[Poll] Check One

[thefourthvine]

Internets! I am still compiling the Woobie Poll of Dooooooooom, but in the meantime, here is a PRESSING QUESTION that came up today while I was (yay!) visiting with norah. Plus some other pressing questions, because why have one forced choice when you can have five?

So. For the rest of your life, you can only have one of each of the following pairs. Which will it be? Which is the ONLY ONE YOU CAN HAVE FOREVER? (If you already live without one or more of these, then obviously your choice is easier. Like, I will have no trouble at all with question three, but question one might kill me.)

I am also taking suggestions for future horrible forced choices. I would like to find the hardest forced choice in all the land. (That isn't, you know, of great weight or import. No Sophie's Choices.)

Poll #2389 Choose Wisely

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 634

View Respondents

You can only have one of these for the rest of your life. Which? Choose wisely:

View Answers

Onions
234 (37.1%)

Garlic
397 (62.9%)

Choose wisely:

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Fat
405 (64.3%)

Sugar
225 (35.7%)

Choose wisely:

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Coffee
159 (25.2%)

Chocolate
473 (74.8%)

Choose wisely:

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Caffeine
426 (68.3%)

Alcohol
198 (31.7%)

Choose wisely:

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Sex (including with partner(s) and with yourself, etc.)
427 (68.4%)

Sweets (including all desserts, candy, etc.)
197 (31.6%)

Comments

[everysecondtuesday]

Onions versus garlic is a terrible choice to make. Also, I am surprised at the number of people willing to give up coffee for chocolate. I suppose at least you'd still have tea.

[giglet]

I didn't choose onions for the same reason that I didn't choose coffee: there are acceptable substituted for onions (shallots, scapes, or even ramps) the same way there are other acceptable carriers of caffeine.

[dhara]

ahahaha, I love everyone's priorities! ecause as of this moment, everyone has voted for chocolate over coffee, and sex over sweets. (Because there are other vehicles for caffeine, like tea! And as for sex, well, duh. Also I'd already chosen fat over sugar.)

[dhara]

*puzzled* by the time I posted the above comment, the poll had been updated, and in this brave new world there are people who would give up chocolate for coffee, and sex for sweets.

[giglet]

Having indulged in many of these already today, I now feel the need to go have some chocolate and alcohol, too.

Giglet is an impressionable Giglet.

[thefourthvine]

I support this life choice!

[naraht]

Neither coffee nor chocolate... I don't like either.

[thefourthvine]

I figured people in that situation could just abstain from that question. (I would have put in "none of the above," too, but it destroyed the terrible symmetry of the forced choice.)

[ratherbe4gotten]

Actually, these ones were pretty easy for me... although I was feeling pretty lonely with the coffee there for a bit...

[thefourthvine]

None of these required any agonizing for me - I knew exactly what I would pick for each choice - but it was pretty painful to say I'd give up onions, even so.

[macey]

...oh god that last choice. T_T

[thefourthvine]

I FEEL NO SHAME. NO SHAME AT ALL.

[calathea]

I am totally indifferent to the caffeine/alcohol choice as I never have either.

[thefourthvine]

See, yeah, that one I expected to be more challenging for other people, but for me - well. If I gave up caffeine, I'd have to give up coffee ice cream. If I gave up alcohol, I'd have to change up some recipes that use wine as a deglazer. And that's it, basically.

[princessofgeeks]

does it mean that i am a bear of very little brain that the choices seems VERY EASY???

LOL.

[flourish]

No, I felt that way too.

[abyssinia]

If I don't really want caffeine OR alcohol can I keep sweets with the sex?

[yvi]

Me, too, please? No coffee, alcohol or caffeine is fine with me :)

[utterfrivolity.livejournal.com]

The only one that was extremely hard for me was sex v. sweets. At any given moment I'd choose sex over sweets, but if I have to abstain from one for the rest of my life, well, there are so many more occasions when I'd feel the pain of abstaining from sweets. Every person eating a candy bar would be a reminder of my deprivation. I don't think I could handle it.

[thefourthvine]

But think of all the movies and fan fiction and books and so on that would remind you of sex!

[ell]

The sugar/fat question was the toughest for me as you need *both* sugar and fat to make cookies or cake or really any dessert worth eating...or even a good chocolate bar...

[calathea]

But you need fat to have cheese. That was my deciding factor in the fat/sugar debate.

[ellen_fremedon]

Is the sugar in Fat vs Sugar just refined sucrose? Or just sucrose? Or is it ALL SUGARS IN EVERYTHING?

It doesn't affect my choice-- I get very very unhappy when I do not get enough fat in my diet-- but it changes it from a trivially easy choice to a woeful and teary one if I have to give up fruit and sweet corn and tomato sauce and carmelized onions and carrot soup and roasted beets &c.

[thefourthvine]

It's just sucrose. If you have to give up all sugars in everything, I'm not actually sure you could eat a balanced enough diet to survive - all fruits and vegetables have at least a little sugar in them.

[frostfire]

See, I have no issues at all with onions vs. garlic, as I like onions but I could not LIVE without garlic, and caffeine/alcohol isn't hard for pretty much the same reason, but the rest...! I saw above someone was all, 'but there are other vehicles for caffeine than coffee'--but COFFEE ZOMG, it's not just the caffeine! It's the best drink in the world! (I truly believe this. Because it tastes SO GOOD, and it's so versatile--you can have it with no calories at all, with fat but no sugar, with sugar but no fat, with enough of both to practically spontaneously give you a heart attack; it can be hot or iced, smooth as hell or strong enough to knock you over--and also it TASTES SO GOOD. I have had a plain old cup of black coffee bring tears to my eyes, no joke. And in addition to all of these delightful things, it wakes you up! I don't know how the human race ended up blessed with something this good, but I am grateful.)

Right, so this just became an ode to the virtues of coffee? IDK, it was still a hard choice! I love chocolate! but coffee wins.

[thefourthvine]

I, too, absolutely could not live without garlic, so that was super-easy. But I want you to know that it is only my love for you that is stopping me from judging you for your Ode to Coffee, the World's Most Noxious Drink (That Doesn't Actually Involve Any Blood or Fungus or Urine or Anything Rotten).

[marginaliana]

AUGH fat/sugar was the only hard choice, but boy was it hard. I finally went for fat, because, cheese! I would have to pick cheese over cookies, I'm afraid.

[thefourthvine]

I, too, would prefer cheese to cookies. Cookies are great, but cheese gives meaning to life.

[katarik]

THESE QUESTIONS ARE IMPOSSIBLE.

If I give up caffeine, I can't have chocolate. If I give up sugar, I can't *bake*. If I give up fat, I can't *eat things at work*. (No, really. I work at McDonald's. I will *never be able to eat again*.)

[thefourthvine]

AND YET YOU MUST CHOOSE. *evil laugh*

[cesperanza]

I'm not sure what this says about me, but I found this a total no-brainer.

[thefourthvine]

It says you are a person of decided opinions. Which, um, is not exactly a shock, there. Just, you know, if someone said to me - "cesperanza: is she kind of wishy-washy?" I would have to say NO.

(And, actually, it was a no-brainer for me, too - I immediately knew what I would have to choose for each one - but it still pained me to give up some of these. And not others. Goodbye, coffee! I never drank you anyway. Your absence will not pain me.)

[toft]

I found this a startling easy poll! I'm not wild about sweets, caffeine or coffee, is the thing. I struggled over garlic/onion, but then noticed in comments about how there are onion substitutes, and changed my vote to garlic.

ETA - although when I considered that taking sex would mean giving up PIE, I hesitated.

[thefourthvine]

Just so you know what a tolerant person I am - I am MARRIED TO A WOMAN WHO HATES PIE. And yet I love her and cherish her anyway. Obviously, I chose sex over pie in a big way. *g*

[sapote]

Does sugar (in sugar vs. sex and sugar vs. fat) include fruit, dried fruit, &c?

Because sugar, the granulated cane product, sure, I'd give that up. Sugar as in all sweet things ever, my vote starts to swing away from sex and shortening.

[thefourthvine]

Sugar does not include fruit or carmelized onions or whatever - it isn't everything sweet in the world. Just sucrose.

[odditycollector]

Easiest forced choices ever!

[thefourthvine]

THEN GIVE ME A HARD ONE.

[ratcreature]

I'd like to point out that you die without fat, but not without sugar, so really how is that a choice?

[thefourthvine]

Well, don't look at me. I picked fat! (And you can take the fat-soluble vitamins independently - I wouldn't deny you that.)

[polarisnorth]

WELL I WAS FINE UNTIL I GOT TO THE LAST QUESTION. /o\

[thefourthvine]

SOMEONE HAS TO ASK THE HARD QUESTIONS, OKAY?

[parhelion]

Having been forced through most of these choices in offline life -- thanks to active diabetes before the annoying Complete Lifestyle Change -- I was able to fill out most of the survey based on my own empirical experience.

Alcohol was a cakewalk, caffeine was somewhat harder, sweets were really rough, fats were downright brutal, and if anyone had suggested anything about cutting garlic and/or sex at that point, I do believe I would have slugged them. While cursing. And possibly weeping copiously.

[thefourthvine]

Oh, man. I just want to offer you a gentle hug and a mug of soothing, uncaffeinated, unsweetened tea. These are painful choices to have to make in real life!

And, yeah, I think punching anyone who suggests you give up sex or garlic is entirely appropriate. (Plus, how do you know for sure that anyone who suggests you give up garlic isn't a vampire? That would be my assumption, I tell you what.)

[minim_calibre]

Coffee is my best frenemy. Chocolate can suck it.

[thefourthvine]

*judges you OMG*

[myalexandria]

ok, it is astonishing how long I had to hesitate over onions/garlic. Giving up one of those two would be BRUTAL, much worse than sugar or fat or even caffeine.

[thefourthvine]

Isn't it painful? That's the one of these that really HURT for me, because as I clicked for garlic, I was imagining all the recipes I'd have to give up or modify, and, just, NO. *clings*

[happydork]

I cannot decide if it says something noble and self-sacrificing about me, or something incredibly arrogant about me that part of my reason for choosing sex over sweets is all the people who'd suffer if I never had sex with them. Then I realised that your poll had encouraged false binaries in my thinking, and in fact it could be both noble and arrogant. But mainly arrogant.

[thefourthvine]

part of my reason for choosing sex over sweets is all the people who'd suffer if I never had sex with them

Clearly, what this says is that you are AWESOME at sex. Sex is your gift to society!