I’m a child of the 80s and 90s. Before Buzzfeed was even a twinkle in some media company’s eye, we had magazines. Among their shiny, heavily-perfumed pages were hidden treasures: all manner of quizzes to help you figure out everything from your personal style to your love life.
Long before I had either of those things, I was entranced by magazine quizzes. It was a good day if you got hold of a copy of Seventeen or Glamour, even an old one, and found a little multiple choice test tucked away inside. It made for the perfect recess activity with friends.
Maybe the fun I had with what was, quite frankly, little more than filler copy is the origin story of my intrigue with self help. Personality and relationship quizzes are like the gateway drug to more involved self-help; they’re even used to lure people into cults.1 I’m obviously not alone in my ongoing fascination, either, as the Buzzfeed Quiz Industrial Complex (TM) would seem to show. Personality quizzes have a long history and like anything that seems like harmless fun, a dark side, too.
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