(Note: From the Editors Desk is an ongoing series of polemics targeting whatever we feel like: whichever sweet and petty prejudice the wind has blown across our desk the day we sit down to write. It can be taken as seriously as you like, on a scale from Rabelais to the prophet Jeremiah).

Trivia Night.

You may not have all the answers, but They do.

And They have come.

They descend on your local watering hole like the Golden Horde, despoiling the womenfolk and putting to death the men, until the river runs yellow with undrunk beer. After the massacre, among the screams of the wounded and the moans of the dying, they begin their most barbaric of rituals: one of them, possibly their leader – the heads of your friends hanging from his belt – stands among the carnage as they divide themselves into groups of 4-6, prepared for some new heinous and diabolical act.

‘WHEN!’ their leader bellows, ‘WAS THE PRESIDENCY OF HARRY TRUMAN?!’

They consult among themselves, amid the wails and keening cries of the conquered, and mark down guesses on sheets of paper.

‘WHO!’ he bellows –the decapitated heads on his belt, the heads of your friends, bouncing from the force of his projection – ‘WAS THE PRODUCER OF SINGLE LADIES BY BEYONCE?!’

The horde consults in their small groups once more, scratching at their paper.

This could have been avoided, you think, stumbling away from the sacked and burning remnants of your former local. This could have been avoided! If only you can make it to the next pub, just around the corner, just up the street, you can give a warning. Do not defy them; do not be proud. This could have been avoided. If only you had submitted. If only you had given up your chair.

Trivia night. If you’ve ever been evicted from your favorite pub like a tenant farmer, you already know where this is going. These people – these ‘people’ – are the kids who couldn’t stop raising their hands in class, the ones who kept raising their hand even after Ms. Roberts told them to let someone else try, the ones who shouted out the answer anyway after Ms. Roberts called on someone else. Their idea of a good time is remembering they know things. We are talking about the basic human capacity to remember things, to learn a piece of information and be able to recall it at a later date: this is their greatest pleasure. These people get physically excited by reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.

‘Now, hold one a minute,’ some of you may be thinking, ‘why is this a big deal? Can’t you live and let live?’

To which I say: No.

Allow me to paint another picture: You’re sitting at a table with friends after a long day. It’s a golden evening: one of those perfect early-Autumn evenings where the days are warm without being hot, and the sun still lingers in the sky. You excuse yourself and go in for another drink. Things are good. You have a pleasant bit of conversation with the bartender. Things are very good. You go outside and are greeted with a man holding the back of your chair, speaking with your companions. Before you can think you’ve made a new friend, he storms off, grumbling. Suddenly, you see them: rearranging tables, snatching chairs, stalking outside the crowd like jackals, waiting for a regular to take a bathroom break so they can store his chair with their own stockpile. They work the crowd, asking for chairs, asking how long you and your friends intend to sit there, ‘ooh, are you playing too?’ they ask. While you sit with your friends, they ask when you might leave, then proclaim rights to your chairs and fight amongst each other like vultures or estate lawyers. Should you choose to stay longer, they resort to violence. But you’ve already read about that.

The trouble with ‘activity’ nights at a pub is that it assumes people need an activity in order to drink; drinking is an activity. Hanging out at the end of the day, conversing with friends, meeting new friends, reclaiming your self from all the stress and worries of life: Is this not enough?

Not for a growing number of bar managers, and definitely not for these people. And even worse, these people are not interested in useful information, but only regurgitating inane drops of knowledge, facts of non-consequence, tidbits defined by their and impotence and uselessness. Who produced Single Ladies? Who cares!

These are a people bent on the collective removal of the native population of the bar. For a group obsessed with nonsense tidbits of knowledge, they seem astonishingly unaware that population removal is a war crime dating back to the Lieber Code of 1863, drafted as General Order 100 to govern the conduct of the Union Army during the Civil War. Then again, that would be useful information.