Good afternoon, Wednesday. I'm a little meh today- getting over a bad cold and feeling challenged by all of that white stuff outside. Only real option is to stay indoors, which suits me fine. I don't want to go anywhere anyway. It's cold and messy out there- home, please.
And speaking of home, I was amazed how many people took that Buzzfeed quiz last week on where one should live. After a series of random questions like what your favorite food is, what era Beyonce you enjoy (umm), and whether or not white wine is your good time, a suspicious algorithm calculated your best hometown. And what ensued was kind of funny, because many of us were left scratching our heads over where we should hypothetically end up. I got Barcelona.
Barcelona? Huh? Though I have never been there, it's somehow never made it to my "must go" list. I know it's fabulous and full of gorgeous architecture and fabulous food, but I'm not moved by the idea of going there, and never have been. I found myself miffed as I watched Facebook blow up with "I got Tokyo!" or "Bien sur, Paris!" or "I knew it! London." Barcefreakinlona? Wrong. All wrong.
And though the questions they asked to craft such an answer were pretty flawed (almost nobody got NYC as the place to live, unless, as one of my Facebook friends pointed out, you chose pizza as your food of choice) and incomplete, it gave me pause to realize how much credibility we give to where we live. I have always been somebody very affected by where I live- it's not terribly evolved I know (the Dalai Lama says if we are enlightened enough we can live anywhere yea yea yea blah blah), but my sense of place is a heightened one, and getting Barcelona felt wrong to me. Off. I am more Tokyo or London or even Paris, I thought. I amI not suited to a life in such a colorful, spicy place like Barcelona. I'm way more urban, intense, and darkish. I felt this so strongly when i lived in Miami- the sense that although MIami is a pretty amazing place to many, it was not my place, and never would be. I'm amazed by how these silly personality quizzes show us a thing or two about our identity- not in that they "get us", but in fact, they show us how disappointed we are when their often ridiculous results yield less than desirable outcomes. And though the quizzes can serve as a nice midday diversion from work, they are super silly. Oh, and aside from dicey algorithms and lack or sourcing for said questionnaires, we provide Google with more facts about us than they need to have. Now they know how we all like our coffee, what kind of music we like, and what we want to eat.
Now unless you are a complete simpleton, you're not going to pick your city based on a Buzzfeed quiz. So why do we do these quizzes in the first place? A recent Forbes magazine piece wondered why "when it comes to novelty quizzes we enjoy being analyzed by simple algorithms that divide and reduce us into a limited number of determinate categories, but when it comes to Google and the NSA we’re terrified of the same thing? My theory is that it is a collective manifestation of a psychological function that Sigmund Freud called “displacement.” Displacement, according to Freud, is an unconscious process through which the psyche transfers energy, ideas, and emotions away from things that cause anxiety, and toward similar things that are superficial, whimsical, and distracting". Heady stuff, but an interesting commentary on self perception. Or how viral these quizzes really are, because according to the same Forbes piece, over 14 million of us took the "where to live" quiz in just 2 days, and as the article also noted, somehow, we must really like to be categorized.
And where did the majority of my good pals get as their perfect city? I was incredulous at how many people got Portland- hipster heaven and liberal hotbed. I know how kick ass Portland is, it's just that I don't personally identify with it as somewhere I wanted to live (though I have sometimes fantasized about a job at Nike). Maybe I need to stop taking quizzes (I also got Thomas as my Downton Abbey character last week, while other girl friends of mine got Lady Mary or the Dowager Countess. Hmm) and simply travel more. It wouldn't hurt to check out some other places, because I know exactly where my home is, at least for now. If a city full of Gaudi and late night partying and inventive tapas becomes my place of choice, you'll be the first to know.
For now I'm buried in another vortex of snow and sniffle enhanced suffering right here in NYC, with nary a pizza slice in sight. Guess what? I'm ok with it, because for now, this is where I belong, ain't no quiz gonna tell me otherwise. And that's what's up this broken algorithm of a Wednesday in the cold tundra of Brooklyn. I relate to New York and categorize myself as a New Yorker, and hope that wherever you live you're in your happy place. Yours, in perfect city living. (Now if only I could figure out which decade I belong in...help me Buzzfeed. Help me). XO