Trivia is not Trivial

Anglerfish are deep-ocean dwellers, with an array of jagged teeth and a luminescent ‘lantern’ hanging over their heads, acting as a lure that helps them catch other fish.

Yet they have another lesser-known secret to survival up their sleeves: sexual parasitism. To mate, tiny males clamp their sharp teeth onto the bellies of larger females. Some permanently fuse with the females and become sperm production organs, losing their eyes and all internal organs except for their testes.

At this point, I imagine my readership is split into 2 camps: “woah! Awesome” and “gah! I came here for personal growth and you give me this?!”

Either way, at least I have your attention. The best thing about this fact is that unless you’re a scientist studying anglerfish (in which case you already knew the fact) it’s totally useless trivia.

Last week I wrote about the importance of maintaining a degree of “blind faith” to balance the increasingly information-led approaches we take to our goals. It got me thinking: the more data-led our lives become, the more we demand that every piece of information we absorb is directly applicable to our lives.

Most of us will never find ourselves 1000m below the surface of the ocean, so we won’t ever need to recognise that bizarre mating ritual. But many of us might have felt a sense of awe or fascination when we learned the fact. For others, animal facts may not be your thing, but you follow facts about celebrities you’ll never meet or historical times you’ll never experience.

The thing is, however diverse the subject matter, we all love a bit of useless trivia. But I’m here to challenge the “useless” part. Indulging in trivia that apparently serves no real purpose in relation to our day-to-day lives, actually does us more good than we might think.

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Unlocking the power of useless trivia

Few activities have the power to build both calm and connection. Typically we think of activities that make us feel calm as solitary, and activities that connect us with others as social, active and needing to be balanced with alone time. Who would have expected trivia to tick both boxes?

Trivia can be a calming distraction

Founder and CEO of Calm Collective Asia, Sabrina Ooi, turns to animal facts as a welcome distraction when she’s feeling unwell or tired. Instagram sensation and best-selling author Brooke Barker has created Sad Animal Facts, a social media account and mindfulness book offering a moment of respite through mindless animal-related trivia.

There is demand, and there is also science. According to a study by The University of California, trivia piques our curiosity, which in turn releases dopamine. It’s no wonder that Sabrina Ooi and Brooke Barker have discovered fun facts are effective mood boosters.

Much like walking in nature can trigger a sense of awe, marvelling at the wonders of our world through facts can have a similar effect. Not a bad way to spend a rainy day when heading outside to marvel at nature holds a little less appeal.

Trivia can forge connection 

I’ve been subjecting quite a few friends to my anglerfish fact. Most recently, one friend replied “a fish fact I don’t know already? Try me.” And we laughed over the fact that he’d beaten me to it and already knew the fact in question. It deepened our connection and we discovered more common ground.

What’s more, trivia facts are memorable because they make us human. Last week, I swapped tips with friends about how to remember people when you’re interviewing multiple candidates for a job or meeting vast swathes of people at a networking event. 

The best tip, we concluded, was to write down the most bizarre (and therefore most memorable) fact about that person as an ‘anchor’ to help you place them next time around. “Loves motorbikes and cheese toasties” is far more memorable than “works in finance”.

We also agreed that remembering someone’s name plays second fiddle to remembering these bizarre facts when you meet someone a second time. Somehow, the phrase “I remember you’re a big cheese toastie fan. Had any good ones recently?” is much more likely to show thoughtfulness and form a deeper connection than “Hi Emily!”

Like trivia, facts can be used to pique our curiosity. I recently met a startup co-founder who used facts to her advantage: Mayra Hurtado, co-founder of Hormony first introduced me to her company’s mission to tackle lack of awareness in perimenopause via a compelling fact on a Linkedin post. “Did you know that searching “pregnancy” on PubMed yields 1.1 million results, but “perimenopause / menopause” only brings up 90,000?”

Oh, wow! Now I understand that this is a seriously under-researched issue, and you’ve used a fact to show me rather than telling me. It’s no coincidence that this fact, and therefore Mayra’s startup, stuck in my head.

Whilst opening with my favourite anglerfish fact is a little too intense for most conversations, facts (fun or otherwise) should not be underestimated as an avenue for more adventurous small talk. Trivia makes us human. And time spent in internet rabbitholes or talking to people we meet about bizarre topics makes us interesting and interested people.

It’s time to ditch the surface-level small talk and find out what trivia your conversation partner enjoys to build a deeper, more meaningful connection.

What’s your trivia of choice? Send your useless facts my way!

Writer’s Note

As I scrolled my email inbox, I immediately took a screenshot of the weird angler fish mating story (I promise it was a feature in the New York Times, not plentyofanglerfish.com).

I thought: wow, nature is mind-blowing, I want to write about this. How on EARTH is this related to personal development? A few weeks later, it had still stuck with me and I’d shared it with a few people who found it equally fascinating. Then it hit me: trivia builds human connection.

If you have any weird animal facts for me, I’m all ears.

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Lastly, there’s only one other thing I like just as much as miscellaneous trivia, and it’s a Dad joke: