Abigail Elliott
GWRTC 103
Jen Almjeld
28, April 2014

The World Of BuzzFeed Quizzes
Sitting at my desk amidst my daily homework I find myself scrolling through Buzzfeed quizzes trying to figure out what city is my city and what type of man I should marry. Almost every day I seem to find myself on Buzzfeed and not knowing how I ended up there. When thinking of BuzzFeed most people immediately discuss the latest quiz that they took and what they received. But Iin all actuality there are more than just quizzes but also articles on an array of topics. Today, most teenagers and young adults are only interested in the entertainment side of the website. But what they may or may not realize is that although the quizzes are a time suck, or in a way a place where people can get away from their stressful and busy life, the quizzes reveal the type of person someone is. 
Founded by Jonah Peretti, also co- founder of Huffington Post, and co-founded by John Johnson in 2006, from a company called Eyebeam in New York City. Originally it was set up as an “experimental lab” where they could track viral content and make things that people from all over wanted to share. This was before all of the meme’s, funny articles and quizzes that are now associated with BuzzFeed. Tthe founder created the idea for of the website when he sent one of his emails to 12 of his friends and it eventually boomed with over a million people viewing it. According to the company, their main goal was to go back to the old style of advertising where “the media and the craft were tightly integrated”. Because of the new or old spin on advertising the company has boomed into a huge multi millionmultimillion-dollar company with over 150 million users today. 
Over the past few years’ teenagers from all over have become distracted by BuzzFeed and now automatically know what is created by the company by their small logos of “LOL”, “OMG”, “WIN”, and especially the green “QUIZ” circle. Many of these logo’s have become very popular in today’s culture since most people are always online and posting about BuzzFeed quiz results. It’s so interesting to see how and why these logos are so popular in our online culture. Most of these abbreviations are from words like “laugh out loud” and “oh my gosh” (or god) and were mostly used in text or IM conversations when they first came out in the early 2000’s. Today these abbreviations are used on clothing, in websites and other online spaces. When teenagers and other avid Internet users see these abbreviations in section titles on websites like BuzzFeed they immediately know what kind of quizzes or articles that are associated. It’s really interestingfascinating how BuzzFeed created their website using popular slang used by this generation and not using the full word that they are representing. Part of this reason is due to the fact that this digital generation has learned how to condense meaning into 160 characters or less. Without knowing the basic slang such as “LOL”, “OMG”, and “WTF” a person wouldn't would not really understand what the quizzes on BuzzFeed are about. Because they are located almost everywhere they are constant reminders of the generation that society lives in today.
Although BuzzFeed has many interesting and distinct parts that target an array of people, the new fad with the website comes from their hilarious and intriguing quizzes. It wasn’t until this past year that these quizzes became noticed. Today most teens and young adults seem to be infatuated with the array of quizzes that they could take to find out the type of Disney character they are or what type of cat they would be. It is easy to estimate that these quizzes are specifically designed for the modern teenager that is up to date with fashion and entertainment. More specifically, these quizzes were designed as a way for kids to get away from their seemly dull lives of homework and activities. In other terms these quizzes were really designed as a