A few days ago, some members of the self-directed seminar and I went to the Gallery, the on-campus pub, to grab some dinner. Unbeknownst to us, there was a trivia night event going on in the Gallery. Upon finding out, we decided to partake in it on a whim.
Games of trivia have a special spot in my heart. In high school, I was part of the school’s trivia team, and our team placed first in BC as well as doing quite well in the national competition. Even before high school, I always enjoyed collecting factoids and having obscure skills. I busted out these interesting tidbits about whatever topics we were discussing or when there were awkward gaps in the conversation. In short, I was (and still am) “that kid” who had something to say about everything.
Over the years, I have met many trivia enthusiasts through competitions and other trivia events, not to mention that a couple of my best friends were in the same high school trivia team. I had always thought that trivia attracts a certain sort of people — “that kid” — but I could not articulate what these attributes were. I stopped playing trivia games competitively once I entered university, but I still occasionally went to the odd trivia nights at pubs or at school, thinking nothing much of them. This time was different, however. Maybe it was the company of my fellow students in the SDS on identity, maybe I was in a more reflective mood — for whatever reason, I started thinking more deeply about why trivia was such a big part of my, and apparently of many others’, identity.
I think my affinity for “useless” knowledge and obscure skills stems from my body. I am not, and have never been, a physically imposing person. Physical strength has never been, well, my strength. Instead, I claimed power through knowledge and intelligence. I suspect that trivia attracts a certain type of person because its main function is to assert intellectual power; knowing small facts about subjects signals that my knowledge is so wide-reaching that it covers the realm of common knowledge and overflows into details that, surely, only a master of the subject would be aware of. Games of trivia, especially, are usually set in public arenas, such as tournaments, TV shows, or pubs. Only in games of trivia can you be a smartass in front of crowds of strangers.
This realization about trivia helped me think about the various different ways in which I exercise power. Atkinson talks about contemporary men doing “Pastiche Masculinity” — adapting to the death of traditional masculinity by creating multiple identities with various ways of claiming power. Surely staking a claim on power by knowing many “facts” is positivistic and based on Enlightenment ideas of rationality and objective truths. In order to overcome this, I must hold myself back from correcting others in abrasive ways, and consider different ways of knowing.