Inventing Personal Meaning through Online Surveys

For ages I've been wanting to write an article about online surveys. I signed up for tons of these things years ago, back in the days when I was still shopping like capitalism was going out of style. I guess it was - for me, anyway. I signed up for all the companies, gave them all my information, and filled out countless surveys. I never made a dime but I'm glad I did my part to help form "public opinion".

Over the years, I've slowly weeded out all the miscellaneous survey requests from my in box except for one particularly persistent company: Global Test Market. I've kept them because they'll give you sympathy points even if you don't meet their participant criteria. For the last six months or so, I have been amusing myself with clicking through their survey emails just for the joy of being rejected.

Unlike most rejection, rejection by Global Test Market and their partners has been positive and validating in that it confirms just how far I have come from my super shopper ways. Generally what happens is that I get a few clicks into the survey, giving them my age and gender. Then they want to know how much money I make and I don't tell them. Then they want to know what I've been buying. Usually this is where the survey stops dead and I get to pat myself on the back in a fit of self righteous post consumerist snobbery.

Today, however, the Global guys asked me about food and restaurants. This is definitely one area in which I am still very much a consumer, and most likely will be for life. No big deal, I thought, as I started the survey. Reading "Fast Food Nation" pretty much cured me of dining at big-box mystery meat establishments.

Still though, Global Market managed to find something I do participate in by asking me about restaurants I've ever heard of, ever. Fine. Yes, I've heard of pretty much all the chains they asked about. Do I eat at them? No. Have I ever? Yes. Then it started getting really interesting when I actually entered the survey.

I used to love shopping. It didn't matter if it was Safeway or Walmart, I would spend hours walking down every aisle and examining every product. The endless choice made me feel like an over privileged kid in a candy store. It was like sex, but more satisfying. It's not like that anymore, though. These days, I get nervous and uncomfortable in the giant stores with their millions of products practically leaping off the shelves, begging me to buy,

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