The survey part of the nativity story is too often overlooked. Sure, there’s the the annunciation by a literal angel that a virgin woman is going to have God’s kid, and the eventual birth of said kid in the unlikeliest of places. But we mustn’t forget that the entire reason Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem was to take part in the census. And I would disagree with anyone who argues this is the least interesting part of the story.
From the census of Quirinius to those little feedback cards they used to hand out in Nando’s, there’s nothing as satisfyingly uncomplicated as ticking boxes. Relaxation comes in many shapes and forms. For me, this year, it’s consisted of rating my satisfaction with things on a scale of one to five. My favourite podcasts. My local council. My gas supplier. I mean, how satisfied am I with my gas? It seems pretty gassy. It’s definitely flammable. Could be cheaper, I guess. Four out of five? What a profoundly, meditatively dull thing to contemplate.
Like so much of what makes 2020 me incomprehensible to 2019 me, it started in March. It started with my hours spent online blending into one continuous blur of focussed inertia, interrupted only by the occasional blink of my reddening eyes. It started with needing some extra cash. And never has the word “pay” been used more lightly than on the many, many websites and apps that offer money for the completion of their surveys. On YouGov, for example, I currently have 1,040 points. I accrued those points by filling out 22 surveys, each taking me roughly 10 minutes. If I earn another 3,960 points, I’m told, I’ll receive £50. Long story short, this works out at roughly £3 per hour (about a third of the minimum wage for someone living in London).
But it turns out it’s not really the money I’m interested in. I began taking surveys to “make £££ from home”, and I’ve ended up taking them purely for the love of taking surveys.
There’s something deeply satisfying about the anonymity of a survey-taker. When, more often than not now, we have to be accountable for our opinions, it’s nice to be able to register that – as a faceless, nameless Brit – I’m dissatisfied with everything from the quality of my internet provider to the government’s response to Covid. “That’ll show ’em,” I say to myself, as I tick the “very poor” box, when questioned about Boris Johnson’s handling of EU negotiations. It’s like microdosing catharsis; sending out into the world one minuscule data point cataloguing my sadness and rage at everything that’s happened throughout this overflowing septic tank of a year.
Surveys, I suppose, are for people who want to feel the gratification of voting, but for everything else. It’s also reassuring, in the age of big data, to have a tiny bit of control over what patterns you’re contributing to. If I’m going to Google weird medical symptoms and cat videos several times a day, I should probably balance it out with something maybe not useful exactly, but not actively useless.
It’s perfectly possible though that my addiction to online surveys has emerged from that unique, 2020 brand feeling of impotence. Filling out a survey is a bit like an incredibly boring version of writing a letter to Santa, where you send a list of requirements out into the ether, hoping that some kind of magic might happen. In the case of the letter to Santa: getting a PlayStation. In the case of the survey: the hope that Boris Johnson might see someone ticked “not very pleased” in a question about how he’s doing as prime minister, and cry. Sure, Santa isn’t real, and neither is the PM’s ability to feel shame, but sometimes it’s nice to write things down. And if “online survey therapy” becomes a thing, I’d like it to be known that I – having not entirely wasted my endless free time in 2020 – invented it.
Taking a survey does actually seem to be a good mindfulness exercise. Just try panicking about your future when you’re figuring out if you’re “moderately likely” or “very likely” to recommend Tesco pet insurance to someone you know. There’s always the risk of falling into a despair pit over the grim futility of getting paid 10p to let a horrible corporation know what they can do to “improve”. But, hey, this is 2020. The year hand-sculpted by Satan out of a shapeless mound of dung. We get our kicks where we can. And, on a scale of one to five (one being “not at all likely” and five being “extremely likely”) I give my chances of getting rich off of surveys a one. But I give my chances of carrying on doing them a five.
• Eleanor Margolis is a columnist for the i newspaper and Diva
