Asklemmy

I joined 20 years ago out of curiousity if I could pass. I did and paid for a membership for a year because why not, but i never did anything with it and never renewed it.

The one thing I might have liked is the local meetings. Our local chapter had a website where they talked about the meetings. They were informal, just dinner and chatting in a private room at a restaurant, and you could learn a little about the people from the website too. It seemed to be heavy on scientists and engineers. This is near a national labratory so that made sense. I would have liked to have more friends like that, still would. But, for all I know, mensa scientists and engineers might be the worst scientists and engineers. They also appeared to be mostly over 60 and I was 20 at the time.

There are discounts on certain things according to their website https://www.us.mensa.org/shop/benefits-and-services/

MENSA is a big con. my mother humoured me when i was around 14 or so and i posted back the mini iq test from some paper or magazine or other. of course they replied wow you're a genius, you better come and get tested in a strict testing environment for real qualified geniuses. they scored me well on their test of words, maths, and square patterns with dots where you have to pick if the next dots should be up or down or whatever. all multiple choice of course.

did alright on the vocab stuff because i read a lot. put my best guess for everything else. big surprise then they gave me an OFFICIAL cert that said you are mega clever why don't you pay to join up? being a naive child of course i wanted to. mum said something to the effect of do you think they are playing you? i thought she was shitting me and just didn't want to pay the sub. obviously i'm a fuckin genius. but i knew she didn't have the spare cash so said yeah nevermind fuck em

dossed the rest of school thinking i didn't need it, why bother when i am a certified genius? never occurred to me that spending all my sunday job money going half on twenty fags and an eighth of soap bar wasnt genius level decison making

i'm doing alright these days but still fuck mensa

Monthly emails about gathering with members, a useless plastic card and your ego filled to the brim. Don’t waste your time and money, weed is better.

the mensa paradox.

people smart enough to get in, are smart enough to know it's not worth it

It discounts my impression of them.

Its funny to qualify and not go after it. After exploration I found the same things. Whats the point? Only thing I could find was hey you can hang out with smart people.

Its lonely being SMRT so this seems like it might be a good thing, but you know what... you put a bunch of smart people in a room and they are all used to being the smartest in a group and its insufferable.

Better to not bring it up, and just find people that share your hobbies tbh.

There used to be a discount on condoms but it never got used.

Look up Jaime Loftus’ excellent podcast “My Year in MENSA” for an in-depth look at the organization.

Genuinely don’t know if I qualify. I tend to score pretty high on the tests because my brain “gets” the exact kind of logic they usually test. What is more important though is that the tests suck in so many ways that it makes the results basically useless. Also I have yet to meet anyone who brags about their IQ score who happens to be anyone worth knowing.

They’d need to pay me a lot of money to get me to even consider joining Mensa.

In Spanish, mensa means stupid. You'd think geniuses would've chosen a better acronym

Mensa membership is directly correlated to taking online IQ tests.

Truly intelligent people don't.

Jamie Lofus did a podcast: (My Year In Mensa)[https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-my-year-in-mensa-55379945/]

It’s like buying a knighthood from an organization that claims to have rights to grant such things. Even though the title is meaningless.

Mensa is the same.

IOW it’s an organization designed to take your money for a title. They get money, you get a meaningless membership.

I found this on their website: https://www.us.mensa.org/shop/benefits-and-services/

For anyone else wondering what a "MENSA" member is:

Mensa International is the largest and oldest high-IQ society in the world.[3][4][5] It is a non-profit organization open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardised, supervised IQ or other approved intelligence test.

I was already questioning why school/university cafeteria staff should get any benefits that aren't present in other jobs.

Thinking one step further: Even if I somehow got into MENSA (unlikely), I can't imagine ever saying, "I see you have a MENSA discount..." ugh.

Half off soft drinks at Texas Roadhouse!