Susceptible

Posted on August 7, 2002 in Reflections Whimsies

I’ve got to stop taking these quizzes. The “Tortured Artist” quiz struck a little too close to certain self doubts I carry about and gave me reason to be worry that I might be brainwashed into something that would not have happened had I not taken the quiz. I am susceptible.

It used to be astrology and superstition that brought me down to a fatalist frame of mind. I now decline to state my sign, read astrology columns, or ask the sign of other people. This is the reason:

My hometown newspaper used to carry a comic page feature called “Stargazer”. I suppose its location should have tipped me off. I was young, uncertain, and hungry for some certainty. I’d look to this column mostly to see what moon face they put next to my sign. The face was a kind of prototype emoticon. You could see at a glance whether your day was going to be good, bad, or neutral. The actual horoscope was written out in a code. You matched the sequence of numbers next to your sign to a list of words in the center column. Thus did the author cunningly combine the mystery of a crossword puzzle with the promise of insight.

I’d secretly glance to the feature every day. How my heart would leap up in delight when the moon smiled and the horoscope spoke of the coming of love or money. The frowning moon made me cringe and the moon which was divided into a light and a dark half made me feel no better. I wanted each day to bring something good.

I managed to observe that when I saw the frowning moon, I shivered in anticipation of the soul-killing event that was due to ruin my life. Seeing the good moon also made for a bad day. The chart didn’t predict events; it suggested a mood to adopt and all too often the promise of the happy turned into disappointment.

Friends who claimed to be better versed in the logic and method of astrology sought to explain my tentative findings: “You’re not suppose to pay attention to the sun sign,” they’d say. “Look to the moon sign.” I did. When they’d ask my sign and make their decisions about whether or not I was a worthy date, they’d still want to know the sun sign. I did a complete horoscope based on the charts that professional astrologers used. I painstakingly determined the exact latitude and longitude of my birth place. The chart suggested a personality to me. I tried to live up to it. The stars said that I was no artist, had no talent (despite the 5 I scored on the Advanced Placement English examination) for writing. I would be best suited, they suggested, to being an accountant. I hated math. I hated numbers. I read at a college level when I was in the Fifth Grade and struggled to learn my multiplication tables. The depression in me took my lack of keen judgement about myself as a sign that I was fatally flawed. Alas! I have since met other depressives who have been through the same self deception. Some are conscious of it, some remain its thrall. If astrology was true, the Beast led me to reason, then some darker force was at work. The same friends who told me about the importance of moon signs and of doing a complete chart had a ready answer for me that the Beast gladly chanted: I was one of those people who suffered from a syndrome in which you experience the precise opposite of what the stars are pulling you to do. I was a contrary. Recognitions of the flaws in such arguments and in the descriptions that astrology claimed to provide for me were drummed out by the Beast beating its drum of doom. My friends assured me that astrology always spoke the truth — as did numerology, palmistry, bibliomancy, UFO paranoia, the visions of self-proclaimed psychics, and whatever guru or gura happened to be popular at the moment.

Following that morning when I sat up in bed and told my wife that I had come to the conclusion that I was mentally ill, I went through a psychiatric screening and was put on Prozac. My resistance to the insidious culture of the Signs began. I stopped sneaking peeks at my horoscope when Lynn wasn’t looking and I stopped braking suddenly to determine the color of the darkish cat that had just crossed the road in front of me. I was cured of superstition until I found online quizzes.

The Empress loves them more than I do. She introduced me to them. Then I started finding them on other pages. I took them, Posted the more flattering or humorous results to my pages.

I am starting to find in myself the rough edge of a consciousness that is the symptom of mindless incubation of the ideas of the self-appointed behavior mavens and cunning sadists who press their judgements on me via the mechanism of the quiz. Not all quizzes are evil: Belief-O-Matic performs a service by pointing its takers to a religious congregation that might suit them well. My results on that quiz (Theravada Buddhist, then Unitarian and Liberal Quaker) made perfect sense to me. Other quizzes, like the “Which Star-Crossed Marvel Lover Are You?” make me laugh. More often, however, I find that the prognosticators who analyze me through their quizzes strike out wildly in many different directions. I’ve seen myself chopped to fit many “personality” molds from “Tiger” to “Healer”. I conclude that most quizzes tell you much about the attitude of the person who wrote them and comparitively little about yourself. The task that most quiz-writers set themselves to is the fitting of others to the stereotypes they have made in their minds. I’ve often found myself not finding the answer I would have given to a question, mostly because it wouldn’t have occurred to the quiz creator as a valid response. The danger of quizzes for me is akin to that of astrology: i start letting the quiz define for me who I am.

The author of the “Tortured Artist” quiz said this describes me [sic]:

Art is significant in my life, people are scum but I have the capicity to deal with it. Give it a few more years and I will either forget about art or hate the world.

Why do I give any credence to the opinion of some mediocre “needs-a-life” programmer who is, at most, only a few years out of high school? I’ve lived my life, thank you, and I have developed nuances from experiences that this fellow hasn’t even begun to realize exist. Why do I waste my time worrying that this guy might be right about me? The effect of the Prozac must be weakening. Or maybe I am just bored.