“*sigh*. They belong to Mensa. But that only proves someone passed a #2 pencil test decades ago.”
Ah, yes. Mensa. OK. All is clear now about the source of the supposed intelligence of these friends who love Obama.
(BTW, if you are in Mensa I apologize to you in advance for what follows.)
Here’s some choice words I’ve had here about Mensa in the past. First a post by another FReeper and then my response.
Posted by someone else at FR:
“Well, smart people quit Mensa very quickly when they realize paying a substantial annual fee gets them virtually nothing but the chance to stand around at informal gatherings with a lot of underemployed whiners who constantly complain that the world refuses to recognize their brilliance”
My response to that post:
“Well, that answers my question about whether any actual smart people are in MENSA. The only MENSAs I ever met made a really, really, really big deal about how they were in MENSA, and yet they didn’t seem all that smart to me. It struck me that it was very important to these people that they were in MENSA because it “proved” to the world (and themselves) how smart they were, and it seemed to me that these people were actually somewhat pathetic. Thus, I wondered if MENSA was actually made up entirely of pathetic people who were not actually very bright.
In my own experience, really smart people have no need whatsoever to prove to anyone else how smart they are. The world either recognizes that fact or not, and they don’t particularly care one way or the other. If they happen to meet another very smart person, then they may have found a new friend. Everyone else falls into one of two categories: teachable and non-teachable. Teachable people are deserving of their attention; non-teachable ones are not.
Since I always wondered why any really smart person would need to join an organization to prove they were smart, I’ve also always wondered if any actual smart people were in MENSA. Now I know. Thanks for the insiders point of view, namely that MENSA is in fact a good discriminator for intelligence: any intelligent person who joins MESA thinking it is an organization of intelligent people quickly discovers otherwise and quits, leaving only not-so-intelligent people as members. In fact, MENSA perfectly selects for those who remain members: not-so-bright and unaccomplished people who desperately wish the world would see them otherwise.”
Haha, apology not needed.
My wife and I joined that and another group many years ago as part of our "Bucket List".
There are upsides.
Having a high teacher membership, events are structured to be a cheap night out. There are fun events, games nights, hobby Special Interest Groups, etc.
All the negatives that person reported are there. But the human dynamics are really not any different from a Lions Club, VFW, Elks, etc.
There are dysfunctional, sometimes unbearable members who join for ignoble reasons, there are good interesting people as well.
It's just another self-selecting tribal thing. Like likes like.
That said, in the case of Mensa, Intertel, Trip9, etc., stupidity is not supposed to be an excuse...though members can do astoundingly stupid things, like throwing away their lives on Facebook, or voting Democrat.