The Tarot Cards of 2016: Bring Back BuzzFeed Quizzes
You haven't really lived until you're a pre-teen in your turquoise-Paris-themed bedroom, kicking your feet in the air with your best friend while you leave the fate of your adolescent love life to a BuzzFeed quiz. It's a niche and esoteric nostalgia, but if you've known the feeling, you've known it well.
A cup of upside-down Page of Pentacles, Serena van der Woodsen is your spirit animal, and "If you were coffee, you'd be a hot decaf (two sugars, two creams)." In their wisdom, readers see uncanny comparisons in how people curtail their fates to mere cards or quizzes under the impression that everything happens for a reason.
Circa middle school, the only directional understanding found between puberty and blooming crushes was that of a BuzzFeed quiz. Now, this was much more than a quiz. These acted under the guise of a spiritual guide at a time when you didn't know who you were or what you were supposed to be. One could take respite in being told exactly what one should resonate with most. An identity crisis, for lack of better generalizations, was slightly remedied by the posh comparison of you and your favorite fictional character.
What was nice about that is that even if you didn't resonate with your results, you could take it again! You could tweak your answers until you were a "pink-drink-girly" instead of your original "iced-shaken-espresso-girly." The world truly was your oyster when it came to creating an identity, even just finding solace in someone else. According to BuzzFeed, you could be whomever you wanted to be—as long as your answers were compliant with a certain algorithm.
BuzzFeed quizzes could offer nice anecdotes to our young, malleable personalities. Creating a world that is entirely tailored to your liking was liberating and also served as a bonding experience amongst friends. The lunch table talk was only as good as the quizzes taken the night prior. Were you a Serena or a Blair? Plan A Wedding, and We'll Tell You What Disney Princess Dress You'd Wear. Choose Ten Cakes To Reveal Your Soulmate.
Serena. Next. Cinderella's dress. Next. The boy you pass after the fifth period. Next. After a couple of years of frontal lobe development and life experiences, collectively, the girls who once kept the lunch table seats warm learned that just because they chose the most decadent cakes didn't mean they would end up with a decadent man. That soulmates aren't built on BuzzFeed quizzes and that life events are not contingent on our surveyed preferences. Rather, growing up on BuzzFeed meant eventually growing into ourselves and finding our actual preferences, which only heartache and love alike could teach.
Despite the illusory wisdom of 2016's tarot cards, true realizations could only come from within, from growth. Maybe that was the lesson all along: your originality is just that. Yours. Completely and utterly curated to your life and all that it embodies. It is nothing an automated quiz service could give you, but boy, was it a good place to start.
Strike Out,
Rosemary Aziz
Boca Raton
Rosemary Aziz is a Content Writer for Strike Magazine Boca. A health and wellness junkie who finds leisure in writing, all things coffee, and observing the human condition– but people-watching is better with friends. Or in her next article. You can reach her by email at r.m.aziz0204@gmail.com or on Instagram @rosemary.aziz.
