The ARSE Test: Coming Soon in Romanian!

I tried quite few viral tools related to The No Asshole Rule, ARSE Mail (an e-card for someone suffering from an asshole or to apologize for being an asshole), The ACHE (Asshole Client for Hell Exam -- to assess of your client is a certified asshole) and The Flying ARSE (to assess if you -- or perhaps someone on your flight -- is an asshole airline passenger).  But none have been nearly as successful as the original ARSE (Asshole Rating Self Exam), a self-test to determine if you are a certified asshole.  It is closing in on 200,000 completions and the other day I got a quite strident request from a reader who wants to be able to post his ARSE score on Facebook and Twitter. And as a sign of international impact, I got a request from a book store in Romania the other day to translate it into Romanian for their website. 

Although I study and teach about what spreads and what does not, I still am not very skilled at predicting which viral tools will take off and which won't -- like much of innovation, there is a lot of "throwing it against the wall and seeing what sticks."  But If anyone has any ideas about why the ARSE persists and the other tools have attracted brief and modest interest (although the ACHE does OK), I'd be quite curious.

Comments

[Ann]

Your three other tests, ARSE mail, the ACHE and the flying ARSE, all involve the effect one person has on another. Or for that matter, it involves another person. People primary think about themselves. We want to know who we are, how others see us and what we can do about it.

[Dan Erwin]

Aside from the substance of your survey, language matters a lot. Simplicity--four letters. Business language is characterized by brevity--we know that from research.

ARSE is very recognizable as an expletive. I have a blog in which I use the term "hellhole" and it continues to get hits. Nothing of earthshaking significance in my blog that I can see. But I have wondered for years about the strange power of expletives to attract attention. I should know, I'm a rhetorician, but I don't know.