by rejecting their payment of your date expenses can come across as looking greedy and undignified.
That’s not her fault as an individual, not in any way. That’s just the reality of this whole entrenched complex of cultural norms and expectations that we’ve got in our society, which we need etiquette to navigate.
@Kimstu
Here you go again. Explain, explain, explain.
You don’t seem to be getting that we understand as much as you do. We’ve just reached a different conclusion than your assessment of proper protocol in this situation. You wanna live according to your standards? Fine. Whatever. Go do it. But don’t you fucking dare tell any of us we’re wrong for handling the situation in a different way.
And let’s not forget how you were gloating and crowing not a dozen replies ago (Or immediately previous to this reply) about how this woman was forced, under threat of violence, to pay her abuser money. To abide by your “principle”. You fucking asshole.
You see these tendrils of yours you are obviously trying to reach out into our lives? Withdraw them, now, before we start snapping them. We do not need to do things the exact same way you would do them.
@Policy of Madness:
Well sure, in actual social situations, that’s very true. In actual social situations, it’s also considered contrary to etiquette to gossip about incidents in other people’s social lives, the way we’ve all been doing during this entire thread about some poor woman’s horrible date experience.
But on a discussion board, arguing freely about the morals or ethics or etiquette or prudence or wisdom etc. of the actions of other people known to us only from public media is par for the course.
@Kimstu
Not equivalent. We haven’t used her name, and this situation has connections to the misogyny most of us experience in our lives and the direction that misogyny could go. This could happen to literally any of us who date men, being prepared is a good idea. Plus he deserves to be shamed for this. That’s one way we help prevent bad behavior like this.
So…find a valid argument. And maybe stop talking down to us.
So you think that the interactions you’ve been having don’t constitute an actual social situation.
That says a ton about you, and none of it is good.
Just. Fucking. Stop. Nobody is dying to hear more from you. You’ve made your point and it’s been rejected. This horse is dead and it’s hypocritical for you to hammer on about etiquette anyway.
@IgnoreSandra:
You certainly don’t seem to understand what I’m saying in my posts. For example:
@IgnoreSandra:
I’m absolutely not gloating about her being forced to do anything. I applaud her for having done the right thing and stood up for herself in repaying the money her abuser spent on her under false pretenses (i.e., the false pretense of being a decent human being who could be trusted to accept and abide by elementary social rules).
@Kimitsu
It’s getting late. Maybe you should take a shower and go to bed. Think about it. Sleep on it. Have a good breakfast and see if your thoughts are more coherent tomorrow.
Right now…you’re mostly just digging yourself deeper.
That’s not good.
@Policy of Madness:
Not insofar as they involve the woman and man in this public news story. I have no reason to think that either one of them has even the faintest idea that I exist, much less about anything I’ve been saying concerning them. I don’t see any way in which I could be reasonably described as being in a “social situation” with either of them.
@Troubelle:
That’s okay, thanks, if people want to continue talking to me I’m happy to go on talking to them! I certainly won’t continue going on about it if they’re done posting on the topic, though.
You’re in a social situation with other people on this board. One that you’ve turned into an awkward lecture-fest about etiquette, which, even if you were correct in your interpretation of etiquette (you aren’t) would be hella rude. Unless you’re the guardian of a child and responsible for teaching that child the ways of the world, noticing or commenting on other people’s etiquette is rude, because the only purpose of etiquette is to make social interactions go smoothly. Your incredible breach in breaking etiquette’s literal first rule has made the social interaction on this forum really unpleasant, which betrays how poorly you understand etiquette and how unprepared you are to correct anyone’s behavior anyway.
Just. Fucking. Stop.