Last year on holiday, my beach read was Neil Strauss's 'The Game', an autobiography about the 'underworld' of the male pick-up artist. It was an interesting read...one of the things I liked best about it was that the 'pick-up artists' in the book collected and categorised their conquests in ways only men can do, seemingly completely forgetting that these women were real people. One kept an alphabetical log, whilst another ranked them in order of attractiveness (in case you hadn't guessed, PC this book isn't). I got the impression they all could have saved themselves a lot of time and effort if they'd just gone out and got themselves a job-lot of model aircraft to build instead, with a little chart to record all their efforts on in whatever way they wanted. Tom Cruise made a bizarre cameo in the book too, doing and saying absolutely nothing whatsoever to dispel the 'sub-atomic fruitcake' image he currently enjoys. All good fun.
But anyway. Part of the book was devoted to the methods used by the pick-up artists to entice their potential conquests, together with their effectiveness. I read through them wondering if any of them would have worked on me, and I'm almost ashamed to admit the one that would, is the one Strauss refers to as 'chick-crack', i.e. a supposedly impromptu personality test he would try out on a potential conquest and her friend/s. Called 'chick-crack' because of its 100% success rate, it would consist of Strauss (or one of his 'disciples') approaching a girl and saying something like "I can tell you your personality in five questions".
Even though I like to think I have some idea of my own personality by now, I lap up personality tests and quizzes like my childhood cat used to lap up evaporated milk. If there is a 'What's Your Ideal Career? - Test Inside!' strapline on the front of a magazine, I'll buy it, even if the magazine is rubbish and even though my answers are always the same, 'writer' or 'counsellor'. What am I looking for by doing essentially the same quiz over and over again? It's not as though I'd nod along in agreement if the conclusion ever changed and became 'debt collector', 'toilet cleaner' or 'football club manager'.
It's not just career quizzes, it's any personality quiz. "What's Your Hair Type?" screamed a quiz advertised on the front of Cosmopolitan. I bought it and did the quiz, even though I know what my hair type is (how could I not...it's on the top of my head for God's sake!)
But it's nice when you get an indication that you might be special, or a bit different from all the rest from personality tests (something Neil Strauss also knew well). The Myers-Briggs test I took for work came back with a conclusion that "only four per cent of the population have this extremely rare personality type" which made me feel great for all of about five minutes, before I read on and discovered that I was best described as "cool, aloof and arrogant" and someone who "inspires a vague feeling in others that life is passing you by". Charming! The personality test conclusion also advised people who may be working with me "not to give Nina a spontaneous hug" (though why would anybody do that at work anyway?!) and that I was "excellent with figures". Wrong! They got that bit wrong! Maybe I'm not cool, aloof and arrogant, either! (cough).
Oh, whatever. I've got a new issue of Cosmopolitan here, and there's a great 'What Kind of Lipstick Are You?' quiz in this one. Can't wait to find out.
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