Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that 99.999% of the planet is living under a rock. At least, that’s the only conclusion I can come to, based on how far we’ve lowered the bar for using this opener.

The bad news? As cultured and sophisticated as you are, you can virtually be assured that you are living under a rock. The good news? It’s apparently a really big rock, and there’s lots of company here.

So how can you find out for sure if you’re a resident of this vast world under the rock? I did a search to determine the criteria. At first, I found a few suggestions that it only takes minimal awareness to separate yourself from these people:

• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade or so, you are familiar with the concept of the internet.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that America is in the midst of a recession.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Justin Bieber.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, there’s a good chance you’ve already heard of Susan Boyle.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Michael Jackson died.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock you are almost certainly familiar with Facebook.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of The South Beach Diet.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month or so, you know that today is Election Day.”

OK, this is pretty reasonable. Maybe there was room for me above ground. Or so I naively thought. When I looked deeper, I saw that being a surface dweller requires an impossibly diverse knowledge base:

• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, you are aware of the Bokeh effect.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Microsoft finally signed off on Visual Studio 2005 and that it’s available now (or soon) to MSDN subscribers.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware by now that an endocrine disrupting chemical known as Bisphenol-A (BPA for short) has been popping up in all manner of consumer goods.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you know that I have been busy developing a library that will, hopefully, make OpenGL development as painless and fun as possible.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that one of the Skrull infiltrators (and the Empress herself) in Marvel’s Secret Invasion is none other than Spider-Woman.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, you know that the VMA’s advanced mixed choir, Powerhouse, was invited to perform on the Oprah Winfrey Show, for a special Glee episode.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about The Audience Conference, taking place in NYC on Friday, November 6th at the Hudson Theater.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Katie Holmes performed a tribute to Judy Garland on Fox’s dancefest competition So You Think You Can Dance last night.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past six months, you’ve heard of US interaction designers and strategists ZURB.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen pictures of the beautiful all-new 2011 Cadillac CTS and CTS-V Coupes.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve already played Madden NFL 09.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Lars von Trier is the premier author of the Danish Dogme 95 manifesto.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, you’ll have noticed that Google’s App Engine now lets you run Java web apps.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you’ll know that the big news this month has been the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 6850 1GB and the ATI Radeon HD 6870 1GB.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the blogosphere cooking and baking their way through Dorie Greenspan’s gorgeous new cookbook Around My French Table.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are well aware that Bora Zivkovic left ScienceBlogs 24 hours ago.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware of the controversy over CW Skimmer.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately you then know Dead Space 2 hit shelves this week.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have heard about the Andy Gray & Richard Keys kerfuffle/scandal.”
• “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have heard the recent brouhaha over Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Notifications update to Windows.”

Give yourself a pat on the back if you were aware of most of these things. But remember, all it takes is one gap in your knowledge to banish you to a subterranean prison. I hope there are enough cavefish for all of us.

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