How tech keeps us silly amongst all the seriousness

Optus employee Tym Yee takes us through some of the ways he stays smiling as the days start to feel longer.  

This morning my co-worker sent me a quiz to complete, totally out of the blue. Ten multiple choice questions, just for fun, to see how well I knew her. Her favourite sport? Tennis. Her most recent streaming binge? A hilarious tiger docu-series, of course. The name of her arthritic 13-year-old de-sexed domestic short haired tabby? Well that would be Mr Squiggles, whom at this stage of our friendship I’ve reluctantly heard way too much about.

Lately you may have noticed that these kinds of DIY quizzes are experiencing a social media revival as life moves online in the wake of COVID-19. They’re reminiscent of the viral questionnaires and listicles from yesteryear (you know the ones – Which Wizard House Do You Belong In? What Type of Root Vegetable Are You?) that make you laugh at their pure absurdity, but that you also can’t help but complete.

Alongside riddles, fill-it-out-and-pass-it-on infographics, and viral dance challenges, these little novel tasks are popping up all over the place, posted by the likes of your overly-active-on-social media Aunty right through to that person from high school who you never spoke with but now know intimately through Instagram Stories.

Digital riddles and social challenges

For example, one of the popular riddles doing the rounds goes : Someone’s mother has four sons. North, South and East. What is the name of the fourth son. Private message me the name of the fourth son. If you lose, you have to repost.*

Although I’m someone who never normally likes to participate in these kinds of things, I couldn’t help but take the bait and try and guess the answer. Was it ‘Someone’? (Spoiler, the answer is at the bottom of the page). Surely it wasn’t ‘West’…

Other people in my social feeds are sharing all kinds of #aboutmechallenges, in which they respond to graphical questionnaires regarding their favourite foods, dream holiday destinations and the like using emojis and funny GIFs. In other cases, I’ve even seen normally very serious friends uploading comical lip sync videos, complete with questionable choreography followed by nominations of who should do the routine next. 

Youthful thinking

While it may seem like we’ve all time machined ourselves back 10 years, this general reprised willingness of fully-grown adults to participate in these youthful get-to-know-me activities doesn’t just tell us what TV series are circling the cultural zeitgeist now or what Australia’s ultimate beverage of choice is.

This rise in interactive social media posts also signals that despite our swift uptake of video conferencing and online learning, we still need to focus on how technology can help us with some really important aspects of human connection. It reminds us that digital connectivity without light-heartedness, humour and fun, doesn’t always feel like we’ve actually made a true connection.

That’s why, with complete abandon, I think we need to take the quiz, answer the riddle and repost the question as much and as often as we like over the coming months. Although they may seem innocuous, these are the thought starters and trigger points to further chat exchanges that we might like to think of as our lockdown lifelines.

Stay silly

In the end I scored a pretty dismal 5 out of 10 on my friend’s quiz this morning, but after shaking off the ego hit of seeing myself ranked in the lower half of all respondents, I promptly created my own version and circulated it among my friends. It made me laugh, feeling like a very self-centred teenager again, compiling a quiz consisting entirely of knowledge about yours truly. But in asking people to guess my most frequently played 90s pop song**, or my undisputable favourite cheesecake flavour***, I‘m really asking and sharing something more – a little daily dose of silliness to help us all balance out the seriousness in the world today.

_{* His name is actually ‘What’, the third sentence is a statement not a question (no question mark). So, a deal is a deal. If you got it wrong, copy and paste the riddle to your profile.}

_{**It’s absolutely Mr. President’s “Coco Jumbo”, and ***Blueberry, of course!}

Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and not necessarily the official position of Optus. Optus is not affiliated with any third parties referred to in this article.”

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