Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The Button

I've been thinking... What if the buttons on the telephone poles at street corners that you press when you want to cross don't really do anything, they're just a great big social experiment? An exercise in futility, if you will. I mean, really. Have you ever gone to a corner and NOT pushed the button? The little dude still pops up and tells you to cross whether you push it or not. I think it's just there to see how many people simply can't resist the urge to push a button. Or perhaps it's there to make us feel like we're actually doing something useful, just like when you were five and you asked your dad if you could help him wash the house and he gave you a toothbrush and said that you could scrub the driveway; you weren't actually doing anything but you felt like you were helping.


It's like you're scrubbing the driveway every time you get to an intersection

Then again, we can't be sure that it really doesn't do anything, so we have to keep pushing it for fear that something terrible will happen. I'm tempted to make a LOST reference, but I wont....
...
Ah, what the heck

We have to keep pushing the button or something bad may or may not happen!

I've been told that pushing the button sends some sort of signal that tells the light to change faster, but I don't believe it; I've read psychological studies before, and psychologists are like the biggest liars ever, and they don't even feel bad about it because it's for science. All social experiments are just their excuses to play us all for suckers.

Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this... If the APA realizes that I'm onto them, they'll probably send their ninjas to come and bump me off.
Ah well. If I go missing, I need you all to warn the people that the crosswalk button is a sham. They must be told. I have faith in you.
Godspeed readers.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude. I actually have always thought that if you push the button it stalls the light. So if impatient people push it like.. sixty times.. they get punished for it. ;) But then, I always think everything is against me...

Meg said...

1. There are some intersections where the little walking man won't pop up if the button hasn't been pushed, even if the light changes because there are cars waiting. Like the intersection in Provo between the library and the 7-Eleven. I don't know how many times I've gotten there as the light changes and had to wait for the light to change again twice (because if there are no pedestrians the light for the cars crossing University Ave is super short). So sometimes, the button does do something. Ha! Theory debunked.

2. It's kind of like elevator buttons. I know that the elevator won't come any faster because I push the button more or harder or hold it down longer, but I STILL DO IT.

3. It's a universal law. There is a button there. Buttons exist to be pushed. Therefore I must push that button.

That is all.

Meg said...

Also, you totally stole the idea for this post from my head, but then twisted it in your own sick way. Because I was going to do one about why people continue to push elevator/crosswalk buttons after the first time, like it will affect how fast the light changes.

Anonymous said...

If you go missing, hopefully they'll let you keep blogging. Maybe ninja's capturing you and putting you in a house, on a hill, filled with millions of cats (that are fed on federal dollars), so you can draw and blog and what not all day wouldn't be too bad, eh?