Jonathan Lemon Has a Spirit Animal

I’ve recently started reading Tim Ferriss’s book Tools of Titans. The book is a compendium of knowledge distilled from dozens of Tim’s podcasts over the years. I’ll save my impressions of the book for later, but there is one item that caught my immediate attention: Tim’s interviewees pick their own spirit animal.

That got me wondering what my spirit animal would be. There is an added level of intrigue for me, as many people I’ve known would describe me as a robot. Knowing my spirit animal might give me extra ammo convincing folks I’m truly alive.

I could brainstorm and come up with an animal on my own, but that’s not exciting as typing “what is my spirit animal” into Google and taking a quiz. I’m awesome at taking quizzes, especially arbitrary ones.

Here we go!

Quiz #1

First stop is SpiritAnimal.info. There’s only 7 questions here; piece of cake. And my animal is…a sea turtle.

Pretty underwhelming. And nonsensical! I don’t have a hump back. I don’t bury anything in the sand. And my skin is anything but reptilian (I have a pretty intense moisturizing routine).

Obviously, since I don’t like the results, this quiz is flawed, inaccurate, and should be completely ignored. I’m taking another one.

Quiz #2

Next stop, Buzz Feed. And the result is…the sloth. That’s even worse than a turtle! I literally (and I mean literally) have nothing in common with a sloth besides being slow, eating and sleeping a lot, and having algae growing in my hair.

This is not going well. Not at all. But really, this particular quiz never had a shot at being useful. I mean, it’s from Buzz Feed.

Strike 2.

Quiz #3

How about this one from Brain Fall. Hopefully this one is designed correctly, unlike the other two. Is it too much to ask for a spirit animal algorithm that hasn’t been corrupted by the Russians or North Koreans?

Moment of truth…I’m a turtle again!

Clearly all these things are rigged. There’s no reason to keep taking quizzes. Three strikes and you’re out.

Conclusion

I didn’t learn my spirit animal, but I did learn that we don’t have to fear an intelligent machine takeover any time soon.

It’s like they say, if you want something done right do it yourself. The correct animal answer for me is the Jaguar.  It starts with the letter J (as does Jonathan), it has spots (as does the freckled Jonathan), and it has a tail (as does Jonathan) and it’s pretty to look at (as is Jonathan).

Here’s to the Jaguar!