About
Which Character Are You? is a type of personality tests that are designed to match up the test-taker with a fictional character from a TV show, film or book by comparing their character traits through a series of multiple-choice questions. Originally found in teen and women’s magazines, the quizzes became popular online through the early social networking sites in the mid-2000s.
Origin
One of the earlest examples of a magazine based character quiz was a quiz titled ""Which Stooge Are You?"published in the February 1999 issue of Men’s Health magazine.[1] The first “Which Character Are You?” quiz to appear online was a thirteen question quiz titled “Which Mummy Character are you?” posted on SelectSmart[2] on July 15th, 2000, by user Slaygirl627.
Spread
Throughout the early to mid-2000s, a wide range of character personality quizzes were created by fans of TV shows and films on social blogging platforms like LiveJournal[11][12], MySpace and Xanga[13] using custom questionnaire generators like AlltheTests[3] and QuizRocket.[4] Buzzfeed posted one of its earliest quizzes on June 12th, 2009, titled “What Summer Song of 2009 Are You?”[5] The site created quizzes sporadically for the next few years, with its sudden boom in quiz content coming in late 2013. The quiz that started the push for more quizzes, according to Buzzfeed’s managing editorial director Summer Anne Burton, was "Which “Grease” Pink Lady Are You?" which was published on June 5th, 2013.[7][8]
In February 2014, celebrities began taking quizzes for the shows they starred in and tweeting their results including Lena Dunham, Sarah Michelle, Jason Alexander.[9]
Buzzfeed Quiz Backlash
The sudden boom in Buzzfeed quizzes resulted in many parodies and thought pieces on their proliferation. On January 28th, 2014, Slate published a post titled “Which Buzzfeed Quiz Are You?”[10] The post copied Buzzfeed’s format and style, and each result links to a real Buzzfeed quiz. On February 25th, 2014, humor site Dorkly[6] also published a post titled, “What Buzzfeed Quiz Are You?” which contained purposefully dark or trivial fake Buzzfeed quiz titles like “Which Girls Character Can You Remember the Name Of?” and "What Character From “Freinds” Who Was Also a Monkey Are You?"
Search Interest
External References
[1]LA Times – The Three Stooges Character Test
[2]Select Smart – Which Mummy Character are you?
[3]All the Tests – All the Tests
[4]Quiz Rocket – Quiz Rocket
[5]Buzzfeed – What Summer Song of 2009 Are You?
[6]Dorkly- Which Buzzfeed Quiz Are You?
[7]Buzzfeed- Which “Grease” Pink Lady Are You?
[8]The Huffington Post- Mastermind Behind BuzzFeed’s Quizzes Explains How They Work And Why They’re So Crazy Viral
[9]People- Lena Dunham Is a Marnie
[10]Slate- Which Buzzfeed Quiz Are You?
[11]LiveJournal- Which Character from “The Road to El Dorado” Are You?
[12]LiveJournal- Which Character From Degrassi Are You?
[13]Xange- “Which Jane Austen Character Are You?” Are You?":http://anna.xanga.com/2008/03/26/14588/