Tag Archives: Buzzfeed

If you were a BuzzFeed quiz, which quiz would you be? Take this quiz to find out!

I’ve been spending too much time on BuzzFeed. All of those quizzes, illuminating so many aspects of my personality that, until now, I just wasn’t aware of. Like which breakfast meat speaks most about my life? (Canadian bacon.) What’s your real favorite color? (Periwinkle.) Which Golden Girl are you? (Dorothy.) The amount of information I’ve learned about myself, it’s too much. All of those multiple-choice questions, I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. Is this the real me, Buzzfeed?

buzz

It started out innocently enough. I took this quiz called, “What City Should You Actually Live In?” Right away, I started getting really anxious. I worried that it would tell me, “You should live in: Long Island!” because, and it’s nothing personal Long Island, that’s where I grew up, I love Long Island, but now that I’m living in the city, I’m very conscious of the army of “born and raised” New Yorkers lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to get involved in some sort of conversation about New York, and just as it sounds like I might know what I’m talking about, these people get right in my face, “I’m born and raised in Brooklyn Heights. What part of New York are you from?”

So yeah, I don’t even say I’m from New York anymore, I just say I’m from Long Island, to everybody I meet, chances are they haven’t even asked, because the minute I let my guard down and let a New York slip out, somebody shows up to out-New York me, “Sorry, Long Island doesn’t count as New York. You’re not from New York. I’m from New York. I just had Gray’s Papaya for breakfast.”

Anyway, I got to work on this city quiz, started answering multiple choice questions, asking me about my favorite snacks, what color socks I’d prefer to wear on a rainy Tuesday, I thought, I wonder where they’ll place me, Boston? Hawaii? New York? Nope, it was Albuquerque, New Mexico. Really?

“Yes, really,” it read in the little description afterward, “While you’ve definitely got a pretty serious mean streak, it’s not near-sociopathic enough to warrant a move to, say, an isolated homestead somewhere in the middle of Nebraska. You’ve never tried crystal meth, but you haven’t ruled it out completely. And you just love enchiladas, which is great, because Albuquerque has some of the best Tex-Mex food in the country!”

I don’t know exactly how they got the Tex-Mex answer. If I remember correctly, the question was something like, “If you had to eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?” And I looked at the selection of answers, nothing really spoke to me, it just seemed like nine food items placed on the screen at random, gummy bears, ramen instant noodles, steak. I don’t remember anything about enchiladas.

But I guess it must have been a really complicated quiz, all sorts of advanced algorithms and sophisticated programming, because who am I to doubt the power of the Internet? Some girl I went to college with posted that she should really be living in Barcelona. It was hard to judge her total reaction, but based on the, “OMG I knew it!” that she wrote on top of the results, it seems like these quizzes are working for other people.

I took another popular quiz, “What Age Are You, Really?” which, by piecing together character traits and behavioral patterns as deduced through yet another series of ultra-specific multiple choice questions, tells you what your real age is. Like, not your real, real age, but the age which you are really. Does that make sense? It didn’t to me at first either, but I saw on Facebook that all of my friends were really twenty-four, very adventurous, super carefree and full of life, even though everyone I know is either almost thirty or already thirty.

“You’re real age is …” I couldn’t wait to have the Internet confirm for me what I already knew, that I’m still as cool as I was in my early twenties, that even though I’m still young, I’m actually a lot younger, “three.” Three? I mean, I knew that I was youthful for my age, but this is pretty youthful. Do I really act like a three year old?

“You’re not afraid to take a knife and stick it right into a wall outlet, even though your fingers and hands are covered in electric burns, this time it’s going to be different, this time you’re going to find out exactly what’s on the other side of that socket. You’ve never outgrown your love of finger painting, and … what’s that smell? Is mom heating up some chicken nuggets for lunch? Mom’s making chicken nuggets for lunch! Yes! Extra ketchup please! No, I don’t want to wear a bib! Come on mom, I’m three years old, I can do whatever I want!”

This one was hit me a little hard, was BuzzFeed trying to tell me about some developmental disorder? Am I really this much of a handful to my friends and family? To my wife? I mean, doesn’t everybody miss the toilet seat once in a while? Those things are hard, man, and I’m so tall, it’s so far away. Why does that automatically make me a three year old?

But if BuzzFeed says so, then I guess I’ve got a lot of growing up to do. Which is nice, if you think about it, everybody else my age is busy worrying about unfinished dreams and graying temples, I can get back to basics, finally tackle those motor skills and basic social pleasantries. Because, yeah, I suppose it wasn’t really that nice when I grabbed that sandwich out of my coworker’s hand as he was about to take a bite. Even though I wanted it. That was his sandwich, and that was a really immature thing for me to do, to lick the whole thing so he wouldn’t try to get it back, and then to not even eat all of it, just the turkey really, I guess that wasn’t really grown-up of me.

And there are so many more quizzes, so much left to learn about myself. Thanks BuzzFeed, keep making quizzes, I’ll keep taking them, and I’ll continue to post the results on Facebook.

32 and a half signs that you’re on the Internet/using a computer/or your cell phone

internet

  1. You clicked on this link. It was blue and then you clicked on it, and when you hit the back button, it turned purple. Unless you’re in incognito mode, in which case it’ll probably stay blue. Or unless you’re on a phone, in which case you didn’t click on anything, you just tapped.
  2. You’re wearing a shirt. If it’s cold outside, you might even be wearing a sweater. If you’re on the subway and it’s raining out and you’re reading this on your phone, a parka isn’t totally out of the question either.
  3. Your leg is tapping on the floor. Isn’t that crazy that you don’t even notice it anymore? Tap, tap, tap, tap, your roommate used to say stuff like, “Stop tapping! Seriously, what’s wrong with you, everything’s falling off the desk, I can’t concentrate! Are you listening to me?” But you weren’t listening, not really, not enough to give a response, and he moved out months ago.
  4. Your cell phone is constantly less than thirty percent charged.
  5. And you’re at a restaurant and you ask the waiter, “Hey man, do you guys have an iPhone 4S charger?” and the waiter looks at you for a second, he can’t outright tell you to go fuck off, so he just kind of stares at you for a while, hoping that through his nonverbal response, you’ll get the hint, like stop wasting my time, of course we don’t keep chargers around for the guests. But you don’t get the hint, so you try, “Can you ask anybody in the back if they have a charger? Any of the other waiters?”
  6. Everything that you read is in numbered bullet points. Like this one right here, number six.
  7. And number seven too. It’s like, there really isn’t any difference between number six and number seven, it’s only by me, the writer, pressing the enter key that
  8. I arbitrarily decide to make a completely new “sign” or “reason.” And that’s how we got from six to eight without having changed topics at all, not really.
  9. But man, when I started writing, 32 and half signs didn’t seem like that big of a challenge. But here I am, I’m only nine deep, I can’t let the readers down, but I’m beginning to suspect that they’re seeing right through me, that I hadn’t really thought out this list, that, sure, three or four of these might be somewhat entertaining, but the rest?
  10. Pure filler. You’re reading pure filler right here.
  11. You’re in an airport terminal waiting for your flight, and that guy’s been hogging the wall outlet for the past twelve minutes, so you ask him, “Hey man, are you going to be done with that outlet soon? My phone’s at six percent.” But he says, “Sorry, my laptop’s at five percent, they take a lot longer to charge than phones do. If you want, you can watch me surf the Internet. I’m reading this list on BuzzFeed right now, “17 Things You’re Doing While You’re Waiting For Your Flight To Start Boarding.”
  12. You’re wearing a shirt. Wait, I said that already. You’re wearing pants.
  13. You’re probably not wearing pants.
  14. Pull up your pants, man, or at least lock the door.
  15. You’re out to dinner, and you don’t want to keep taking your phone out to finish reading this list, but you can’t pay attention to anything else, so you excuse yourself to use the bathroom, and you step outside the restaurant to finish it up, and you look up to see if everything’s OK back at the table, but nobody’s at the table, everyone’s outside with you, they’re on the Internet too.
  16. You’re sitting shotgun in your parents’ new Ford Explorer, your phone is totally out of battery, the giant computer center console clearly advertises its ability to seamlessly integrate your phone’s browser with the car’s navigation system, but does that mean that it’ll be able to charge everything up? Mom? Do you know how to use this? You’ve never looked at the manual? OK, mom? Mom, can I use your phone? Because mine’s out of battery. Eleven percent? I’ll just use three percent, I promise. No, I won’t touch your Candy Crush, seriously, I stopped playing that game weeks ago.
  17. You’re reading this and you’re thinking, “Oh my God, that is so true.”
  18. You’re reading this and you’re thinking, “Well, I don’t really relate to this one.”
  19. You’re reading this and you’re not even concerned that I’m saying one thing and then I’m saying the exact opposite right below.
  20. You’re not reading this at all, someone linked to it on Facebook and you clicked, “Open in new tab,” but you already have so many tabs open, so many other Internet articles and lists that you saw on your news feed, there isn’t enough screen space to fit all of the tabs, and so you can’t even tell what the tabs are, there’s no room for labels, but still, you look at the browser, you think, I’ll read all of those, I’ll get to them eventually, and then months later your computer will freeze or you’ll be forced to reboot for an update, you’ll look at the fresh browser screen and think, wow, that was a relief, a new start, no old links to weigh me down, but just as you resolve to only open links that you’ll actually read, the browser flashes, “Restoring last session,” and there they are, all of them, tons of lists, this list, you’ll finish reading it eventually, you’ll get to it soon.
  21. You’re saying to yourself, “We’re only at number 21? This whole list could have been condensed to two, maybe even one. Why did he decide 32 and a half? What a bunch of nonsense, and we’re barely halfway through. What the hell, man, why do I keep clicking on these lists, seriously, does anybody proofread these things? Why are they so popular? Is somebody actually making money off of content like this?”
  22. You’re scrolling all the way down without reading, just to get a sense of how long this thing is going to go.
  23. But even the writer is getting bored here, so it’s a relief to find the next few numbers to be nothing but short, filler sentences.
  24. More filler.
  25. If I had time, I’d look up some animated gifs.
  26. Like a picture of a TV actress making a face, with the subtitle, “Gurl …” across the bottom.
  27. Or a different TV actress making a different face, like a confused face, and this caption say, “Say what?”
  28. This isn’t so bad. 28 already? 32 and a half doesn’t seem that far out of reach now. Maybe it’s not too late to make it 42 and a half. But that would involve scrolling back up and editing and more typing, no, I guess 32 and a half is fine.
  29. Your phone is really, really hot.
  30. It says something like, “Your phone is overheating. Stop using it for a minute and let it cool down.”
  31. You just got an icepack out of the freezer and, it’s probably not a good idea for thing to be frozen either, so you just kind of alternate, fifteen seconds on ice, fifteen seconds off, fifteen more on ice, and over and over again until that warning goes away.
  32. You could have sworn you read this same exact list sometime a few months ago, but this clearly says that it was written today, so you search Google to see if maybe it wasn’t posted somewhere else a while ago, but you get to Google and they have one of those flash games in place of their home screen, so twenty minutes go by, and you beat it, but you forget what you came there to look up in the first place, and all of the tabs are blurred together, you can’t even find Facebook, so you just open up a new tab and commit to not losing your place this time.

32.5 You finish, you get to the end and you’re like, I did it, I read that whole thing. But where’s that sense of accomplishment you get from reading a newspaper or a book, of having done something? This feels like the mental equivalent of having just scarfed down a twenty-piece McNuggets as a midafternoon snack. And yeah, don’t forget about that that “and a half” punch line that wasn’t really that funny when you read it back in the title. Here it is. 32 and a half signs that you did it, you read the whole thing.