In a holiday ad (for Spanish speakers) the furniture giant IKEA gathered several families, seating each clan around a large table where a holiday feast was prepared with all the trimmings. Then a quiz started: if a person answered the question correctly they could stay and keep eating, but if they got something wrong they had to leave.
Initially, everyone found the quiz easy, correctly answering questions like:
- What animal filters can you find on Instagram stories?
- Can you demonstrate the “swish swish” (or “floss”) dance?
- What is the latest Instagram feature?
- Can you finish a lyric from this current song?
- What does this text message abbreviation mean?
- How did this celebrity couple meet?
But when the questions became more personal the answers stopped coming:
- How did your parents meet?
- What exactly is your dad’s job?
- What degrees does your grandma have?
- What’s your son’s favorite group?
- What’s your wife’s dream?
- What has your mother been studying recently?
Some family members tried to guess the right answer, but one after another, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, grandparents too, had to get up and leave. Finally, there was one solitary figure remaining, a lonely grandpa. A teen daughter summed up the embarrassment everyone felt: “What I’ve discovered is that I don’t know as much about my family as I do about some celebrities.”
There was a happy ending. Everyone was invited back to the table, but this time smartphones were placed in a box in the middle of the table and the lid was firmly affixed.
