Pub quizzes. Where being wrong is free.
Pub quizzes are booming and the prize is basically nothing. They are the last place in your week where being wrong costs you nothing.
THE GIST ON PUB QUIZZES: "Where being wrong is free"
Why is everyone going?
Pub quizzes in Britain are booming. New nights open every week and pubs are turning them into a lifeline while the rest of the industry contracts. The prize is a 30 quid bar tab split six ways.
Every question could be googled in three seconds. Nobody checks their phone, and no one really enforces the rules either. People go anyway, every Monday, with their mates, to be consistently wrong. In my case, catastrophically.
Where else does being wrong cost you?
Everywhere else in modern life, being wrong comes at a cost. At work it costs you credibility. On social media it costs you followers. A wrong opinion at a dinner party costs you the next invite.
So we spend our weeks performing certainty we don't have. Rehearsed opinions and hedged takes, and the mental cost of performing knowing across every part of your life is enormous and exhausting. It's why we feel drained by six without having achieved anything.
Why does not knowing matter?
Sitting comfortably with not knowing is the only state a real thought can form in. If every setting requires you to already have a position, you stop being able to genuinely think. You lose curiosity and the ability to change your mind.
What is a pub quiz, then?
A weekly rehearsal for a skill that has stopped being practised everywhere else. And it doesn't matter when your teammates write Magnolia when you clearly said Mongolia.
Our pub quiz team name is The Reigning Champions. What's yours?
Quiz team: what's your name?
Your take. One tap, then see how everyone else voted.
Quick answers
Why are pub quizzes booming?
Huw says it's the last place in your week where being wrong costs you nothing.
What is the prize?
Basically nothing, a 30 quid bar tab split six ways.
Why does not knowing matter?
Sitting comfortably with not knowing is the only state a real thought can form in, and performing certainty everywhere else kills curiosity.
See you on the next one.
What should the next one be? Suggest a topic for Huw to explain
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