Re: Reaction to TRASHionals

walter_shandy <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Sat, 20 Apr 2002 07:36:11 -0000

Hm... I don't know if I'm expressing a minority opinion here (yes, I 
probably am), but I didn't find the TRASHionals questions to be 
substantially more difficult than other high-level trash tournaments 
(e.g. Capitol Punishment -- it was probably a bit tougher than the 
Ann B. Davis, but I digress.)  Of course, there were some difficult 
questions, but not in my opinion an unusually large number of them.

Of course, difficulty is in the eye of the beholder, and may vary 
from person to person -- with the greatest variance, I think, being 
in the "geek factor" of the questions. This is not necessarily a 
matter of "geek trash" questions; it's more a matter of writing the 
sort of questions (in all areas) that reflect the interests of 
geeks. (Which interests themselves vary from geek to geek, and so 
forth... and might it not be argued that we are all geeks for 
something, and so forth.) But in any event, a certain level of 
geekiness or non-geekiness tends to affect all the questions in a 
packet; I would tend to say that "geeky" questions tend to reflect 
the small and amusing details of society at the expense of asking 
questions on those things widely recognized to everyone, whereas "non-
geeky" would reflect broad social trends at the expense of... well, 
at the expense of geeks, among other things. Which is not so much 
a "populist/ephemeral vs. specialized/enduring" sort of argument as 
it seems (though there are elements of that dynamic in play)... a 
geek will be inclined to write a question on a random, ephemeral 
subject if he finds it interesting, whereas such bulwarks as 
the Beatles and The Godfather, though obviously well-known, 
may be seen by the geek as relevant.

For example, take the field of music.  In addition to the Beatles and 
that sort of thing, the standard non-geek is going to be inclined to 
write questions about Britney Spears or Creed or whatever is selling 
many copies at the time.  Meanwhile, the geek is going to be asking 
relatively obscure questions on theremins and novelty music from 
the '80s and (ahem, ahem) non-album Weezer songs.  (Meanwhile, when 
it comes to movies, the geek and non-geek may switch places... 
suppose the non-music geek knows about, and wishes to ask about, a 
lot of obscure movies?)  

Of course, this is only a matter of inclination -- any question 
writer worth his salt is going to attempt to cover as many genres as 
possible. But while I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest this, I'm 
not sure everyone out there is remembering to cover as many levels 
of accessibility as possible.

Both the geek and the non-geek, who in the end resemble the 
specialist and the neophyte respectively, must be obliged.  A 
tournament full of marvelously amusing obscurata is only interesting 
or fun so far as its audience has any clue what's going on.  
Meanwhile, a tournament where one can scan the history of the 
Billboard charts and box-office receipts and find the answers lined 
up neatly is also not much fun, because there's no element of 
surprise or discovery in it.  This isn't so much a matter of 
difficulty as a matter of accessibility -- there's a world of 
difference (in terms of enjoyment, if not in terms of statistics) 
between being unable to get the question before someone else does and 
not knowing what the question was about after it's over.  

So, what does this have to do with TRASHionals? Not much, so far as 
I could tell. I was on the whole exceedingly happy with the 
questions, though in retrospect, the percentage of sports questions 
on the "big four" of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey felt 
a bit light, and the music questions continue to seem rather heavily 
weighted towards pop (in the stylistic sense) and the currently 
popular (in the, errm, popularity sense), but the former is 
nit-picking perhaps caused by faulty memory, and the latter (which 
is, anyway, directly contrary to Ross' comments!) may just be 
personal preference. As far as I'm concerned, TRASHionals has done 
an excellent job of combining the expansive and the accessible; 
clearly, though, there is at least some dissent on this point.

Last of all, I would like to suggest that people try to keep the idea 
of "excessively obscure content" separate from that of "too much geek 
trash"; the two complaints are not really much like each other.  Not 
that anyone was doing that overtly, but hey, I'm just saying.