The flamingo effect

This post is not about any biological phenomenon associated with the flamingo- A tall wading bird with mainly pink or scarlet plumage and long legs and neck. It has a heavy bent bill that is held upside down in the water in order to filter-feed on small organisms. This post is however about a human phenomenon which every other person experiences at some point of time in life. Well may be, may be not, it you are too smart you may never have to.

We are talking about the average human being who has a tendency of cutting slack in stuffs whenever it’s not fatal, moves his ass only if it becomes necessary and unavoidable, may wake up late and think of snoozing the alarm a little bit more. They all have the same tendency, doing just enough.

But while you are doing just enough to manage a task, what happens at the end? You may end up reading the document half-heartedly, making the shortest possible presentation with the scarcest data in it, may run just 1/6^th of your targeted distance. We all know, it’s not fatal.

Often there comes a time when we are asked a question by our senior, we surely don’t know the answer, but there is no harm in making a wild guess right, let’s stick to an educated guess over a wild guess. What would that invite you at most? May be a warning which is most likely to keep your mouth shut and stop bluffing. When you get caught and feel completely busted, I call it the Flamingo effect. What makes me name it that when I blurted out the wrong figures and got caught I was just feeling lucky you see.

Déjà-vu.

 It was an event from my school, may be standard 6^th. I was selected in the team of 2 which was supposed to represent my school at a state level quiz competition. It was organised by my father’s office people so the human resources guy was quite impressed by me as I had scored highest in the objective type screening. But what we don’t know here yet is I bluffed my way out, lucky day you see. And there at the quiz, after scoring an easy 20, we sit there to a question which could easily make us the winner by getting us 50 points in one go. And the question, we had to identify the bird in the picture. Now all including my partner in the quiz were looking at me for the answer, after all I had hit the buzzer even before they completed the question. I mumbled the line which I guess I will not forget in my life. Is it the Siberian crane? “For a second there was a deafening silence as the anchor really thought I got that, hitting the buzzer and all.

 “Its the Flamingo, you get a -50 on that”

Easy calculation. 25-50= -25. We stood last.

What do I do! I am a slacker who has often been lucky enough to get the wild guesses correct! I was feeling lucky that day!

Hence, the Flamingo effect.

Now that’s kind of my favorite bird now as i have obsessed about it for all those years now. Yes, now 26, and still can’t get over the gold plated watch they gave to the winners there at the quiz. Marvels of human nature, we are a fabulous species.

If I could go back into time and change anything, I would not be hitting the buzzer, but I completely did and there was no other thing which would have happened at all. So even if you are feeling lucky, the Flamingo effect may still follow you and haunt you for life.

And, we are back :D