Have Fun, Then Feel Guilty, with the “Prof or Hobo?” Quiz
The University of Toronto must be glad they’re paying for personal server space, since it lets people from all over the world come and see content created by their faculty and students; content like the Prof or Hobo? quiz page.
It is a pretty great quiz! There are only ten items, alas, but each one is a real challenge. Is this guy a hobo, or a professor?
What about this guy?
It’s not easy!
It’s also not very nice. It’s kinda fair to make fun of college professors for looking like bums — they could certainly manage not to, with a little time and effort — but it does inherently require you to also make fun of how bums look, and they don’t necessarily get a lot of say in the matter.
(I also question the use of the term “hobo” here — “hobo” implies a migratory worker specifically, not simply a homeless person. But maybe it’s one of those words that is slightly different in Canada, like how they say “tuque” instead of “stocking cap” and “excuse me” instead of “fucking move it, asshat.”)
So please don’t pass this around Facebook (as I see so many of you doing) without at least a momentary pang of privilege-guilt. It is pretty nice to be able to make fun of people for looking like they’re homeless, secure in the knowledge that we, personally, will never look like that except by personal choice. Well, “nice” in the sense of “personally beneficial,” not in the sense of “kind to others.”
Because it’s not, particularly. And that’s mostly okay — we can enjoy things even if they aren’t 100% politically correct.
But we should take a moment to acknowledge that we’re doing it. Otherwise we’re just being entitled asshats. And if we’re asshats, some day some Canadian is going to come up to us and say…
…”excuse me.”
Add new meaning to “a rose by any other name.” Thanks for your post. Very thoughtful.