Molly O’Connor/Winonan
BuzzFeed, the popular site dedicated to humorous lists and GIF sets, is hard to escape these days. A surplus of BuzzFeed quizzes has taken social media by storm.
What started as a trendy website has developed into a craze. BuzzFeed is now well known due to the constant circulation of new quizzes available to take. Need to figure out which city you really belong in? BuzzFeed has that one. Want to know which TV detective you would be? BuzzFeed has that one, too.
Chris Garcia, a graduate of Saint Mary’s University Winona campus, is a fan of the site and uses it frequently but has been trying to break the habit of posting quiz results on other forms of social media. Over the years, he’s seen its meteoric rise in popularity.
“I use BuzzFeed a lot. Especially in the past year or so,” Garcia said. “When I first started college, I didn’t think BuzzFeed existed. I never really knew about it until my senior year of college, and that’s also when I started using it.”
Garcia appreciates the site’s organization, how everything from news to quizzes is arranged and almost random.
Contrary to what it may look like on Facebook, it’s not all about the quizzes. BuzzFeed offers visitors to the site a chance to catch up on current events and sports as well as enjoy humorous lists and posts.
For Garcia, BuzzFeed is a source of entertainment rather than just a quiz database.
“I pretty much use the entertainment section of the site and once in a while I will use the quiz section,” Garcia said. “I do use BuzzFeed as one of my main news sources and entertainment sources.”
The same holds for junior Hannah Flood, who sees BuzzFeed as something more for various forms of comedy and entertainment value. When asked why the famous BuzzFeed quizzes are suddenly so popular, Flood was unsure.
“I have no idea, I’ve been wondering that actually,” Flood said. “They create a good imagination of what could be different. I actually take a lot of the quizzes and think, ‘Really? That’s not me at all.’”
Flood doesn’t seek out the quizzes or the latest trends on BuzzFeed, it all comes down to who posts what on Facebook.
“I think I get sucked into it much too quickly. It’s very entertaining,” Flood said. “The subject matter is just so light and silly, but it’s fun to use, or at least all the stuff I see that is.”
One general consensus is that BuzzFeed will probably not last.
“I’m sure it will die out soon,” Flood said. “It’s much less interactive with other people, which is not a good sign since we’re already on that downward trend.”
Garcia also sees BuzzFeed becoming less prominent on the Internet, but for now it’s still around, asking which Disney sidekick you are and which celebrity you have the hots for.
