The Megahunks & Superbabes fiasco

About a year ago, I prepared a talk on the use of analogies to understand complex systems to give as a part of the Un-Distinguished Lecture Series (better known as UDLS). It’s a topic I find interesting, but I worried that it would be boring to a bunch of grad students dropping in on Friday before going out to drink.

In order to spice it up a bit and, yes, try to secure a larger audience, I announced a talk on a different topic: sexy men and women. Before giving the presentation on analogies and complexity, I would give a joke presentation full of garish slides, inane talk, and unfortunate typos. It would lighten the mood, I thought. The audience and I would laugh at the amateur quality and vapidity of it all. I put together a few slides, and mailed out the following abstract:

there are lots of people that are super hot for men and for women but do we know which is hotter the man or the woman? im going to show a lot of pictures of sexy people and we can decide which are the most sexy or the two. SAFE FOR KIDS!!! (your sick for thinking i’d make a pornshow) ;P c u there

The trick worked: somewhere between twenty and thirty people showed up in time for the talk (as punctual as CS students are when there’s no free food), a good turnout. I did my best to live up to my stupid slides, speaking with the judgemental attitude of TMZ in the style of JEFF K. The three slides in my joke presentation on megahunks and superbabes follow.

The audience laughed and called out jokes. A few pointed out the incorrect use of “whose,” that I had stretched some of the images, and tried to guess who was with Jeff Goldblum in that photo.

I followed these slides with a blank one, over which I said something along the lines of “seriously though, here’s what I’m here to talk about” and then got into the real presentation: Thoughts on the Use of Analogies in Understanding and Solving Complex Problems.

That was when I lost the audience. Talking though the first few slides, I noticed that they’d become much quieter. Emt, interrupting my explanation of how colour is to spectrum as tone is to scale, asked “Analogies? Are you serious?”

“Uh,” I hesitated. “Yeah.” I had hoped to pull the rug out from under them, but I had sucker punched them instead.

I got through it, but I’ve not lived down my mistake. Since, other UDLS lecturers have joked about it by showing slides on unrelated topics with long titles in the middle of their presentations, threatening to “pull a Lucas.”

I’ve thought about that bungled joke a while. My joke presentation flopped, but why? I’ve tried to diagnose what went wrong, and find ways to avoid making the same mistakes. What follows are a few of the things I’ve come up with.

They’re not hard and fast rules, nor are they applicable in every case. Some should be obvious. Nonetheless, I do think they can be useful, and not only to fake out your audience with cheesecake.

Get your rewards right

I went from ogling Megan Fox to a remarkably un-sexy brain teaser from the GRE test prep. I feigned a fun, juicy presentation but delivered a dry, thoughtful one that had nothing to do with hot bods. It was a mistake to do so. It is better to risk scaring the audience away at the beginning, then rewarding them for their patience, than to tease them and not deliver.

Perhaps I should have started with a dull presentation, later switching to something more engaging. I could have made drab and heavy slides, full of complicated diagrams of the geometry of beauty, then moved on to more colourful things, like the photos of hurricanes and crowds in the slides on complexity.

Take advantage of their good will

Thing is, it’s okay to start juicy and then dry up—a little. The slides could have hooked them, softened them up for some meaningful content. As it was, the fake presentation grabbed everyone’s interest, and then the second one did nothing with it. There was no connection to be made from sexy people to complexity. It is important to take advantage of the good will of the audience.

I could have realized hunks and babes would be more exciting than analogies and complex systems, and kept those slides, used them to draw the attention of the audience before dropping science on beauty and sexual attraction. After I had everyone’s eyes and ears, I would ask “Why do we find this supermodel so attractive?”¹

Be clear before being clever

I thought the goofy, poorly made slides would tell them that the presentation was a joke. I mean, the images are warped, the spelling off, and it’s in Comic Sans, fer chrissake! They were meant to make the audience sceptical of the presentation.

They weren’t clear. Not everyone takes typos as cues to become critical and wary, as I do. Instead, the mistakes and imperfections signalled to the audience that they could kid and relax. The real joke—that the whole presentation was fake—was hidden. It is better to err on the side of readability rather than of subtlety.

The joke might have been clearer had I used something more esoteric, less appealing, and been more forceful and bizarre. I could have made the topic ridiculous, presenting close-up images of insect larvae and asking the audience which they thought was most attractive. “Which of these slimy young things would you like to kiss?”

Be sure they’re in on it

The audience did not know it was a parody, and I did not do enough to help them see it as one. I had failed to get the audience on my side. They had fun with “Megahunks & Superbabes” itself, not at its expense.

I assumed they would come in expecting to see a serious presentation, but sent out a silly abstract and started with funny slides. I failed to see that the audience did not, and could not, know that I intended to talk about analogy. I’m the only one that can read my mind. Presentations should be considered from the perspective of the audience, divorced from the experience of the presenter.²

I’m certainly not the only one that’s failed to get his audience in on the joke. Ghandi made the same mistake. He describes it in his autobiography:

When my turn for speaking came, I stood up to make a speech. I had with great care though out one which would consist of a very few sentences. But I could not proceed beyond the first sentence. I had read that of Addison that he began his maiden speech in the House of Commons, repeating “I conceive” three times, and when he could proceed no further, a wag stood up and said, “The gentleman conceived thrice but brought forth nothing.” I had thought of making a humourous speech taking this anecdote as the text. I therefore began with it and stuck there. My memory entirely failed me and in attempting a humourous speech I made myself ridiculous. “I thank you, gentlemen, for having kindly responded to my invitation,” I said abruptly, and sat down.

Ghandi and I should have known better. Not only could we have communicated our intent more clearly (Ghandi by impersonating Addison), but we could have taken a moment to think about the audience. Would they know about Addison’s stumble? Would it be funny to them?

Be confident

All things considered, I would have been better off without “Megahunks & Superbabes”. I was told later by a by a few audience members that the presentation about analogies and complex problems was pretty good, despite starting off on the wrong foot. Instead of resorting to cheesy humour and sex appeal, I should have been confident enough in my presentation to go out and give it as it was.