Friday, April 4, 2014

Don't be a Sucker for Online Quizzes



They are everywhere.

What Downtown Abbey Character are you?

What Superhero?

Font?

There is even one to help you discover - get this - "What Arbitrary Thing Are You?"

Really?

Are we that fricking board? Self absorbed? Lost? What?

You know I was in Guatemala last week, and I did not meet anyone wondering about these things. Instead, people were busy working and cleaning and talking - yes talking - face to face. Not chat icon to chat icon.

What an idea.

But the bigger, nastier, more insidious problem with all these online "quizzes" is that you are not the only one investigating your inner donut.

So are corporations.

Remember the surveys?
Long lists of questions which were trying to figure out if we were better suited for Time Magazine or Playboy? Well, people don't like filling them out. Too invasive, they say. And that, my dear quiz-takers, is bad for business. Why? Because business believes they do much better knowing your business.

So, instead of surveys, Facebook and other social media sites are teeming with cute little "quizzes." Which Twin Peaks Character am I? Well, Buzzfeed will gladly tell me once I tell them my favorite movie, song, drink, and TV show. Oh, and while I am at it, also describe a bit about my personality.

Get the picture? It doesn't matter. The people willing to buy the answers to your questions just did—a great big 3-D image of what I am likely to buy, watch, indulge in and who knows what....

I heard the other day that Target knows when a woman is pregnant before she does. It all has to do with buying patterns, which they track like a hummingbird tracks nectar.

In other words, you there in the pseudo-world of internet quiz-land, while you think you are having a little fun finding out if you are Dumbledore or Severus Snape, know in reality it is you who are being played.



What kind of candy are you? Let's hope it is not a sucker.


-Naseem Rakha 4/4/14