if you don't want to connect FB when you get to that screen there's a button to do it anonymously

and in the cam part if you don't want to do the webcam thing just disable your cam or put a post-it on your lens and ignore that part / keep going

I got to the third test (the emotional one) and didn't understand what I was supposed to do so I stopped. It was pretty interesting up to that point though.

JL that's all regular stuff, the crazy part about it is the end

open it again and do it again.. it's amazing (unless you're one of the few people their algorithm doesn't work on)

Well. I trusted you and clicked all the nonsense. When I got a standard one-fits-all horoscope I was done. Also I don't have Facebook.

You got the benefit of the doubt. But I won't do something based on your word again Firas.

jouke you haven't taken my word yet. Keep going.

I am in the top 2% of my country! WOOO!

OMG IT TOLD ME WHAT TO DRAW! I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE AN IPHONE WHEN I WAS A KID SO WHY DID I THINK OF THAT AS MY DRAWING?!?!?!

Nope, I drew something completely different.

So I went through some tests then it tells me I need to start again on a desktop. WTF wouldn't they point that out at the start?

sucks arse_hat

meanwhile I have learned something about how this quiz works that makes it more of a trick than I thought, but still gave me chills when I first did it though

Wait. How? Wha? I'm going to do this again.

Ok. Now I know it lies.

I drew something different too. Am I broken?

I'm in the top 1%. And yes, firas, the last part is pretty weird.

SPOILER DON'T READ

I drew something quite similar to what it was supposedly "telling" me to. I drew a pine tree, and it said to draw "a wooded glen." I think it works by identifying the drawing and then making shit up based on what a limited number of people said they'd drawn as a little kid. I almost drew a stick figure girl, and if I had, I bet they'd have found some way to make the case that they'd told me to draw that.

Pretty neat, Firas, thanks!!

Oh, and I am a communications specialist because I made the cut. ;)

I seem to be in remarkably high percentiles as well.

SPOILER ALERT

So, I'm thinking about the structure of this, and I think it's kind of a classic magic trick. I recall one card trick I learned as a kid which relied on a specific interaction where you predicted which card, from an array of four, that someone was going to choose, and then as the magician you removed all the other possibilities until they were stuck with it, but you made it look like they were choosing. There's something like that going on here.

There are not all that many images kids draw, so what adults think they are picturing as their drawing is a somewhat predictable range of things - families, cars, houses, pets, stick figures, trains, explosions, trees, etc. The game's effect hinges on saying that the stimulus presented to you primed you to draw what you drew. The whole thing actually hinges on the picture of the girl with the drawing. But when you draw whatever it is you were going to draw, it's not because you were primed or "told" to draw something. The thing is that you don't even remember what that picture was behind the girl, so you can't go back and prove that they don't match. The game uses some program to analyze your drawing (that's why the grid), figures out which of those limited categories it's in, and then presents you with a small sample of images that were already included in all the tests to "prove" that you were primed. Truth is, you were "primed" with everything and all the bases were already covered.

So for example: in my first game, totally cold, I drew a car with a family in it on a trip. And I was shown that the pic behind the girl showed a car, the psychological test had me choose an old-timey car as one of my answers, and the audio recording said "draw a picture of a vehicle." Chills! Wow! How did it know? Gee whiz.

SO the second time, once I thought I had figured out what was going on, I watched closely. I decided before taking the test again that no matter what my "priming," I was going to draw a kid-style pic of a kittycat.

The pysch test part includes, indeed, pictures of cars, people, trees, pets, etc. etc. etc. everything a kid might draw - including, of course, a cat. The image of the girl is pretty key: this time, when she came up the picture behind her was a fairly generic kid picture of a house. I don't want to take the test yet again, but there's a good chance it's just always a house - because that is unremarkable, not something you notice, especially when you're being distracted by an emotional question like "which one is you," or whatever, that's kind of going to guarantee that you look at the face. To remember what the picture was I made a note of it.

Went through the rest of the tests - didn't spot anything about cats in the video, though the image salad there contains so much content, and is so intentionally distracting, that it's probably just about impossible to even know for sure what it did and didn't show you. But it probably does include all the things - vehicles, pets, explosions, families, yadda yadda (in addition to the more memorable shocker stuff like blood and maggots...though there were enough bugs in the choices that maybe it includes the possibility of people drawing bugs).

So when I got to the end, I drew my cat. She says "You drew this" and shows my cat. Then she prattles on about the priming thing, and says "look at the picture behind the girl," and it's no longer a house. It's a cat. Even though the first time, it was quite definitely a house, and I had a handwritten note to prove it. Then it cites a cat picture from the many images in the psych test, shows me a couple video clips I don't even remember of cats and dogs, and this time the recording says "Draw a picture of an animal."

So the whole thing presents you with a big enough range of options that, no matter what you draw, within a predictable range, it can cherrypick the content in reverse. The "trick" starts with your drawing, and depending on what you drew, works backward from there to convince you that it was telling you to draw that thing, because almost any image you might draw has been presented to you at each phase along the way.

I must say, it's really nicely done, and very cool, but it's all deception - a magic trick. I do love stuff like this. Too bad ultimately it's just a boring TV show. Part of me would love to get caught up in a pervasive AR game sometime that's fully serious.

So anyway, I read some more about it. Apparently it's part of a really large "transmedia campaign" featuring cryptic ads and secret puzzle boxes sent in the mail to media people. The first test is designed by this dude Richard Horton, who seems to basically be a web designer and who has a history of inventing fakey psychological tests - some stuff on MeFi about earlier projects. And they did work with a magician to develop it.

Should I be concerned that the job title i got at the end is pretty much the same as my real job title?

There are 5 possible job titles.

Well, right - it was kind of a joke. This is classic "cold reading" stuff, and the number of options at the front end made it clear they were setting themselves 5 options for the back end. Still, well done and I thought it funny that I ended up with my real job title.

Sure, I get you.

I didn't really think it was the same as cold reading, but am just now noticing the technique called Shotgunning which is part of that (though it's also part of performance magic). This is a technique where all the possible outcomes have already been predicted; the only person who doesn't know where it's headed is the mark. Here, it's called Equivocation and, specifically, mentalism.

I guess I don't really like the category "cold reading." It's really a subcategory of psychological manipulation, not always used to "read" people. That's just one application of this kind of manipulative trick.