I don’t know. More importantly, neither does anyone else. The better question is, why would anyone think anyone could know? Though they have been with us for some time I’m seeing more and more quizzes on sundry social media feeds promising to tell me not just what pizza topping I am but which castaway on Gilligan’s Island, which 80’s pop diva, which former Secretary General of the United Nations. I’m not such a grumpus as to argue that there is something sinful about taking such quizzes. Nor am I inclined to believe that anyone takes these quizzes too seriously. I do believe, however, that one reason we are tempted to take the time to take such quizzes is wrapped up in what I call authority lag.
The internet is unlike any other publishing form that came before it. Perhaps its two biggest qualities are its ease of entrance and its reach. Before the advent of the internet publishing was a rather elite club. To be able to publish one had to have access to some seriously expensive hardware. Whether in print or through the airwaves media required technology to mass produce ideas, and to find paying markets to receive them and therefore called for trained professionals to produce things. No one ever found a teenager in a basement and gave him the keys to the New York Times, or FoxNews.
Which, of course, we are all well aware of. We snicker about the basement dwelling internet “writer.” We’re amused that no matter how bizarre, one can find every imaginable theory expounded and defended somewhere in cyber-space. But that is where the disconnect is. If we really believed that the person behind every website we visited is some socially awkward kid, would we spend as much time as we do online? I mean, we know objectively that Buzzfeed does not hire Ph.D’s in psychology who also have masters degrees in pop culture to write the “Which Flintstone are you?”. They don’t do double blind tests to make sure that their quiz questions truly reflect Wilma’s personality.
While we are plenty cynical at a conscious level, it’s at the subconscious level where we let faux authority slip through. We’re used to thinking that what we read, especially if it has nice design elements, has authority. We’re used to thinking that an organization called The Institute for Character Discernment must have an office somewhere with trained staff. When it’s really just some guy in his basement, who hopes you won’t know he’s just a guy in a basement. (Not me though. I work upstairs. You can take me seriously.)
On the internet it’s just us. It’s not a newsstand, but a coffee shop, not a newspaper but a diary, not the news, but home movies. My advice, and of course, it’s just me, is that we should be a bit more skeptical about the credentials of others, a bit more slow to lend credence to the incredulous.