(source: TASR)
People have come up with some funny answers during the ongoing census that is compulsory for all people residing in Slovakia.
“Jokers tend to state humorous answers especially when it comes to questions of their religion or nationality,” the spokesperson of the census Jasmína Stauder stated, as quoted by the TASR newswire.
For example, when asked about their religious preferences, some people answered: “Jedi Knights” or “Alcohol Witnesses” which is a satirical group formed on Facebook by stand-up comedians, a parody of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“We haven’t evaluated these answers yet, so if the campaign of Alcohol Witnesses was successful, we will learn after the census,” Stauder said, as quoted by TASR.“We haven’t evaluated these answers yet, so if the campaign of Alcohol Witnesses was successful, we will learn after the census,” Stauder said, as quoted by TASR.
Majority of answers are serious
Alcohol Witnesses claim they are not jokers. They consider themselves a serious church, but they are not registered yet.
“The aim is to find out how many people claim allegiance to this religion,” said its main representative Gabo Žifčák, the stand-up comedian, as quoted by TASR. “We need 50,000 signatures to register the church and we need to know whether it is worth it to start collecting them.”
A funny part of the census is, according to Stauder, responses to the questions about when people were married. “A man complained we destroyed his life as he did not remember the answer and his wife was offended,” Stauder said.
“But most of the answers are serious and we want to thank people who approached the census in this way,” a spokesperson added, as quoted by TASR.
Conspiracies, too
Conspiracies spin around the census, too. The spokesperson said that she would divide them into categories ranging from harmless and funny to harmful and dangerous.
“The classic question asked most often is “why do you need it, you know everything anyway”,” Stauder noted.
She points out that the information gathered about how people travel to work and whether they live somewhere other than at the address of their permanent residence is not possible to know without census.
More dangerous conspiracies connect the census with the vaccination roll-out or claim that people are being implemented with microchips via the census.
“Luckily, this group is not big either and we usually get questions that are logical and legitimate,” Stauder said.
