How to Become Unpopular
By Yvonne Zipter

I myself am rather astonished this essay isn't about Bush, since he's clearly an expert on the topic of how to become unpopular—although frankly, the amount of space I'm allotted would barely scratch the surface of Bush's legacy of alienation. While my own experience with becoming unpopular—and I was a nerd throughout my school days—doesn't come close to Bush's global unpopularity, I can nevertheless claim to be held in low esteem by everyone from my sister to my hairstylist to someone from a seminar in Russia last year. No doubt, you are asking yourself, How can I, too, achieve this level of unpopularity? It's simple, really: read and learn.

It starts with the sense of duty I feel to set the record straight when I get an e-mail message claiming that, for instance, the American Cancer Society will donate three cents toward cancer research for every e-mail forwarded—which, as one of the authors of Urban Legends Web site points out, "is akin to the notion of a hockey player 'donating' all the goals he scores to his team," since the cancer society is actually in the business of doing research. But really, what harm is there in forwarding this message? According to the Urban Legends Web site (www.snopes.com), "The various ACS offices around the country have been hit with calls asking about this most touching e-mail, and manpower that could be put to much better use ended up staffing phones and answering e-mail. (It's ironic, that. The families of real dying seven-year-olds end up getting the short end of the stick because of this outpouring of love for a fictitious child.)"

It's also that, since I tend to be overextended—who isn't in this day of time-saving devices, like the cell phone and the beeper, which allow you to be contacted whether you're a continent away or just on the toilet?—when I get an e-mail telling me there is a race to collect e-signatures from 300 people who believe in God before someone else collects 300 e-signatures from those who believe in gay marriage, I want to make sure there's a payoff. The payoff, I guess, is for whoever starts one of the several versions of this hoax, who will get to sit back and snigger as hundreds of people furiously try to collect signatures for this contest with no named purpose. Call me a curmudgeon, but I'd rather get a two-line note from those sending me these things about how they are than hear (falsely) that the Gap or Nike or Microsoft will give me free stuff if only I will forward the message to a hundred of my closest friends.

Now I don't know for sure people are hating me for my insistence on checking Snopes.com—to see if, for instance, there really has been a rash of service station customers getting stuck by HIV-loaded syringes affixed to gas pump handles (no). I don't know because when I cheerfully respond that they've been duped, all I receive in return is a stony silence. Who can blame them, when I am playing Scrooge to their Pollyanna? Here they are, trying to do a good deed—like keep me from locking my dogs in the car again by having my partner Kathy beep the remote door unlock button over my cell phone as I hold it to the door—and I get all Allen Funt on them: Smile! You're on candid camera! Without the camera. Or the fifteen minutes of fame.

The problem is that I have been laboring under the misapprehension that people will be grateful to learn the truth. Shows how misguided I am. But it's an affliction I can't seem to shake, one that started in early childhood, when I busted the department store Easter Bunny after having noticed his all-too-human hand through a hole in his costume or when I announced to my crestfallen cousins that Santa Claus was actually Uncle Art, who I recognized by "Santa's" wristwatch. It's like I have a very specific form of Tourette's Syndrome where I am inappropriately compelled to blurt the truth. If only it were contagious: maybe I could figure out a way to pass it along to George Bush—or anyone in his administration.

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