My sign is "Stop"

Today I shall share a pet peeve.

I don't like any of the disciplines or schemes where you ask someone a few questions, and from the answer you pretend to deduce all sorts of things about the person's personality.

Today I annoyed a friend on LambdaMOO. She asked me what color I'd favor if I were going to get a new car. I thought that she was asking because she was planning to get a new car, and she wanted my opinion about colors.

Now I am just the wrong person to ask about something like that. I am fashion-impaired. I know the basic stereotype about red sports cars, but past that I'm clueless. I just don't have much of a preference. If I can save even twenty bucks getting an unpopular color, I am so there.

But it turned out that she was looking at one of those magazine articles or web sites that takes your favorite car color and on that basis assigns you all sorts of personality traits. For her, it was a fun game and I was being a curmudgeon for not wanting to play. For me (and I realize that I am probably alienating at least half my readers, and I'll have to limp on with the other one) it was an unpleasant question for several reasons. First, I know that I am ignorant of all kinds of cultural knowledge about the social significance of different colors. So I would have to pick a random color (because honestly I have no favorite) and she would come to some conclusion about me. And then she'd look it up in her table and come to more conclusions ... forming opinions about me based on utter bunk.

So she said she was just making conversation, that it was just harmless banter like astrology.

Bzzzt.

I cannot begin to tell you how offended I am whenever anybody even pretends to know things about me based solely on the time and place of my birth. It is hard enough to make a good impression without people who don't know me telling lies that others will believe. And you know that stuff people always say? "Oh, I don't believe it, I just read it for fun!" I don't buy it. You're only saying that because I've revealed my skepticism and you don't want to get into a fight about it. I appreciate that; I don't want to fight about it either. But my feeling is that you wouldn't bother reading the thing, you wouldn't put in the energy to drag your eyes over the smarmy, self-righteous lines, if you didn't think there was something to it.

And I just don't want to give you any fodder; I don't want to tell you my sign and have you say, "Oh, all Orions are skeptical like that!" and no matter what I say, your attitude to me will change.

It's a kind of bigotry, don't you see? You have prejudices about dates of birth. Let me tell you, I think nationality has a lot more effect on personality than whether you are a Casseiopeia or a Pegasus.

OK, rant rant rant. Maybe I need a beer or something.