Buzzfeed. Although founded a few years ago, it has recently become the greatest new hype over the Internet allowing people to discover, share and track everything, literally everything interesting, crazy and awesome happening on the internet. It provides breaking news, original reporting, social news and entertainment across the world wide web to its audience of a 100 million.

Just a few weeks ago, when I was in the library, I could hear my friends exclaiming statements like, “I can’t believe I got Japan”, “I can’t believe I didn’t get Pakistan!” and “Sofia Vergara is definitely my dream lunch date”. I was wondering what they were all talking about and after finally getting to know, they told me that they were taking a Buzzfeed quiz on “What Country Do You Actually Belong In?” I decided to take this quiz myself and eagerly answered questions like “What could you eat forever?” and “Pick one of these vices/sins/guilty pleasures” only to be surprised that Buzzfeed suggested I live in the Netherlands. I’ve never been to the Netherlands, I’ve never heard or known much about it but somehow, Buzzfeed suggested that the Netherlands was ideal for me and had “EVERYTHING”.

After much thought and discussion with my friends regarding this enigmatic quiz, I decided to do some research on Buzzfeed, its quizzes and how it was able to determine which country I belonged to. I came across an interview which the Huffington Post held with Summer Anne Burton, who spearheaded the quizzes on Buzzfeed. When asked how these Buzzfeed personality quizzes are built, Burton explained began to explain that there are tabs for questions and tabs for answers. Her suggestion is that the results should always be written first. Once you have the results attained, you can tab over to questions. Under each question, you would have an unlimited number of answers that you can add. Each answer is assigned a personality. This is the reason that the results are done first; it’s easier to write the answers if you know what personalities you’re assigning.

Burton was then questioned about the logical sense behind her quizzes; some of the quizzes make sense and some of them don’t seem to have any relationship with the answers that are provided and the results that are given. Burton mentions that their most successful quizzes are built in a way that those who are taking them can relate to them.

An interesting comparison that the interviewer made was that Buzzfeed personality quizzes are somewhat like a Myers-Briggs test. When asked if readers expect to have a scientific explanation for their results from the quizzes, Burton says probably not. She herself compares them to astrology. Her biggest advice for completing these quizzes is to keep a “good attitude” so that you don’t stop yourself from having fun with them. It’s meant to be fun, somewhat like a game.