Although I normally love to make you laugh at my columns, this week I need to address something very serious. I have an addiction. This addiction eats up all my time, distracts me from my schoolwork and contributes to many sleepless nights. I will finally admit it: I am addicted to [Sporcle](http://sporcle.com).
For the uneducated, Sporcle is a website devoted to trivia games and other quizzes. The 15 categories are: entertainment, gaming, geography, history, holiday, just for fun, language, literature, miscellaneous, movies, music, religion, science, sports and television.
Obviously, I couldn’t care less about the more educational categories, but I bet I spend at least an hour a day playing the movies, music, television and entertainment quizzes. I never feel guilty about this wasted time, though; Sporcle’s slogan (say that five times fast) “mentally stimulating diversions” leads me to believe that listing all 83 Best Picture winners will increase my intelligence.
It’s a good thing I didn’t discover Sporcle until college, or I probably never would have graduated high school. Keep your fingers crossed that it won’t affect my college GPA too much.
This addiction has lead to one amazing discovery, though: I know a lot of random shit.
It amazes me how many seemingly useless facts I know. Honestly, it would be a dream of mine to be a contestant on “Jeopardy!” Somebody sign me up and I’ll give you 2 percent of my earnings.
But until that day comes, my knowledge of the greatest one-hit wonders of the ‘90s will only be a stupid party trick. And even then, people would rather listen to some crappy LMFAO song than Del Amitri’s “Roll to Me.”
In fact, sometimes my petty knowledge can be my Kryptonite. I constantly have to bite my tongue when people I barely know say something I know is false. Apparently, strangers don’t like being corrected by a know-it-all college kid. Who knew?
Even my friends and family occasionally zone out when I’m talking about some obscure indie movie I want to see in a couple of months.
It’s not my fault that I can tell you the exact box-office grosses for the top 10 movies each weekend. I just absorb information like a sponge.
This isn’t true about all information, though. I still have trouble trying to list the five elements of excellent journalism or the amendments of the United States Constitution. You know, things that I actually get graded on.
Note: During a time of writer’s block, I took a quiz titled “TV Series by Wives (Pics).” I scored a 14 out of 16. In case you were wondering, the shows I missed were “ALF” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
It would make my life so much easier if my pop culture knowledge was directly related to my grades, or even better, my income.
Alas, the world doesn’t work that way. I will have to actually gain a useful skill to become rich and famous, unless you know anybody willing to pay me a six-figure salary for being able to name all 12 Pixar movies in 19 seconds.
