When I was young, I had a really diverse palate. I ate mushed up peas, carrots, bananas and even apples. My mom fooled me into believing that they tasted good by using a deceptive trick she called airplane mode. She would maneuver a spoonful of yucky tasting crushed up carrots in an airplane motion to distract me from the horrible taste of carrots. The airplane motion made them taste slightly better. Much like how a small package of pretzels, nuts, and Minute Maid Cranberry tastes better at 36,000 feet on an airplane. It has everything to do with the limited options we have on planes, and I had in my parent’s house.

When I realized that my mom was hiding all these different food options, I got so mad that I threw a tantrum…in the middle of the night. It wasn’t the uncomfortable crib, or the stinky diaper that made me cry. It was the fact that my parents lied to me about the other food options that were available. To get revenge, I got up and went to the bathroom, but I purposely left a little leftover in my diaper for my mom and dad to clean up at 2 am.

I could have been eating pizza, pasta, and unlimited breadsticks at Olive Garden. I could have been eating peanut butter, chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream or Fettuccini Alfredo. But my parents decided to feed me mushed up carrots. My parents couldn’t even wait until I was two days old to start decieving me. If you can’t trust your parents to be transparent, then you can’t trust anyone.

From that day forward (Day #2 on earth), I stopped listening to other people and only trusted myself. I would try stuff, see if I liked it and if I did, I would keep eating it. If I didn’t like it, I would throw it on the table, or at my sister, or get up and throw it in the trash when my mom wasn’t looking. I would even utilize my fully formed resting bitter face (RBF) to show them what I wanted. They got the hint, and by the time I was 3…days old, I was eating stuffed crust pizza and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Tonight Dough a couple of times a week.

When I first started out in social media marketing, I was introduced to the concept of A/B (I call it A/Bitter) testing. It’s a simple test, where you introduce two ads with everything the exact same, except for one variable. Then after a while you can tell which of the two variables is more relevant to your audience. After that, you run another A/B test on another variable and by the time you run every different variable, you don’t have enough money to run the optimized ad. It’s a really good way of showing your boss that you’re good at going over budget and you need much more next year. You can also claim that if he gave you more money, you finally run an optimized ad…after more A/B testing.

What I didn’t realize until I started running A/B tests in marketing, is that I’ve been A/B testing well before I knew even knew what the ABC’s were. I was running it by showing my parents what foods I liked. It isn’t as exact a science as an A/B marketing test, but it’s how you manipulate your parents or other people you are in a relationship with, without even knowing it.

For instance, you were probably young like I was at some point. Many years ago, you were a teenaged rage hormone monster, and those hormones made you do really dumb things. Like be attracted to other teenaged rage hormone monsters.

You stopped concentrating on important things like homework, college and career, and were so singularly focused on another rage monster, that you made Glen Close from Fatal Attraction look like a dedicated animal lover. Your rage hormones may have miraculously matched up with another rage monster and you might have dated for a month or two or even a whole semester. In a rare moment when the inner hormone beast wasn’t raging, you might have actually talked to this person you were attracted to. You might have made a mental checklist of things you liked and didn’t like about them.

After that person “broke your heart” they became the “A” in your A/Bitter test for relationships. No matter how good or bad they were, you would use them as the barometer for what your next person would be. Your “B” person had different things you like and different things you didn’t like. Then your A and B combined into your A, and so on and so forth, until you are where you are today. And today, you’ll be doing more A/Bitter testing.

It’s the same with jobs, family, movies, music, food, things you buy, art, and blogs you write. You might think the reason I blog is to entertain my small audience of friends, family and other WordPress bloggers, but it isn’t for you at all, you selfish imps. This blog is all about ME and MY bitterness. It’s just one big A/Bitter test about what I’m feeling at the moment, what kind of things work and don’t work, and like Facebook, how much money I can bleed out of you.

I’m sure you are all loyal followers for all 10 years I’ve been doing this. I’m sure you’ve read, liked, commented and shared on every one of my posts. You might think that because you’ve been following me for 10 years, that I like you or something. There are no feelings at all. You are all just a bunch of little fish in the fishbowl that I’m observing. I’m Neo and you guys are just a bunch of code in my Matrix.

Here are some Bitter Friday Giftures for you, but just know that they aren’t really for you, but just another A/B test. Enjoy…

My first day…

My parents using deceptive tricks…

This is me taking over the feeding…

Pretzels always taste better…

Because…

From then on…

Before I even knew my ABC’s…

We all had one of these monsters…

We thought this…

And this…

Little did they know…

And you all just look…

Now that you know you are part of the Matrix, you can relax and have a steak, some mashed potatoes and some pizza, because those things aren’t going to go to your hips. They are just going to the 1’s and 0’s near what you think is your hips. If you want, I can shave off the 1’s and 0’s near there later, but only after I’m done using you as an A/Bitter Test.

What kinds of A/Bitter testing have you been doing your whole life?

ARRRGGGHHHHHH

Bitter A/Bitter Testing Ben