According to a survey by a web-based service dedicated to neuroscience research, when it comes to smarts, Kinston/Lenoir County ranks 476th out of 478 metropolitan areas.
Laredo, Texas, and Lumberton are the only cities ranked lower than Kinston. Even if in some alternate universe this survey was worth a hill of fully digested beans, of the bottom three cities on the list, Kinston would be No. 1.
The web service in question — Lumosity — has been online since 2007. According to their site, they “believe in improving brains.” To achieve this goal, the doctors behind Lumosity have developed a series of online games that are supposed to improve your cognitive abilities.
Being the Mayor of Simpleton, I have no grounds to attack the wisdom of Lumosity’s founders. I’m sure the walls of their offices are covered with Ph Ds, degrees and STDs. Could playing tic tac toe on the Lumosity website help ward off Alzheimer’s disease, or is this snake oil for smart phone zombies?
I signed up for a free account but quickly learned that if I was serious about Ziploc-ing my brain for freshness, it was going to cost me. Lumosity offers several payment plans, but the best option seems to be the one-time $269.96 Lifetime package; NOT $270, but $269.96. They used three more characters to point out a 4 cents difference from a round number, so they’re bound to know what they’re doing.
Lumosity also offers a family plan, but I’m not so sure being surrounded by mentally sharp people is a good idea. It’s worth the aggravation of being the only one who can change the clocks in the car if it means you’ll have an advantage when it comes to dividing an estate. If your brother thinks 15 acres of swamp is more valuable than 10 acres of timber, who are you to argue? Make the man happy and buy him a nice helmet with all your pulp earnings.
The survey that purportedly determined we’re all a bunch of dunderpates relied on people who had the free time to take an online test. I ask you, how many people reading this have time to take an online test that doesn’t involve a free football phone?
Could the people of Kinston/Lenoir County be too busy trying to scrape out a living to devote a chunk of their day to an Internet survey? If anything, the results of this test should probably be flipped. Laredo and Lumberton came in below Kinston, which means they’re the only other metropolitan areas with enough people smart enough not to waste their time on the Internet equivalent of magnetic bracelets.
It would help to know how the data was collected. Were area doctors, engineers and architects included in the survey, or did they pay a mime college dropout $7.25/hour plus a Hot Pocket to email people at random? Did Lumosity advertise their survey on “Face The Nation” or during an episode of “Big Brother?”
Some may deem this a radical thought, but what about the people who detest social media and the Internet in general? Were socially awkward teenagers armed with clipboards and $8 khakis sent into the wilds of Lenoir County in an attempt to attain an accurate reading?
You know who has time to play Internet games? People who drive around trying to sell steaks of indeterminate origin from the back of their pickup truck; people who take up two parking spaces; people who block two gas pumps just so they can have a shorter walk to buy a honey bun; the person in your office who bangs on their computer keyboard as if it was having an affair with his or her spouse; the person who has a swastika tattooed on their forehead and 2 feet of underwear sticking out of their pants who can’t understand why they can’t get a job.
Also, the tests on the Lumosity site are biased towards Northerners. More than one-third of the test questions were related to bagels and sidewalk urination.
In an attempt to be fair, I called the phone number listed for Lumosity on the San Francisco Better Business Bureau website. At 10 a.m. West Coast time, their mailbox was full. Apparently, no one at Lumosity has figured out how to check voicemail.
Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in the Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Sample the new Third of Never album “Downrising” at jondawson.com.