Friday Night Magic Card Game Linked to Male Infertility New Study Finds

Denver, CO

It's Friday night in Denver, Colorado, and the most happening place in town isn't a night club; it's a local Denver area card shop, where young men pack the gaming tables to play Magic: the Gathering. The atmosphere is tense at the officially sanctioned tournament. The smells of sweat and two-liter Mountain Dews fill the air, peppered with the aroma of Funyuns and honey buns. Cards hit the table in rapid succession as players smack talk their way to glory or defeat. But little do these players know, more may be on the line than an unopened pack of Shinies or Holofoils. Their very reproductive health may be at risk.

So says a new study published Friday by the Institute of Theoretical Science Bureau of Statistics (ITSBS), which finds that the popular card game Magic: the Gathering may be the single, leading cause of infertility in young men between the ages of 18 to 23. The report, coming on the heels of an earlier fictional study conducted by the ITSBS that examined the effects of playing Yu Gi Oh (another popular tournament card game), sent shock waves through the gaming community.

"Clearly we're seeing a link between playing card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu Gi Oh night after night and male reproduction," according to ITSBS spokesperson Garfield Promo. "Just what this link is remains to be seen; however, the results are clear: becoming a regular Magic: the Gathering or Yu Gi Oh card player decreases your chance of conceiving a child by 100 percent."

"The ramifications are astounding," said John Foils, the social scientist made up for this article, who headed both studies. "At first we thought these young men simply lacked the social skills or basic hygiene necessary to attract a female. But what we found shattered our pre-conceived notions. These may just be the most sexually promiscuous males in America today."

While most study participants were reluctant to discuss their sexuality in private, researchers discovered that once players were placed in a group setting, a card shop or local fast food restaurant, they began to open up.

"They seemed more comfortable discussing intimate issues when surrounded by their peers," Foils discovered. "I vividly remember the night when one player (who asked to be referred to by his nickname, 'Twitchy', so his mom doesn't find out), finally broke down and admitted to having 'wild monkey sex' three times the night before. As soon Twitchy said this, another player divulged that he'd had 'wild monkey sex' four times that same night. The ice broken, soon the other players nearby confessed to having wild monkey sex five, even six times a night, every night."

"Threesomes, four-somes, even five-somes seemed to be the norm with this population," according to Foils, "And protection? Forget it. Most of them admit they've never used a condom. Of those who did, one indicated that he stopped using contraception when he could no longer find the extra large size he needed. One of his peers added he faced similar circumstances when he couldn't find the extra, extra large size he required. Yet another needed jumbo, extra, extra large."

"It was a similar story in every card shop we investigated," adds Foils. "Young men living on the edge, engaging in wild, unprotected sexual activity and playing cards."

The study, conducted over an exhaustive nine-month period, canvassed card shops from coast to coast. "While we concentrated our efforts on mid-sized metropolitan areas such as Denver, Colorado and Charlotte, North Carolina, we also went to card shops in outlying suburbs and major cities," said Promo. "Originally we planned to study both males and females, but despite our best efforts, we were unable to find enough females in these card shops to create a statistically significant sample size. Still, the results we were able to find astounded us."

But as these results poured in, what puzzled researchers most was that despite the rampant, sexual behavior exhibited by research participants, not one of the players had ever fathered a child.

"Clearly this meant that something more was going on," said Foils. "And this led us to an unmistakable conclusion: playing Magic: the Gathering or Yu Gi Oh had rendered these young men infertile."

Currently, some ITSBS scientists believe that simply playing Magic: the Gathering or Yu Gi Oh causes infertility. Others think that the polyvinyl undercoating used in holofoil cards to make them so shiny is absorbed through a player's skin creating a hormonal imbalance. More research is underway to confirm these hypotheses.

Despite the sensational findings, what disturbed Foils the most was the cavalier attitude displayed by many of the players.

"When presented with the evidence that playing Magic: the Gathering or Yu Gi Oh may lead to infertility, most players shrugged it off and refused to quit playing," said Foils. "And even more disturbing, when players were asked to reveal this information to their female partners, most confessed they couldn't remember the contact information, or even the names, of the women they'd been with."

"When pressed, these young men act like they've never even spoken to a woman, much less been intimate with them. Clearly this is how they justify their wild behavior -- treating these women like they don't exist," added Promo. "And that is perhaps the greatest tragedy of it all."