007: Trivial Pursuit
on living under a rock
Written at home, chewing on “PMS Gummy Vitamins” that taste like pink starburst. I bought a subscription after falling for an Instagram ad last year, and used to eat them routinely until I didn’t and am now working through my backlog of bottles after I cancelled said subscription. (I’m not sure they actually work, but I’m still happy to fall for a placebo if it helps me.) Since these are “wellness” gummies and not medication anyway, you can’t overdose, right? *eye twitch* Right?
“Who is Joe Manchin, and why do we hate him?” I shouted at a girl whose name I had forgotten already as she handed me a stack of index cards and a pen.
"I don’t know, just go with it!” Whats-her-name shouted back.
“I named our team! I thought it was a cool name!” shouted Random#2, a tall bald man.
Thus began Team Fuck Joe Manchin’s campaign for victory at Jackalope bar’s Thursday night Trivia.
I used to think I’d be pretty good at trivia—back in grade school, I still slept at a normal hour which led me to retain an inordinate number of random facts in my long-term memory. I’d won casual Sporcle tournaments with old teams and had played a few rounds of trivia games in the past. I also considered myself decently well-read and well-informed, but… I’ll just give a highlight reel of Round 1: Current Events.
What is the name of the British prime minister who resigned in a record 45 days in office?
What I learned: Asking how to spell a name does not make you sound smarter than just admitting you haven’t read the news (or seen any memes) this week.
(Answer: Elizabeth Truss)
Which state’s legislators voted on the official state dinosaur this past week?
Teammate’s +1: Oh! I think it’s Massachusetts!
Another teammate: Massachusetts seems too classy to have a state dinosaur…
+1: No, I saw a meme about it on Reddit!
What I learned: I need to read Reddit more often.
(Answer: Massachusetts)
Which Asian-American actress was announced to be featured on the U.S. quarter?
Me, but also everyone else, simultaneously: “ANNA MAY WONG!”
Also me: I guess that one was an easy question…
(Answer: Anna May Wong)
Alaska’s crabbing season came to an end this week when a shortage of this number of snow crabs was said to be missing.
+1: It’s a crazy number. Like more than 100 million!
Our team: How do you even know that? And that sounds way too high!
Random person in the crowd: It’s national news! Do you even read the news?
(Answer: 1 billion)
What prescription drug is experiencing a nationwide shortage?
Drunk Bystander: It’s ADDY! I KNOW! YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME I WORK IN PHARMACOLOGY! I KNOWWWWWW!!!
The actual medical and biopharma researcher on our team: Uh, let’s just go with what he said.
(Answer:
AderallAdderralAderralAdderrallAdderall)
Surprisingly, our team managed to be in the lead by the last round. My biggest contribution was my handwriting, which apparently wasn’t even that great since Drunk Bystander rewrote one of my answers for legibility (yes, I was offended).
All in all, my biggest takeaway was that I am pretty trash at trivia.
That’s my problem with trivia nights—despite that it’s a game, the competitive me still gets irritated when I can’t score “easy” points. Trivia is supposed to be a game with a fairly low skill floor, yet my perpetual blank stare beckons a look that says “How did you not know [exceedingly unobvious obvious fact]?”
It’s even worse when the theme is something people expect you to be good at: The topic is sports and you were a D1 athlete, or the topic is movies and you brand yourself a cinephile. What better way to expose that your knowledge has regressed to that of a layman than to stare back at the teammates counting on your expertise?
Ironically, one of the reasons I came out that night was to learn from trivia hosts. A few weeks ago, I had gotten the idea to host a pandemic-style Zoom party and thought that trivia could be a fun activity to bring together friends from all over. I had a plethora of silly questions and prompts stored in my mind, and I was curious to see what question formats or themes people typically enjoyed.
Now, I was losing confidence that I’d be a good host if I wasn’t also a good player. Was I living under a rock, in an underground empire I had subconsciously carved for myself? And in turn, would I as a trivia host now be holding my friends hostage in said world?
The cool and zen me (Zendy?) would smirk and sip on her drink as she sits, unaffected, amidst the competition at the bar. You don’t want to be good at trivia anyway. What’s the point of knowing so many random facts? They don’t mean anything in real life; it’s a waste of brain space, she’d say.
I could at least prove that I pay attention to what’s around me, no matter how small… and that I at least read the news, I’d respond, still salty about the rando who chided me for not knowing billions of snow crabs had gone missing.
Was I living under a rock, in an underground empire I had subconsciously carved for myself?
I should remark somewhere about how I have a hidden insecurity: being “aware," the hip little sister to yesteryear’s being woke. I'm not the first to learn about anything, and I hate the anxiety of missing a beat or feeling out of the loop. I feel left out for hearing news secondhand from a good friend. I feel lame when people quote an author I should have read years ago. I feel guilty being late to learn about the latest controversies1 or humanitarian crises2 even though nobody is handing out virtue points for being the first to post on social media.
We all have the same amount of time every day, but this gap in awareness highlights another fear: that I’m spending my time on the wrong things. Or rather—that I’m not spending enough time on the right things, the relevant things that folks connect on, whether it be productive things like important world news or podcasts that lead to personal development, or “cool” things like funny memes, the newest Netflix programming, or sports leagues updates. Ugh, the influence of capitalistic norms.
“I don’t think I’m any good at trivia,” said Trevor, one of my friends, at dinner the next day. I was telling him about the events of trivia the night before and the thoughts that spun out from it.
Trevor is one of the smartest people I know, and spends his day in an interesting field as well—he’s an AI natural-language-processing researcher, who lived and traveled in Europe for several years before moving back to SF. He knows details about so many things that he considerately offers to change the topic when he suspects he’s going into too much depth on a subject.
“Really?” I said. “I feel like you knew so many random facts in college.”
“I spend a lot of my time now rabbit holing on really specific topics, and I don’t know anything about pop culture anymore.”
“What’s an example?”
“Like, I spent two hours taking a Wikipedia walk through pages about the German intercity transit system. The S-Bahn and U-Bahn are so seamlessly integrated and the tracks are so space-efficient—the design and planning is very intentional and you can notice the difference. While other major European centers like London have their own systems, it still isn’t the same level as in Germany. It's because since London and Paris were already large cities before trains were introduced, they had to build their train tracks and tunnels to connect from different terminals and city centers that had already been around for hundreds of years. On the other hand, major cities in Germany all grew and were built after the S-Bahn and U-Bahn systems were established in the late 1800s, not the other way around, so the maps and stations could be planned on their own, which accounts for how there are underground transfer terminals, or how the same ticket can be used across both systems and in different cities too.”3
“How did you decide to do that, on a random night?”
“I’m telling you, I just rabbit hole these days. I was just thinking back on my time in Germany and one thing led to another.”
Jeopardy!, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, and Cash Cab champion Tony Hightower claims quiz competitors don’t need to have naturally great recall to win. I know this, because I read his interview as I continued to look around the internet for more information to answer my questions about trivia. Here’s what he had to say:
The people I know who are really, really, good at trivia are people who are voracious readers, and who process information really quickly. But there’s also a certain dreamer thing that you have to have. You have to let your mind travel down rivers that it doesn’t normally go down, and start thinking, ‘Well, what if this?’ and ‘What if that?’ … I don’t think there’s a right way to remember things. I think it’s just a matter of reading stuff, and staying curious… It’s a matter of engaging with the world, and having stuff wash over you from all kinds of different directions.
And re: feeling like you live under a rock—
All questions are hard if you don’t know them, and easy if you do… We all have our esoteric areas of knowledge… Don’t downplay what you know just because you think nobody knows it… Trivia covers everything. It’s impossibly large.
Lastly, regarding “winning”—I’ll just paraphrase what he says. Go study the particular game you want to win. If it’s trivia at a certain bar, see what that host likes to ask questions about. Study for the test.
In classic Wendy fashion, I was too fixated on the outcome (winning / hosting a fun trivia event) to zoom out and see the bigger picture: There is no right or wrong thing to spend your time on, so long as you are led by curiosity and an appetite to experience more of the world. We all live under rocks of our own choosing—beautiful, infinite, worlds where we create rabbit holes in every which direction, unique in their design. Where quiz games can be just about winning inviting others to see a glimpse of the esoterica beneath, and the lovely chaos and fun that ensues.
Join the Party!
I wasn’t going to casually mention a Trivia Night without also inviting you! This Trivia Night is open to all friends and friends of friends—really, the more the merrier. I’ve put a lot of thought into designing questions that everyone can have a fun time answering or intelligently guessing on.
Here’s a link to the event, or you can click the button below to RSVP (guests allowed!):
Featured This Week
Jackalope
1092 Post St, San Francisco, CA 94109
Lower Nob Hill | $$ | hip • casual • American |
Jackalope sits on Polk St, and features an old-fashioned plinko game (where you can win anything ranging from a Jaëgermeister-Fireball shot to a bottle of champagne) and weekly trivia on Thursday nights along with weekday and weekend happy hours. From what I saw, they are drinks only—no food. There’s also bar seating with a few high tops and a lofted 2nd floor overlooking the string lights and geometric jackalope installment on the main wall.
Donaji
3161 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Mission | $$ | casual • Mexican
Donaji is a Oaxacan restaurant with a menu featuring masa—corn—based items: tamales, tacos, sopes, enchiladas. (Cue “It’s Corn!”) They also have my favorite Mexican dish, pozole—in both its red and green variants, a variety of tacos with a Californian twist, and a mole sauce that you’ll be excited to show your friends. Order at the front and take a seat indoors or outside—the restaurant boasts a casual atmosphere easy for anyone to swing by and have a meal without much fuss.
I feel compelled to draw attention to Kanye West’s recent controversies, including his antisemitic outbursts. I don’t have anything helpful to add other than my grief and indignation that this is hurting my Jewish friends.
Likewise, I feel compelled to spotlight the worldwide protests following Mahsa Amini’s death and the fight for women’s rights in Iran. Please read up as I am no expert on either of these topics—I’m still learning as the news is released.
Trevor shared a lot more than what I wrote and said it much more intelligently. Alas, I am a human with a limited memory for verbatim speech.