Today in 1975, Paul McCartney released “Venus and Mars” (not to be confused with “Ebony and Ivory”):
Birthdays include Ramsey Lewis:
April Wine drummer Jerry Mercer:
No comments on Presty the DJ for May 27
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Another Beatles anniversary today: Their “Beatles 1967–1970” album (also known as “the Blue Album”) reached number one today in 1973:
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Two unusual anniversaries in rock music today, beginning with John Lennon’s taking delivery of his Rolls-Royce today in 1967 — and it was not your garden-variety Rolls:
Ten years to the day later, the Beatles released “Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, 1962,” which helped prove that bands don’t need to be in existence to continue recording. (And as we know, artists don’t have to be living to continue recording either.)
Meanwhile, back in 1968, the Rolling Stones released “Jumping Jack Flash,” which fans found to be a gas gas gas:
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Two Beatles anniversaries today:
1964: The Beatles make their third appearance on CBS-TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show.”
1969: “Get Back” (with Billy Preston on keyboards) hits number one:
Meanwhile, today in 1968, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful were arrested for drug possession. (Those last five words could apply to an uncountable number of musicians of the ’60s and ’70s.)
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As readers know, I have gobbled up a fair amount of time taking online tests that determine that I am, among other things, Darth Vader.
This all started with Buzzfeed, whose evil genius got interviewed by the Huffington Post:
Do you drink gin and tonic? Like to eat rice and beans? Can’t live without Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie”?
Then BuzzFeed knows you definitely should be living in Rio de Janeiro.
If you’re on Facebook, it’s been hard to miss the rise of BuzzFeed’s enigmatic personality quizzes. Its most popular quiz “What City Should You Actually Live In?” — 20 million views — spread furiously through the social network. Everyone eagerly answered seemingly random questions like “What could you eat forever?” and “What’s your jam?” and got an answer to a fairly weighty question that was perfect for sharing. (Look guys, I should live in Paris!)
The editorial effort behind the quizzes has been spearheaded by Summer Anne Burton. She was originally hired to work at BuzzFeed two years ago while freelancing and waitressing in Austin, Texas. Now, as managing editorial director based out of the website’s growing New York office, Burton, 31, oversees the BuzzFeed’s viral lists, which have driven the site’s growth to a record 130 million visitors in November 2013.
Burton spoke with The Huffington Post about how the quizzes get made, why they’re so crazy viral and how they have their roots in women’s magazines. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.
So when did the quizzes start taking off? And why?
We had been making quizzes slowly, but nothing crazy. Then, around the end of last year, I was looking at some stats and what posts had done really well. Our most shared post was this quiz called “Which ‘Grease’ Pink Lady Are You?” that Louis Peitzman in L.A. did. It had not been a big hit when it was first published, but it had this super long tail.
I had noticed a couple other things like that — posts that were quiz-related or quizzes that had a second life. So I mentioned the “Grease” quiz a couple times in meetings with my team. They all are addicted to getting a lot of reactions and sharing, so it was inspiring for them to hear that that could do so well. They started making a lot more quizzes.
We have this staff writer Jen Lewis, who’s also an illustrator and who does a lot of design work in Photoshop. She started making personality quizzes that have basically the look you see now, where instead of it being a bunch of text, there are these little square questions that have text on them and look pretty. She started making quizzes that look like that.
Screenshot from “What’s The Name Of Your Soulmate?” by Jen Lewis.Then in January, our travel editor Ashley Perez made “What City Should You Actually Live In?” and it immediately became one of our most viral posts of all time.
I’ve definitely seen that post.
That one was definitely a big tipping point. We made templates for the design elements so that people who aren’t super familiar with Photoshop could make their own version of it and wrote out some some loose guidelines for what makes a quiz good.
Can you walk me through how a BuzzFeed quiz is built?
So when you make a personality quiz, you have a tab for questions and a tab for results. One of the first things I tell people when I’m explaining how to build a quiz is that they should always write the results first. You might have a quiz like “Which ‘Saved By The Bell’ Character Are You?” So you have the six main characters, and you write the result title, give them a photo and write some text about each of them based on their characters before you did anything else. We have some ideas about how long they should be and what’s good for sharing.
Once you’ve put in the results, you can tab over to questions. Underneath each question there’s an unlimited number of answers that you can add. With each answer, you assign a personality. That’s why we do the results first. It’s a lot easier to write the answers if you know what personalities you’re assigning. So in my example, you’d add answers and assign six different results.
The backend is actually just a hidden version of a classic Cosmo quiz. You have six buckets, and whichever answer you have the most in the bucket, that’s the result that you get.
Some of these quizzes seem to make sense. For “Which ‘Parks and Recreations’ Character Are You?” I can answer the questions in a way I’d expect Leslie Knope or Tom Haverford to, and I’d get them as a result. But for other quizzes, like “Which Arbitrary Thing Are You?”, there doesn’t seem to be any relationship between the answers you give and the results you get. So is there any internal logic to how these quizzes are built?
I think our most successful quizzes are mostly built so that the results feel personal and that you can relate to them. The answers genuinely correspond to the results. We’ve tried a lot of other experiments, which is just the nature of the way we function at BuzzFeed. “Which Arbitrary Thing Are You?” is kind of a joke about BuzzFeed quizzes. That’s something we encourage and think is fun. People thought it was really funny and liked it, but it’s more humorous than most of our personality quizzes, which I don’t think are humor so much as they are a way for people to identify and relate to others.
There was a Slate article about BuzzFeed quizzes that characterizes them as having “seemingly random results [that] could be a deliciously nihilistic commentary on the human condition.” So do you think that some of the editors and writers at BuzzFeed have approached them like that?
I think the quizzes that most people are sharing and talking about aren’t very random. I think it comes from a genuine place.
It seems that these quizzes are designed to reveal some underlying personality traits, like a Myers-Briggs test. Do you think readers have the expectation that they’re going to get some sort of scientific result from these quizzes?
I don’t think so. The thing that I compare it to is astrology. It’s not scientific, but if you have a good attitude, that doesn’t keep it from being fun. When you get the results, you can relate it to yourself. Sometimes, that relationship is, “ Oh my gosh, I’m not a Zack Morris, I’m a Kelly Kapowski.” That’s a lot of the sharing that we see. It’s fun, it’s a game. I don’t think that when people answer “Where Should Your Next Vacation Be?” they are super invested in thinking that’s going to tell them something really deep about themselves.
One of the cardinal rules of life is that anything worthwhile will be copied — sometimes improved, sometimes not. Several other quiz websites have sprung up like dandelions on a lawn. According to WhichCharacterAreYouQuiz.com, I am Confucius …
A wise and thoughtful person, always seeking to improve other people’s knowledge. You have learned lots from life, including many difficult personal situations. Loyalty is your main attribute, and you can be depended on if a task is given to you.
… Abraham Lincoln …
You are disarmingly unpretentious, a plain-spoken person genuinely interested in people and their problems. A good listener you are at your best in relaxed conversation with small groups. Your ready wit, down-home logic, and seemingly endless store of anecdotes delighting those present. For all your good humor, however, you have a dark side and have wrestled with bouts of mental depression.
… St. Andrew (except for the golf part) …
A perceptive person, you know when you meet someone interesting and immediately want to introduce them to your friends and family! Sadly, sometimes their fame overshadows you and you are forgotten about. However, you are fiercely loyal to your friends. You love to travel and always leave your mark wherever you go – everyone wants it remembered that you visited them. Your favorite time of year is winter and your favorite sport is probably golf.
… writer Gregory Maguire …
You are one of the rare people who don’t judge a book by its cover. You are able to look at a person and see their heart. You disagree with stereotyping and you do everything in your power to stop it from happening, people often to look to you for advice because you see the bigger picture.
… Ringo Starr …
You are Ringo Starr, drumming is your middle name. You can sometimes be overlooked but you are the peacemaker in your group and your friends would be lost without you and your steady yet jokey manner.
… Pulp Fiction’s Marsellus Wallace …
You are the man. The boss. Everyone is scared of you and no one that has half a brain will defy you. If you’ve got someone making trouble for you, you don’t mess around and call in your henchmen to sort it out immediately. You don’t give out second chances to anyone, unless your pride is at stake.
… the Dr. Who played by David Tennant …
You are stylish, witty and charming. It’s no wonder that women throughout the galaxy are clamoring after you! You truly enjoy being with people, and are particularly drawn to those who are curious and creative. You are talkative and have a positive nature, but your high energy levels can become exasperating for those around you.
… Daniel Craig as James Bond …
Lacking the stereotypical tall dark and handsome looks that have made those who have walked the path you are on successful, you use your own unique, dashingly handsome looks in your own way. You are known for causing controversy. Despite the constant and overwhelming criticism of your abilities to get the job done, you have been able to silence your critics way beyond their expectations time and time again. You have thrown out all stereotypical characteristics which many believe would not play in your favor. They were wrong!
… and Aaron Rodgers:
You are cold and calculated on the field, but the joker in the pack off it. Performing with the proverbial chip on your shoulder, you’ve proven to those who rejected you that it was the biggest mistake they ever made.
(Anyone who has ever seen me attempt to throw a football — indeed, throw anything — should be amused at the last one. A coworker and friend of mine once noted that, at the time, I had the build of a quarterback. But, I replied, I have the arm of a kicker.)
Burton mentioned astrology. The Seriously for Real website promises “AN ACCURATE HOROSCOPE FOR THE WHOLE YEAR 2014! (Well Maybe Not So Much),” which in my case says:
GEMINI – The Twin (May 21 to June 20) Nice. Love is one of a kind. Great listeners. Very good at confusing people. Lover not a fighter, but will still knock you out. Geminis will not take any crap from anyone. Geminis like to tell people what they should do and get offended easily. They are great at losing things and are forgetful. Geminis can be very sarcastic and childish at times and are very nosy. Trustworthy. Always happy. VERY Loud. Talkative. Outgoing. VERY FORGIVING. Loves to make out. Has a beautiful smile. Generous. Strong. THE MOST IRRESISTIBLE. 9 years of bad luck if you do not share this post. -
… Memorial Day weekend, or veterans/war dead/family dead/unofficial start of summer weekend.
But it’s also high school commencement weekend in most of Wisconsin.
I’ve written about all of these (the latter earlier this week), so feel free to peruse all of these.
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The number one single today in 1960:
Today in 1969, the Who released their rock opera “Tommy” …
… two years before Iron Butterfly disbanded over arguments over what “In a Gadda Da Vita” (which is one-third the length of all of “Tommy”) actually meant:
The number one British album today in 1970 was “McCartney,” named for you know who:
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Some Democrats running this fall are claiming that they are the real champions of the middle class.
They therefore have a few things to explain to voters about their president.
One is why raising their energy costs is good for them. From Newsmax:
The Obama administration’s ongoing assault on fossil fuels is hurting the poor, says Stephen Moore, chief economist for the Heritage Foundation and a board member of the Wall Street Journal.
“The left has this assault against . . . drilling and nuclear power and natural gas and all of the ways that we get cheap and abundant electricity,” Moore told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.
“Their agenda is to make electricity power much more expensive by making us buy it from things like windmills and solar power, which is extraordinarily expensive.
“[This] is going to hurt the poor way more than it’s going to hurt rich people because the poor are the ones who are going to be priced out of the electricity market,” he said Tuesday.Moore said low-income families have been devastated by the government’s regulation of coal operations.
“You can go to whole towns in states like Kentucky and West Virginia, in Ohio and Pennsylvania and . . . even Virginia that have been essentially wiped out because of this, you know, wacko assault against fossil fuels,” he said.
“The people who are hurt are people who make $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year. These aren’t rich people, and there are whole towns, literally whole towns [that] have been decimated by this radical environmental agenda.”Here’s how it works: Energy is a big component of the cost of everything you buy, both in creating it and in transporting it. If things become more expensive, people buy fewer of them. If people buy fewer things, unemployment increases. It’s unclear to me how increasing unemployment helps the middle and lower-than-middle class.
Tied to that is Obama’s obsession with global warming — I mean, climate change — I mean destroying capitalism. Herman Cain:
I’ve said it many times but it bears repeating as often as is necessary: Global warmists are really government expansionsts, and global warming is merely their chosen rationale of the moment for the things they really want to do. Try to make any distinction between the left’s preferred “response to climate change” and the left’s agenda in general: Higher taxes, more government control of industry, more enforcement power for federal bureaucrats.
You can’t. There is no distinction to be made. This is what they want regardless of circumstances. If global warming wasn’t the rationale for it, a shortage of Popsicle sticks would be.
And Secretary of State John Kerry clumsily revealed that in a commencement speech at Boston College:
“The solution is actually staring us in the face. It is energy policy. Make the right energy policy choices and America can lead a $6 trillion market with four billion users today and growing to nine billion users in the next 50 years,” Mr. Kerry said in his commencement address, referring to climate change. Then came the odd poser.
“If we make the necessary efforts to address this challenge—and supposing I’m wrong or scientists are wrong, 97% of them all wrong—supposing they are, what’s the worst that can happen?” Mr. Kerry said. “We put millions of people to work transitioning our energy, creating new and renewable and alternative; we make life healthier because we have less particulates in the air and cleaner air and more health; we give ourselves greater security through greater energy independence—that’s the downside.”
Well. Not that I would expect a left-wing ideologue like John Kerry to understand this, but that’s actually quite some downside. You manipulate the movement of capital from reliable energy sources to those that are immature and unproven. You increase people’s energy bills. You soak up taxpayer money subsidizing industries that are not viable enough to operate on their own, likely getting the same results we’ve seen so far with green energy subsidies (Solyndra, Fisker, ethanol, etc.). You impose crushing new costs on manufacturers. You turn bureaucrats loose to enforce all this, knowing full well that the culture of the federal government is to use such power to endlessly harass chosen targets.
And oh by the way, you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage globally because – regardless of what any treaty might say – other nations have shown they will only hue to this insanity until it starts costing them their economic viability.
Who do manufacturers employ? Not rich people. Kerry, to no one’s surprise, overstates the employment potential of so-called green energy (birds killed by wind turbines are unavailable for comment) and ignores the unemployment that will result.
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I wrote earlier this month on the ham-handed efforts of Fond du Lac High School administration to censor the high school’s magazine, Cardinal Columns, for largely spurious reasons.
My blog mentioned one of my more fun stories to do, about a high school’s underground newspaper. One of that underground newspaper’s staff was Ben Bromley, who now writes:
The good thing about censorship of student publications – the ONLY good thing – is that it’s an educational exercise.
Students learn so much in fighting for their First Amendment rights. They learn the extent of their resolve. They learn that the ideals of the Bill of Rights extolled in the classroom aren’t so revered by school administrators intent on protecting their fiefdoms. …
The struggle of the Cardinal Columns staff calls to mind my own nearly a quarter-century ago in Lancaster. In May of my senior year, I was working with my co-conspirators to plan the final edition of our underground student newspaper. We were coming off our swimsuit issue, which featured the heads of students and staff grafted – using scissors and glue — onto models’ bodies. Remember, this was 1991, when nobody had Photoshop and Madonna didn’t have a British accent.
Our paper wasn’t as hard-hitting as the Cardinal Columns – instead of investigative articles about rape and expulsion, we featured fictitious faculty profiles and a tongue-in-cheek advice column. It wasn’t the New York Times. Or even the Country Valley Weekly Dime Saver.
But we clashed with school leadership nonetheless. Our first issue criticized the quality of the sanctioned student newspaper and the faculty’s oversight of it, a stance that earned me a trip to the principal’s office and got my paper kicked off campus. An article about the junior varsity football team getting into a fight after a blowout loss got me dragged into the hallway for a dressing-down by the coach. I kept extra pairs of underwear in my locker that year.
On the plus side, being renegades meant we didn’t have to operate through official channels. School administrators could block us from distributing our paper on school grounds, but couldn’t stop us from publishing. We spent most of the year handing out our paper across the street before school, even on bitter mornings. It was the first of many warnings about how cold journalism is, all of which went ignored. Here I am, a generation later, still writing screeds in protest of censorship.
Censorship of the Cardinal Columns prompted Fond du Lac High students to organize a protest, a sit-in that was short-circuited when students were threatened with citations for truancy or loitering. About 10 moved their protest across the street. Others were herded into the school theater, where the principal listened to their concerns and answered questions. Here’s another key lesson: Our freedom to express ourselves and assemble peaceably is celebrated down the hall in civics, but disregarded when it becomes uncomfortable for school leaders.
What are Fond du Lac’s students learning from their educators? That the First Amendment should be observed only when it’s convenient for those in authority. That journalism shouldn’t challenge the powerful. That administrators care less about students’ rights to self-expression than they do about protecting their fiefdoms from threats real or imagined.
One of Bromley’s co-conspirators apparently is now a principal in Illinois. (Oh, the irony …) He wrote on Facebook about how he has in the past asked students to read their notes because quotes in stories were placed out of context, or pulled graphics because they violated school alcohol and drug policies, and spoken to students about “the quality and content of their work.”
That is not inappropriate. As was pointed out in a Facebook response to my original blog, school administration takes the role of publisher of an official school publication. More importantly, student journalists do need adult supervision, because any of them who (foolishly decide to) become journalists will have editors and publishers above them, so they might as well get used to having their work scrutinized. The educational process includes educating student journalists.
Unfortunately, most school administrators have had no journalism training at all, and you can look to the Cardinal Columns controversy for the logical result. And in the era of the Internet, administration heavy-handedness encourages going online, or to social media, off official channels and away from adult supervision.
The other, and presumably unintended, consequence of this was that this ended up in the media anyway. The Fond du Lac school administration’s efforts to keep the controversy out of the prying media’s eyes failed. Bromley’s principal’s efforts to get the underground newspaper off campus ended up getting it in the city’s newspaper, whose circulation was 10 times the student newspaper’s circulation.
(Irrelevant aside: I believe I played, if that’s what you want to call it, softball with Bromley’s father on the newspaper’s late softball team.)
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I thoroughly disagree with the number one song today in 1961:
Today in 1965, the Beatles found that “Ticket to Ride” was a ticket to the top of the charts:
The number one album today in 1971 was the Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers”:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 