John Egan poses with his laptop in Austin, Texas. Egan, 50, said he takes online quizzes partly because he’s curious about himself and because he wonders how his answers will stack up against his friends’ answers on Facebook. A recent veritable explosion of silly online personality quizzes, most of them created by the young social media mavens at Buzzfeed.com, has everybody talking about which state they really ought to be living in and which Harry Potter character they really are.NEW YORK – For a compulsive online quiz-taker like Chrissy Noh, the temptation was too great to resist: “Which sandwich are you?”
After answering a series of unscientific, seemingly unrelated questions, which included selecting her favorite doughnut from a lineup of frosted pastries, she had her answer (grilled cheese, for the record). And she’s not the only one who’s comparing herself to sandwiches lately. Go on, admit it: Chances are, you’ve been doing it, too.
A recent explosion of silly online personality quizzes, most of them created by the young social media mavens at Buzzfeed.com, has everybody talking about which state they really ought to be living in and which Harry Potter character they really are. Buzzfeed says the quizzes are smashing traffic records and generating more Facebook comment threads than any viral posts in the site’s history.
Experts say the phenomenon isn’t surprising given the age-old fascination with that central question – “Who AM I?” – and a desire to compare ourselves with others in a social media-obsessed society.
On a recent snowy day, the 37-year-old Noh, who lives in New York City, admitted that she and several friends spent the afternoon taking quizzes and texting each other screen shots of the results. “It turned into an all-day group text message fest, where it was just picture after picture of, oh, what rapper are you?” she says, laughing. “What career should you actually have? Which sandwich are you? Which member of One Direction should you marry?”