The Nonquestioner

The nonquestioner (n). A person who attends a seminar or presentation and stands up to ask a question, only it is not a question. It is a rambling statement that goes on and on and has no apparent end or interest to anyone in the audience but the same annoying, rude person talking.


So yesterday I attended an event at USF about deforestation in the Amazon. At the end of three presentations, it was time for questions. That’s right, QUESTIONS. Of course a nonquestioner had to be part of the line up. Usually, a nonquestioner can fall into one of 3 subcategories:

1. Secretly resents not being asked to be part of the presentation and decides to fulfill that role during the nonquestion.
2. Wants to impress the presenters/audience with some obscure fact that might not even be a fact.
3. Overtly transforms the nonquestion into a heated preaching moment to a choir that is already converted. (As in “And the rainforest is disappearing! And damn it, we need to do something about it!”)

As you might have guessed, this nonquestioner was all three and was annoying as hell. Even better, the moderator tried to boot him on 2 separate occasions by politely asking him to get to the question. She finally succeeded on the third, more forceful try. What was the question? Obviously, there wasn’t one.