Jen McCreight blogs about giving a talk at a meeting of Mensa, the “international high-IQ society.” Worth reading in its own right, but I was struck by one anecdote in particular: the color-coded stickers that indicated huggability.
- Green = Hug me!
- Yellow = Ask me first
- Red = Don’t touch me
You read this correctly. A group of self-selected high-IQ people feels the need to have stickers on their name tags to let strangers know whether it’s okay to come up and hug them. As Jen put it: “I originally didn’t put any stickers on because I had no idea what they meant, but after being hugged out of nowhere by a complete stranger, my badge quickly looked like this:”
I don’t think the stickers are a bad idea; if they help people figure out appropriate ways to behave, it’s all good. But I can’t help but think that there are many other groups of people who would manage to negotiate this particular social minefield without the help of any stickers at all. There are many different ways to be “intelligent.”
I have never been to a society meeting in my life where people went around hugging willy-nilly, and I wished I had a sticker that said “STF away from me”. What’s going on at these functions, anyway? This some extension of the “Good Genes” dating service?
I’m a bit dumbfounded by all this hugging. Don’t try this outside the US, folks! Unless you want to explain yourself to unsympathetic cops.
#12, keith:
Someone who is so out-of-touch with their human emotions that they can’t sense something as basic as whether someone wants a hug = someone I DON’T want a hug from.
You are surrounded by people that far out of touch with themselves every day. Most are in denial about it, others are looking for solutions.
Funny. You go to any conference in Germany and hug a stranger, they’ll put you under glass as interesting exhibit 😉 Sometimes formalities have advantages.
They better be careful because hugging could lead to something else!
I think this looks like fun. It reminds me of “stoplight” happy hours we have in grad school, where you’d wear “green” is you were single/interested, “yellow” if in the middle, and “red” if taken. I don’t think that MENSA is doing this because they lack the capacity to figure this stuff out on their own, I think it’s just supposed to be something fun to do.
Apparently DSK misread the colour of the hotel maid’s badge.
More seriously though, I have a family member who has Asperger’s. He is tactile defensive and has difficulty reading social cues. For someone like him the badge system is eminently sensible. They have difficulty navigating the social minefield and need well defined rules to help order their life.
Why not go with a full-blown (pun intended) handkerchief code?
Of course, a wedding ring has a similar function. 🙂
You don’t hug because you want to, you hug because someone needs it.
This is TOTALLY ridiculous. All through my life, I have interacted with all types of people, from the lowlife to the upper gentry, and even with top academia, including during my few years at Caltech. Any well bred individual knows how to behave, no need for “code.”. But I guess this code was necessary: again, from my own experience, most of these same people are total social misfits.
” Green = Hug me!
Yellow = Ask me first
Red = Don’t touch me”
Cripes. Mensa has a color-coded terror alert system just like the “knuckle draggers”.
Rich.
We’re in the best of hands.
Interesting that some people actually want to be hugged and especially by strangers.
The only situation in which i can imagine myself wanting a hug is when im freezing and extra body heat can make a difference.
But Im all for stickers if some group of people find them useful, but there should be one more rule added: no color sticker – no hugging.
…Hug me, or leave me; nothing inherently wrong with hugging those you love…too, how many times have you people been the object of, or the giver of, hugs when your stupid ass favorite sports team scored a point, or a goal…?…many times by/from those sitting near/ in close proximity to you at a sporting event? that’s okay, because “…our ( insert team/athlete name here) just made us so happy because we just won the cup??? you’re more used to-and prone to-it than you might want to believe…GET – A- HUG…
I joined mensa over a decade ago (surprisingly easy), but lost interest as soon as I read some of topics and comments in their magazine. I now understand that IQ tests and other testing of intelligence is highly subjective, and it is very difficult to get a good estimate of intelligence once you get to the 98th percentile (and even harder past the 99th percentile).
Being a hypocrite, I think I’ll renew my membership. Go Mensa!
I was an avid non-hugger – until my first husband passed away from colon cancer when he
was only 43. I rethought the position, and decided I would go for the warmth. If someone I know wants to hug, I will accept and return that hug.
Lots of people need hugs for lots of reasons, even from strangers if given correctly. It’s a human thing.
Ha. You think “socially intelligent” people don’t need this?
People who think of themselves that way are the worst about it.
I was a member of Mensa a few years ago. The hug dots don’t exist because Mensans are socially clueless; they exist because hugging is (was?) a bigger part of Mensan culture than it is in society as a whole. The hug dots let the huggers hug each other without bothering the more “normal” people. I wore yellow dots and everything went along like it would normally.
A lot of people join Mensa for the wrong reasons, but when I was a member, most of the active members who went to events were just like everyone else, only friendlier.
The intelligence of the sticker system is evident.
Maybe the important lesson here is that sometimes dumb people think the correct answer is wrong because they don’t quite understand the question? Does the term ‘over your head’ ring any bells?
What on Earth was this person speaking at a Mensa gathering for? Does she have some kind of narrowly specialized knowledge we needed? For God’s sake, she wasn’t allowed to mingle was she?
Funny, I always considered myself a prude, but I guess I was wrong considering some of the posts on here. Many of us working in labs, and cubes (usually alone) solving the world’s problems don’t get a chance to socialize and hug as much as the burger-flippers of the world. The dot system is neat, efficient, and allows people to get some of the physical interaction they may be missing in their lives. It also helps break the ice for those that are looking for a potential mate at this meeting of kindred spirits. Our conventions are 3-5 days long & then we get back solving the water or energy crisis, designing a better car, or whatever. We don’t have the same luxury of time that many in the center of the bell curve have.
I can’t believe that so much time and effort is being wasted on such a trivial issue. Mensa bashing has always been rampant but to label all Mensans socially inept because we deal with a small situation in a quick, easy and non-threatening way is as silly as it can be. There is every range of behavior, belief, sociability, social status, whatever, in Mensa. We do talk to each other about a myriad of things; we just like to get to the heart of the conversation without having to do the groundwork over and over again. If we don’t spend time on do you or don’t you want a hug, we can talk about love and hate and the consequences of both emotions, their role in literature and mass media, etc. Once you learn the ABCs and how to read, you don’t start with relearning the ABCs every time you open a book. As far as I know, the hug, ask, or don’t hug stickers are a non-issue among Mensans.
“There are many different ways to be ‘intelligent.'” The refuge of the weak-minded.