I’ve always nursed a
desire to go on Mastermind. Now that
I’ve lived long enough to know the answers to slightly more than an
embarrassingly miniscule total of general knowledge questions, it occurs to me
that I might avoid coming last; if, that is, I can exercise the self-control
required not to flap about when an answer is on the tip of my tongue and then
to mutter FUCK’S SAKE when I’m told what it is, like everybody naturally would,
because clearly you’re prepped by the Mastermind wardens not to do that as it
makes for rather awkwardly shit telly.
The erroneous assumption
that a demonstration of knowledge implies intelligence is one of our society’s
sad maladies. People who win Mastermind are NOT actually
clever. I’d be fucked off if I spent
months researching from a wide range of sources in an effort to learn
everything about a chosen subject as deeply infused with facts as The Life and Works of Bob Dylan, only to
be beaten by some idle cunt who manages a score of 20 with no passes on Fawlty Towers, simply because he’s
watched the same 6 hours of television again and again. Or The
Harry Potter Novels. Oh well done,
you’ve read 7 seven books and remembered them.
You lazy fucker. Oh, and you work
as a librarian? One of those busy jobs
that means you have fuck-all to do now that they have automatic machines in
libraries? No wonder you know everything
about Emily Bronte (short life, one novel, you fucking cheat!)
An equally flawed belief held
by many is that a high IQ score makes you a genius. If you’ve ever sat an IQ test (one set by
MENSA as opposed to one of those 10-question internet jobbies that you do and
then have to sign up to something they’re selling to get your result), then you’ll
realise that having a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re intelligent, and certainly
far from being a fucking genius, but quite simply good at doing a certain kind
of test. And if you are good at doing
that kind of test, you are invited to join MENSA, a club full of people who
BELIEVE that they are the cleverest in the land and desire the opportunity to
boast about being in MENSA and joining MENSA’s dating agency so that they can
meet other people that are good at tests to have sex with and generally talk to
about doing tests and quizzes and being ever so fucking clever. The pure fact that someone would choose to
join MENSA is the surest indicator of non-intelligence and therefore all
members should be consequently excluded from MENSA for not being clever enough
to have joined in the first place.
What I have NEVER nursed a
desire to go on is University Challenge.
As a teenager, considering a university career, the impossibility of answering
anything on that show caused me great anxiety and destroyed my confidence. As a middle-aged adult, the impossibility of
answering more than a few questions on that show causes me great confusion as
to how anyone aged 18-21 knows that much about science, maths and culture. What did their parents do to them? Lock them in a cellar with the Encyclopaedia
Britannica and electrodes tied to their toes, with no access to any television
channel except BBC2 and a regime of 18-hour a day home-tutoring that forms an
educational equivalent of Victorian child labour in its brutality and
intensity? Freaks.
At the other end of the
spectrum is that now ubiquitous dumbing down of quiz questions linked to
prime-time TV shows trying to make money by getting viewers to text in their answers
to patronisingly brainless challenges like, “Which country do English people
come from? (a) England, (b)
Brazil, (c) Tesco, (d) I’m a moron.”
Why not just ask people to text in, charge them a quid and say that
someone will be randomly selected to win the prize? Do they really believe that there are people
out there who’d answer (a) and then consider their chance of success greatly
enhanced, because not everyone would have known that?
I wanted to finish this blog
post with a rant about the BBC quiz, EGG HEADS, but I have probably exhausted
your patience by now and besides a loud beeping sound tells me that my 2
minutes are up; but I’ve started so I’ll finish: Eggheads
- What utter cunts.
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