This video was made possible by WIX. If you’re ready to create a website, head
over to wix.com/go/infographics2019 to try out one of their premium plans right now. Though often lumped together, deaf people
and mute people are two separate types of people, and just because one is deaf does
not mean that they are mute. Caused by illness, injury, or medical mistake,
muteness can rob someone of their primary method of communicating with the world, but
have you ever wondered what it would be like to never use your voice again? Hello and welcome to another special Challenge
episode of The Infographics Show- today we're going to be once more using your favorite,
and our least important, guinea pig- we mean staff writer- to find out what life is like
if you don't speak for a week! Day 1: Wow. When I started doing all these challenge episodes
for Infographics I thought it'd be kind of fun, something that takes you out of your
comfort zone and maybe pushes your boundaries a bit- all while getting paid for it! Sounded like a win/win for someone adventurous
like me. Then I started actually doing the challenges-
no underwear for a month, ok that's easy enough. Don't leave the house for a month, umm ok
not so easy. Sleep all night and stay up all day for a
month, alright, getting rougher. Eat all your food through a straw for a week-
now it's getting painful. My point is that when I started these I tried
to think of all the zany things I might end up doing, and not once did I think about not
speaking for an entire week. I can only be grateful that the devils that
The Infographics Show secretly worships and feeds a steady diet of human misery- my misery-
didn't decide to make this a month-long challenge as well. So, I get to experience what life is like
for someone who can not speak for a whole week, which- and I hate this about me- I am
kind of interested to try already. That's despite the fact that I've done this
whole schtick long enough to know that it's going to get difficult, and then it's going
to be painful in some way or another. This time at least it's pretty obvious- how
in the world am I going to get through life without speaking for a whole week?! Luckily we are living in the digital age,
and as I sat down to plan out the scope of this challenge I realized that I might actually
be able to breeze through without uttering a single word. Instead of calling someone on the phone, I
can text. Instead of going to the grocery store, I can
have groceries or food delivered to me via an app, and I never once have to talk to anyone. The real problem is going to be dealing with
the girlfriend, since as most of you know by now we live together. That and any unexpected social plans- which
I'm insisting that we don't change at all, because the challenge is only fair if I get
a real taste of what this lifestyle is like. So if any events or things pop up, I'll be
attending, as a complete mute. That will take some serious explaining. I'll update once every two days or so, fill
you in on my week of silence. Right now it's 7 am on Monday and my last
official words for a week were a really bad dad joke I told the girlfriend as she was
leaving for work: Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon? Great food, but no atmosphere. I love dad jokes. I just realized though that if something tragic
and sudden were to happen to me, a dad joke may be the last thing anyone ever heard me
say. I'm kind of ok with that. Day 3: Life is certainly interesting when
you're not allowed to speak. It's weird how quiet the house gets during
the day without me speaking. I typically work from home if I'm not out
on a gig as a photographer, and I have the house to myself with the dog until late at
night when the girlfriend gets back. I never realized how much I talk to myself
out loud when home alone though until suddenly I couldn't talk anymore. I guess we all talk to ourselves sometimes,
but it became pretty obvious these last two days that I probably do it more than the average
person because the house just feels so eerily silent now. It's kind of been creeping me out to be honest,
so now to compensate I play the tv extra loud. You know that irrational feeling that a serial
killer is lurking in your quiet house? I get that feeling all the time now. I tried to do my plan of having groceries
delivered to me so I would avoid the hassle of trying to play mute in public, but then
I saw what the delivery fees were for someone to bring me groceries from literally right
across the street and I flat out refused to do it. It's not that I'm cheap, it's just preposterous
I'm paying almost $5 extra for what is literally a three minute walk for me. Also I realized that I would look like the
laziest human being alive to the delivery driver if I seriously had them drive from
wherever in town they were just to bring me groceries from across the street. That is a problem I did think up a solution
for though, I could pull out my crutches from when I was injured a long time ago and pretend
I couldn’t walk. But ultimately I just couldn't stomach paying
$5 for a three minute walk. So my first foray into the real world without
speaking was mostly uneventful. I typically wear headphones and blast music
anyways when I go out because I'm not really a people person, and it's the perfect way
to ignore girl scouts or anyone with a clipboard who wants your support for a million different
causes. Once I got stopped by a lady who said she
was signing a petition for improved mental health care for kids in public school. I told her I hated kids with mental health-
and she never bothered me again for the rest of the week she was in front of our grocery
store. The girlfriend was with me and she was so
embarrassed that she punched me hard in the arm and told her I was joking, but while she
wasn't looking I gave the petition lady the craziest look I could- and it worked. Bought myself one week of peace. Once I did the same with girl scouts, just
kneeled down and started explaining how she was being exploited for her labor by the cookie
maker, and only receiving a tiny fraction of the value of her labor in return. And even that was in the form of funds for
her troop to go camping or something, while the cookie company kept most of the monetary
profits. One of the adults quickly pulled the little
girl away and I didn't get bothered again for the rest of the month that they were there. Anyways, the trip went off without a hitch
until I got to the register and the girl tried to make conversation. See I go to this grocery store all the time,
for seven years now, so everyone there knows me. I couldn't just blow the cashier off, so instead
I just pointed at my throat and pretended to be sick. Luckily she bought it, but it made me realize
something. See my plan had been to just pretend to be
mute, but suddenly I feel really uncomfortable just pretending to be mute and having people
believe I have a real disability. It feels like a terrible thing to do when
there's thousands of real people out there who are unable to speak. I guess I'll stick with the sick story for
now, but I doubt it'll hold in a serious social engagement. The other thing to report is that the girlfriend
has been texting me a lot. She won't admit it but I think she secretly
really misses talking to me so she's overcompensating with texts. It's kind of sweet, and thinking about it
suddenly made me feel kind of sad. Day 5: Well, this challenge has been a lot
easier than I thought it would be- mostly because I work from home and my writing work
requires very little actual voice communication with clients. However, last night the heat got turned up
to 11. The girlfriend's work had a social mixer type
event. Typically I hate these things, but from time
to time the girlfriend will drag me to one though, and I tend to spend the time at the
open bar doing my best to really push the generosity of the free drinks- especially
the gin and tonics. We decided that my cover story would be that
I was really ill and my voice was practically gone and it was painful for me to speak. Girlfriend made something up about laryngitis
or something, she knows just enough about medicine to make it believable. As we were on our way I wasn't happy at first,
until I realized that now I had the perfect excuse not to speak to anyone at this event,
and that suddenly made me really happy. Until the girlfriend told me she wasn't going
to let me spend the entire night at the open bar, “People need to see your face more
at these things, it's good to network”, she said. If people want to see more of me, they can
always right-click save my facebook profile pic. Then they can see me anytime they like. To say that the girlfriend took full advantage
of the fact that I couldn't refute anything she or anyone else said would be an understatement. She committed us to at least a dozen little
dinner dates with other couples- which I hate with all my heart- and she committed us to
a game night with a bunch of people I don't know. I love board games, but I hate playing them
with a bunch of strangers. Once I played Cards Against Humanity with
a group of total strangers and let's just say that the night ended with someone crying
after I played a “dead parents smell like...” card. Apparently her parents had just died a week
or two earlier and everyone but me- the stranger- knew. I don't know when the girlfriend discovered
that she had the power to commit me to all sort of things I would never, ever do, but
I suspect that she'd been planning it from the get-go, because she is in fact a sadistic
and evil genius. To say I was annoyed would be an understatement. Day 7: I can finally speak again! Holy crap I have seriously missed the sound
of my own voice. The first time I talked my vocal chords squeaked
from disuse, but thankfully I was by myself when it happened. This challenge has been... difficult to say
the least, and not just because of not being able to talk, but because of fighting the
urge to speak in the first place. We take talking for granted, and it becomes
really obvious when you stop talking just how much we use voice for communication- yes,
even in our digitally connected world. I know what you're all thinking of though-
what happened at game night? Well, it was predictably terrible for one,
and I'm not sure if not talking made it worse or not. We played Risk, which doesn't really require
any talking so that's great- except I get really competitive with board games. Like, really competitive. See, there's an unspoken social contract you
enter into when you do a 'fun board game night' with your girlfriend's friends and co-workers. You play to have fun, not to win, and you
are nice to the people who are terrible at the game and make sure they are included and
get to play and have fun. I don't play to have fun, I play to win. I was Napoleon slashing my way across Europe
and Asia, making and breaking alliances as it suited me. The game was over in thirty minutes which
I feel is some kind of record, and all without me saying a word- just writing messages out
on a notepad. The great thing about people believing that
you are really ill and can't speak though is that nobody tries to- so no awkward forced
conversation with a bunch of strangers. That was a big plus for me, and something
I could get used to. I've spent the week communicating via post-it
notes or text messages and my final report is that it's really, really lonely not having
a conversation with someone. Sure, modern life might make it really easy
to not use your voice to talk, but it also robs your conversations of depth and meaning. They don't flow the way they would if you
could speak, and I think the event that summed it up best for me was when me and the girlfriend
were driving home last night. She got really sad and said that she really
missed me this week, and I knew what she was saying: not being able to have conversations
with me really made her miss me. Then she told me that she'd been thinking
about the same thing I had thought about on day one, after I spoke the last thing I've
said to her all week- she said, what if something really sudden and tragic happened and the
last thing I ever heard from you was one of your stupid bad jokes? I could tell she was really sad, so I grabbed
her phone and pulled up her voice memos and showed her that before the week started I
had recorded, “I love you”, on her phone. Not speaking may be a great way to get you
out of really boring or dreadful social events you don't want to attend, or at least get
you out of having to talk to anyone at those events, but it really boxes your life in. You don't realize how free you are to express
yourself with your voice until it's no longer there, and conversations without it are slow,
frustrating, and really shallow. I have a newfound appreciation for the struggles
of mute people, or even deaf people who have difficulty speaking with people and making
themselves understood. Thinking about trying out your own no speaking
challenge? Wonder what you’ll do to fill the time? How about finally designing that website you
keep putting off? But don’t worry, it’s going to be much
easier than any of our challenges, because you’ll be using Wix. Their powerful design tools let you build
a site in seconds using fully customizable templates, or build it from the ground up
with their robust suite of design tools. Plus their subscription services offer 24/7
tech support and an extensive knowledge base is always available to help you take on any
problem. Try out Wix today by visiting the link in
the description or going to wix.com/go/infographics2019. Think you could handle not speaking for a
week? What other challenges should we put our favorite
lab rat through? Let us know in the comments! And if you liked this one, check out I Didn't
Wear Underwear For A Month. And as always if you enjoyed this video don’t
forget to Like, Share, and Subscribe for more great content!
