I have determined that I am the writer’s equivalent of bipolar. I am not sure that psychologically I qualify (though I am also not sure I do NOT not), but my writing habits sure do. I seem to either have a plethora of positive to share, or a storm cloud of negative. And since I prefer to stay away from negative, this usually results in my going into blogging silences. Sadly, in recent weeks, thanks to the abundance of negativity that is prevalent just about everywhere, my blogging has been notoriously NON. That is an awful lot of silence from a guy who often doesn’t know how to shut up. But I am fed up with being fed up, and decided that a little humor … even if slightly bitter humor … would maybe help end the silence … and the negativity (at least the personal negativity).
I have masterfully managed to completely separate myself from almost all things connected to humanity. This makes it rather difficult to relay the humor I encounter, since I really only encounter me and I am boring. But as much as I would love to, I can’t seem to escape the world of social networking, which somehow means I also can’t escape the political world. This is a world that is ripe with humor. In fact, it is such a joke that any humorous commentary I could possibly conjure up would pale in comparison to the ludicrousity (it needs its own word) of modern-day politics. So what HAVE I been doing to … er … um … WITH … myself? Watching a lot of bad TV. Playing a lot of pointless games. And taking … SHUDDER … surveys.
I am not proud of this fact, but I cannot deny it either. I take online questionnaires, for “fun”, to relieve boredom, and to ”earn money”. Of course the last is by far the funniest, unless earning 10 dollars for hours of answering questions that may or may not have been written by trained chimps is actually called earning money. The one thing that all these surveys HAS done for me is provide me with an unwavering surety, verging on pure faith, that humanity is …
DOOMED.
Most of the surveys are presented by advertisers to see if their intended audiences are actually as brainless and easily manipulated as the advertisers assume they are, but some of them are political “activists” seeing if THEIR intended audiences are actually as brainless and easily manipulated as the political “activists” assume they are. What scares me is that the advertisers and political “activists” may be right. I suspect there must be several classes for proper survey writing, such as Forcing Answers 101, and its sequel Making Completely Unreasonable Assumptions 102. There is also a follow-up course … Interpreting Statistics to Say What You Want (a 300 level course at the very least).
Questions are almost invariably multiple-choice. However the choices will rarely allow for the concept of independent thought. For instance, none of the above, or maybe even all of the above … or worst yet … it depends on the situation … will rarely be offered as options. So one is forced to pick from a selection of answers that may not really apply … thus providing the questioners with undeniable “facts” that they gladly force down our throats at a later date, once their extremely (non)scientific questions are answered. In other words they are modeled after the tests that define the education system these days.
I could give many examples of how ridiculous some of these questions are, such as asking the personality traits of THINGS, or asking how much we spent on a random item bought twelve months ago, but that would make this already rather long bit o’ nonsense REALLY long. So I will focus on the specific questions that prompted me to write this rather long bit o’ nonsense.
- Do you drink beverages in the afternoon for a specific reason? Some of the possible reasons … a pick me up, a snack … those are the ones I picked, though to me they are basically the same thing.
- What kind of beverage is it? … several varieties except the one that happens to be the correct one for me, which is a fruit smoothie.
- What are you doing when you drink this beverage? This was the question that really threw me. I am not sure how my answer will help them, since what I do while I drink my beverage is drink my beverage.
If the average human actually thinks the way those who create these questionnaires think they think, then I am pretty sure of two things … I am not human, and humanity is most definitely a failed experiment.
