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dakkar_it

36 / M / Straight / Single

London, United Kingdom

His journal posts

The USA is not the world

Jan 25, 2008

I'm taking some tests. MostSomeof those assume that the testee lives in the USA. People, the USA is *not* the world. It's not even an extremely important part of it, culture-wise. For this, I'm bad-rating tests that I can't complete because they assume USA-only views or knowledge (e.g. divide the political thinking between "Republicans" and "Democrats", or assume I know USA-only franchises).

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I'm taking some tests. MostSomeof thoseassume that the testee lives in the USA. People, the USA is *not*the world. It's not even an extremely important part of it,culture-wise. For this, I'm bad-rating tests that I can't completebecause they assume USA-only views or knowledge (e.g. divide thepolitical thinking between "Republicans" and "Democrats", orassume I know USA-only franchises).
The USA is not the world
I agree! I noticed the lack of "world-view" in the questions. Actually, many of the questions are down right biased. I feel bad you're having a tough go of it!

A former user commented on Jan 25, 2008

An image of ThellieEm123 While I agree that the egocentricity of most Americans in making tests like that is a problem in general, should all tests be created without any sort of bias in them? What about all the tests that are for men or women only? Only for straight people? Only for those with certain personalities and lifestyles? I don't think each test should necessarily be answerable by everyone. I kind of see it as crying foul at a Star Trek fan test because people who are not fans would not be able to understand the context of the questions and available answers. I really don't see the difference. Other than from the US, there are many tests that are culturally biased to Australia, Russia, India, and most notably the UK. Should those tests be given bad ratings because of that as well?

ThellieEm123 commented on Jan 25, 2008

An image of dakkar_it @ThelieEm123: «I don't think each test should necessarily be answerable by everyone» No gripe there: I'm with you on this. I wouldn't take a "pretty girl" test, or a "soap opera" test, if advertised/named as such. But if I see a test about "how you like life" that assumes I know the difference between various USA-only clothes shop chains... well, I can't say it's a well designed test. On the other hand, the "Politics Test" says on the cover that some questions are about the USA Presidential candidates (and optional questions, even), so I have no problem with that. Oh well, I'll edit my original post: "most of them" is wrong, they were "most" only because I had taken very few.

dakkar_it commented on Jan 25, 2008