What’s with all these Internet quizzes? You know the ones. They pop up on Facebook. Or one of your 4,927 Facebook friends sends you a quiz so she can get to know you better.
Because, goodness knows, she only has 5,280 friends herself, and therefore she needs all the BFFs she can get. So it’s, like, really important that you tell her all about yourself. And post a selfie while you are at it.
These quizzes are sorta like the “rate your mate” quizzes our moms used to read about in “Cosmo,” back in the post-Kinsey but pre-Steinem days. And please don’t tell me that it was your grandma who took those “rate your mate” quizzes, instead of your mom. Because if that is the case, then you are way too young to be clicking around on Facebook, and I am older than dirt.
Those Internet quizzes are real thought-provoking exercises. Not because they are intellectually challenging, but because they make you wonder, “Who would ever think up these things?” And they may provoke you to comments like, “Why on earth would I ever want to know what kind of animal I might be and why did I just answer all those dumb questions in order to find out that if I weren’t human, I would be an armadillo?”
OK, here is a popular one: “What famous movie character are you?”
After playing 20 Questions on a website of unknown origin, which has probably dropped more cookies on you than a whole troop of Girl Scouts on a quest to raise money for a trip to a jamboree, you discover you are most like Megan, Melissa McCarthy’s character in “Bridesmaids.” And here you had visions of being Scarlett O’Hara, Spider-Man or Katniss. Take heart, it could be worse. Someone we know, but shall not name, was most like Mr. Chow, Ken Jeong’s character in “The Hangover.” Not once. Not twice. Heck, I was Chowed in all three “Hangovers” Oops, did I say “I?” It was really a friend of a friend of a friend that tested out to be like Mr. Chow. Really.
Have you taken the Harry Potter Sorting Hat quiz? The one where you find out which Hogwarts house you belong in? Everyone wants to be in Gryffindor or maybe Slytherin. Every time, every sorting test, some of us poor schlubs end up in Ravenclaw. We Clawers study hard, are abysmal at sports, and never get to play with dragons. Luna Lovegood, the Harry Potter character who is strange, even for Hogwarts, is a Ravenclaw. Stupid Sorting Hat quiz.
Who is writing these diabolical quizzes? Can’t you just see some nerd, with sticky, orange Chee-fingers, amped-up on Dew? He’s cuddling his laptop and coding a quiz that will inform the clueless test taker, “If you were a celebrity pet, you’d be Paris Hilton’s chihuahua.” That is probably every nerd’s secret dream. Or else it’s being hired as a Cheetos taster at Frito-Lay.
If you have ever taken any of these Internet tests, please lock your significant other out of your Facebook account. Now. For the sake of your relationship, as well as any children you have, will soon have, or will someday have. Your sweetie does not need to know that the food you most resemble is a spinach soufflé, and your kids will never let you forget that if you were a character in the great American novel, you’d be “The Poky Little Puppy.” Or “The Cat in the Hat.” Whichever.
Well, speaking as Mr. Chow, who is actually an armadillo and is enrolled at Ravenclaw, these Internet tests are spot on.
Plus, now I’m getting all sorts of interesting emails asking me to donate money to rescue endangered armadillos and to enroll in online magic potion cooking courses. And, by the way, there is this great Facebook test to find out what famous rock star I might be most like.
Devo, here I come!
Hope is a humor columnist for The Dickinson Press and The Drill. She writes about everyday life, living in the Oil Patch and Twinkies.
