Well, I suppose it was bound to happen regardless of my having a TBI but I’ve been notified by some folks that my email account has been sending out “quizzes” from a site called IQ Elite (definitely does not merit being linked here). Apparently clicking on the link and taking part in the quiz puts some of your digital information in their database. It’s one of those online dating sites, only you don’t find that out until after the quiz is done I guess. And yes, I was dumb enough to take the quiz.

I don’t know if it was related to my using Lumosity and FitBrains for cognitive exercises these past months but I wonder. Like when you search on something online, say a coffee maker or something, and then you see coffee maker ads for days afterward whenever you visit other websites. I’ve been using those sites for extra brain exercises. They’re interesting games at least to me. They serve as a crude tool for measuring your progress at the particular tasks in the games but they’re nothing like cognitive work in real life. For a lot of different reasons but I’m not here to argue for or against them.

I’m sorry if any of you have gotten spammed by IQ Elite. Just put it in your spam folder. And no, I’m not looking for entertainment outside my marriage.

What I would like to do is a social experiment with that site. It would have no credibility whatsoever but it might be entertaining. I’d like to create a new email address and go to that site and make a profile for, I dunno, “Sparky Terwilliger”. My sincere apologies to anyone actually named Sparky Terwilliger. No harm is meant and I did do a Google search on the name to make sure it isn’t in use online before doing this post.

I’d set him up (using some random photo from a catalogue I guess) with a profile that made it absolutely clear that he had a TBI. No gross pics showing ugly scars, just photos of a normal looking person in normal settings. There are various personality and intelligence tests (like emotional intelligence) you can take and I’d make them show him as average. Well, at least I’d hope I could get average or well-balanced scores on the tests. I’d try to make him a normal active adult just with a recent traumatic brain injury.

I wonder what sort of activity or interest that profile would get.