Apathy Sketchpad

I was just asked this question in a survey online:

My response was to laugh out loud, copy-paste it into a blog post, and then close the window. I suspect the number of people who responded much the same way will never be reported.

Surveys are weird, though. I was once phoned up by a guy asking me questions about something he called the “rugby uninen world cup”, where “uninen” was pronounced “U, 9, N”. The bulk of the survey was him listing corporations and me telling him that I don’t know whether or not they sponsored the world cup. Then there were questions with numerical answers, which went like this, “how many times a week do you watch sports?”

“Zero.”

“Two?”

“Zero.”

“Two?”

“Zero.”

“One?”

“Deal.”

Then he asked me if I had a Visa card, which I do. He said, “Do you know what is,” (he was Indian; I don’t know if he was in England or not but he definitely was Indian,) “actually, I will tell you what is a Visa card. It is a card that you use to buy things and then you pay back the money at the end of the month,” to which I replied, “no, it isn’t.” That’s a credit card. Visa is a brand name. I have a Visa card that operates on nothing like that principle.

This sort of thing, I think, explains why we have so many products that nobody could possibly ever want.