“Tuesday’s Dilemmas” is a hilarious Dutch website that has been set up by a group of six individuals in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The idea is simple: you are provided with two absurd situations and you have to choose one of them. The six creators tell us how they came up with the idea and what their favorite dilemmas are.
For the six makers, it was already a long-standing hobby to give each other dilemmas – and the more absurd, the better. Illustrator Marloes Toonen says: “Some of us are related, and we would do this with each other, in particular at family gatherings, deep into the night. It was a challenge to try to come up with a truly difficult and absurd dilemma for the rest of the group. We started with a Facebook page so that we could also propose the dilemmas to other friends.” Now, two years down the line, they have more than one hundred dilemmas on offer.
Strange conversations
Thanks to Facebook, Tuesday’s Dilemmas spread far, wide and fast, and they even started receiving cartoons from people they do not know. “There was an active response to the dilemmas, because, apparently, they were familiar to people. We try to create dilemmas that are instantly easy to imagine. You fantasize about things that did not really happen and have the strangest conversations about them, that can be both surprising and funny. Furthermore, you get to know your friends better this way.”
Introducing:
Martje (29 years), teacher-researcher Swedish Linguistics
Favorite dilemma: “There’s always a clown sitting by your bed OR Your nose grows when you lie.”
Joeske (27), teacher
Favorite dilemma: “If you see a pimple on someone, you have to squeeze it OR If someone starts talking about the weather, you spit in their face”
Hayk (26 years), teacher
Favorite dilemma: “You have to read a Mills and Boon novel every week OR Have ‘penisboy69’ as your user name and email address for the rest of your life”
Joep (30), filmmaker
Favorite dilemma: “Everything you say is also dubbed into German OR You are followed by a street organ everywhere you go”
Brechje (28), PhD linguistics at the University of Amsterdam
Favorite dilemma: “You have to squeeze the kitchen J-cloth dry into a glass and drink it OR Have an aggressive ostrich in your bedroom for one whole night”
Marloes (28) illustrator and Visual Arts teacher
Favorite dilemma: “You have to go fishing every day between 7 a.m and 8 a.m OR You need to ask your father for permission every time you want to have sex”
