I was recently informed of some fairly incredible news - a girl I went to Princeton with (graduated a year ahead of me, but I didn’t know her) apparently went on to become a porn star. “Star” is probably a misnomer, I’m sure she’s not famous or anything, so just think of it as “porn actress”. Even though I didn’t know this girl, I nonetheless found the story mind-blowing. I definitely reacted with a bigger “wow” to this news than any other high school or college classmate news I’d ever heard.
This got me to thinking - what could I hear about a former classmate that would be more shocking than finding out he or she did porn? I gave it a good 10-15 minutes of thought, and here is the list of “eventual classmate outcomes” that I came up with:
1. Became a terrorist.
2. Became the leader/messiah of a substantial cult (over 20 people) that ultimately involved death.
3. Switched genders.
4. I couldn’t think of anything else that would be more shocking than porn.
Even hearing that someone committed murder would be less shocking. Let’s be honest here – we all went to school with someone who conceivably could kill another person. Doesn’t mean we thought it was really going to happen, but it was within the scope of plausibility. I’m sure you know someone who, given specific environmental conditions, you believe has a greater than 1% chance to commit a homicide. You’re just a little leery around that person, right? This person has no reason whatsoever to kill you, and yet…you’re careful. Better safe than sorry.
As an aside on the murder thing, after the Columbine tragedy, I wondered, “if that happened at my school, who would it be?” I started making a mental list of plausible candidates, and let’s just say that list was way too long for my liking.
Once the list got to eight or nine, I started reversing course. “No…that’s ridiculous, Eric, he could never kill a dozen people…uh…right?” The whole mental exercise was both spooky and depressing.
Terrorist is, suffice it to say, a pretty big deal - I actually can’t envision a single person I’ve ever met going down that path, so, I mean, yay for that. Same for the cult leader thing, although I can sort of imagine someone leading an innocuous cult for a little while. There was supposedly a small cult at Princeton a few years before I got there, but nobody died.
Transgender was a tough one to rank on the list – surely hearing that kind of news would elicit a huge “wow!” from me. At the same time though, my instinct is that there are more transgender people in the world than there are porn stars. I don’t really have any statistical evidence to support that claim, but I somehow intuitively feel this is correct. This might stem from the fact that I have met at least two transgender people (I suppose you never truly know how many transgender people you’ve met), but zero porn stars (I guess the same inconclusive comment holds here too). I used to work in the same building as a 6’4” man-turned-woman who was fond of wearing giant frilly pink dresses.
It was a giant wall of pink. Dude/non-dude did get her own bathroom though. That was a good perk. Anyways, despite the “numbers”, I ultimately think switching genders would shock me more than porn.
If somebody became a con man/white collar criminal, it would need to be on an epic Bernie Madoff type scale to outweigh porn star, I’d say. Drug dealer, bank robber – those things just don’t quite measure up unless we’re talking about Pablo Escobar or Bonnie and Clyde level stuff. Let me know in the comments if you think I missed anything of if you would have a different list. In the meantime, I’ll worry about how my Google AdSense banner ad is going to change in light of some keywords in this post.
This got me to thinking - what could I hear about a former classmate that would be more shocking than finding out he or she did porn? I gave it a good 10-15 minutes of thought, and here is the list of “eventual classmate outcomes” that I came up with:
1. Became a terrorist.
2. Became the leader/messiah of a substantial cult (over 20 people) that ultimately involved death.
3. Switched genders.
4. I couldn’t think of anything else that would be more shocking than porn.
Even hearing that someone committed murder would be less shocking. Let’s be honest here – we all went to school with someone who conceivably could kill another person. Doesn’t mean we thought it was really going to happen, but it was within the scope of plausibility. I’m sure you know someone who, given specific environmental conditions, you believe has a greater than 1% chance to commit a homicide. You’re just a little leery around that person, right? This person has no reason whatsoever to kill you, and yet…you’re careful. Better safe than sorry.As an aside on the murder thing, after the Columbine tragedy, I wondered, “if that happened at my school, who would it be?” I started making a mental list of plausible candidates, and let’s just say that list was way too long for my liking.
Once the list got to eight or nine, I started reversing course. “No…that’s ridiculous, Eric, he could never kill a dozen people…uh…right?” The whole mental exercise was both spooky and depressing.Terrorist is, suffice it to say, a pretty big deal - I actually can’t envision a single person I’ve ever met going down that path, so, I mean, yay for that. Same for the cult leader thing, although I can sort of imagine someone leading an innocuous cult for a little while. There was supposedly a small cult at Princeton a few years before I got there, but nobody died.
Transgender was a tough one to rank on the list – surely hearing that kind of news would elicit a huge “wow!” from me. At the same time though, my instinct is that there are more transgender people in the world than there are porn stars. I don’t really have any statistical evidence to support that claim, but I somehow intuitively feel this is correct. This might stem from the fact that I have met at least two transgender people (I suppose you never truly know how many transgender people you’ve met), but zero porn stars (I guess the same inconclusive comment holds here too). I used to work in the same building as a 6’4” man-turned-woman who was fond of wearing giant frilly pink dresses.
It was a giant wall of pink. Dude/non-dude did get her own bathroom though. That was a good perk. Anyways, despite the “numbers”, I ultimately think switching genders would shock me more than porn.If somebody became a con man/white collar criminal, it would need to be on an epic Bernie Madoff type scale to outweigh porn star, I’d say. Drug dealer, bank robber – those things just don’t quite measure up unless we’re talking about Pablo Escobar or Bonnie and Clyde level stuff. Let me know in the comments if you think I missed anything of if you would have a different list. In the meantime, I’ll worry about how my Google AdSense banner ad is going to change in light of some keywords in this post.
3 comments:
who's the porn star? Email me.
How about "married his sister" or "married her brother?" I would find incest more shocking than porn.
Oh that's a good call, yeah, incest would take the cake. Maybe even over terrorist.
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