‘Which arbitrary thing are you?’

Do buzzfeed quizes tell us anything insightful?

When setting out to find material to compose my first blog, I needed to look no further than my Facebook news feed for some interesting content. Those of us on Facebook are all familiar with the rise of Buzzfeed’s inscrutable personality quizzes.

The quizzes gained popularity after the link to ‘What City Should You Actually Live In?’ went viral. It immediately became one of the most viral posts of all time. With 20 million hits it feverishly spread through the social network and fuelled the creation of more unsystematic tests such as ‘Which Harry Potter/friends/girls character are you?’ ‘Which European country do you actually belong to?’ and a personal favourite, ‘Which arbitrary thing are you?’ The latter being a self-conscious witticism about the Buzzfeed quiz craze. Some would argue that there is a lack of correlation between the answers you give and the results you get. Moreover, it certainly does not follow the definition of psychological tests which was put forward in our introduction lecture:

‘They measure a person’s psychological characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics such as height and weight.)’

But do some of the quizzes actually tell us something about ourselves? Questions remain: do they mean something to people as far as their own identity is concerned? If they really are just random results, then why are people obsessed right now in taking them, comparing with friends and sharing their results all over social media? Buzzfeed are creating up to 5 new quizzes every single day and demand is high. I set out to inspect some of these questions by taking the original and most well-known quiz, ‘Which city should you actually live in?’

After answering a series of questions, from ‘How do you take your coffee?’ to ‘What’s your jam?’ I completed the quiz in roughly a minute and was ascribed the city of Paris. Apparently this is why I should live in the capital of France: I am ‘an artist, a philosopher, a daydreamer.’ My friends have told me that ‘I seem to have been born in the wrong era’ and according to this source they are right in their reasoning. Supposedly I want to live a life of ‘passion and vigour, filled with good wine, great coffee, and world-class food.’ Overall I was pretty pleased with my result. Paris is a city I can relate to and could definitely see myself in. I am European, I study philosophy, I love wine and coffee and who doesn’t love food!?

So, was buzzfeed accurate? I don’t think that anybody would support the idea that an 8 question multiple choice quiz can locate my underlying desires and attributes to a geographical location. However, I do believe that there is a small amount of rationality to the results in some of the quizzes and they are widespread because they are essentially a bit of fun. Although we know that the tests are by no means scientific, I am not surprised by their popularity and prominence, given the timeless fascination with life’s greatest question: ‘Who am I?’

When taking these quizzes, we are not wholly invested in believing that the results will tell us something particularly deep and meaningful about ourselves; however we are an egotistical generation, who enjoy receiving information relating to ourselves, even if it may not be accurate. I would offer that the Buzzfeed quiz phenomenon is more of a game than an actual test and I can conclude with confidence that these tests are not reliable and they are not certainly valid!