Let’s eliminate “Google it” from our lexicon

image source: Crocs (via The Motley Fool)

Pop quiz, hotshot: you’re at a restaurant and someone brings up a question to which no one knows the answer.

What do you do? What do you do??

You may not recognize the classic setup line cribbed from the now ancient movie “Speed” starring everyone’s favourite, Keanu Reeves. 

Are we all on a bus hurtling towards disaster? (yes I Googled this photo).

But since smartphones became ubiquitous, the common reaction is to Google it. 

A few years into the digital revolution people began realizing what this trained impulse was doing to our ability to socialize.

Gen X and early millennials may remember dining out at restaurants where wifi blockers were used to discourage anti-social dining. Or gamification, where everyone set their phones at the centre of the table and the first to pick theirs up paid for a round, or the entire tab.

But soon enough those fads were forgotten and we went back to our ways because if there’s one thing humanity has proven, it’s that human behaviour is hard to control or quantify. There are whole academic fields, including behavioural economics and sociology, that routinely get it wrong. 

Not in hindsight, mind you, but that’s only helpful for solving past problems. (Yes, if they’re past problems, they no longer need to be solved; only blame assigned. Again, I jest.)   

Here’s the thing: I recently saw a Tik Tok on why they used Crocs in Idiocracy, and had to know the answer. And the answer is: yes, we are all shuffling toward the apocalypse wearing the idiot footwear of prophesy. (No offence, Crocs.)

Here's the story:

(A little part of me died, having to pull this original Mike Judge clip, where he explains the choice of Crocs for the movie, from an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience. I may delete this entire post just because of it but I digress...)

As the US descends towards November, and the rest of the world sits on the rim of the toilet waiting for the flush, we’re once again in the shoe fits mentality. We are looking for answers in the unlikeliest of places. 

Because Google only gives us the answers to past problems we already know. And we already know that.

Besides, don’t you ever get tired of knowing all the answers?

Please, don’t make me thumb it out for you.