Zen Hex website, a freewheeling hodgepodge of user generated quizzes, polls, surveys, poetry and forums.
"Goofy," "ribald," "politically-charged," and "an undercurrent of cynical truth," might best describe much of the content, which is often peppered with 'expletives deleted,' sub-culture in-humor and innuendo.
The site's host, also known as Zen Hex, from Stow, Ohio, says the site is a surprise success because it is "virtually pointless" in general, but launched as a creative outlet for his computer animation, poetry and other digital antics.
The website offers tools to create games, animation and quizzes like "What American City" and, with more than 100 quizzes, quiz-making is one of the site's most popular features.
"Most people who take a quiz seek to have something revealed about themselves. The American City quiz is rather different in that it translates personality traits into unique American Cities. I think people have taken interest in this because of the unique character of the cities used in the quiz," says Hex.
The cities you can "become" are Boston, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Memphis, New York, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.
The quiz determines how your favorite activities, sports, food, drink, color and mode of transportation translates into a city personality.
Hex admits some stereotyping is involved.
"Some cities immediately bring to mind music, like Cleveland (rock) or Memphis (country). Some cities offer images of history and culture (such as New York, Boston). Some cities have a very obvious character related to travel and tourism, such as Las Vegas and Orlando. For those reasons this quiz was not difficult to write questions for, as long as I stuck to the light stereotypes. Consider the food question. Chowder, crab cakes, tofu? Yes, they seem almost shamefully stereotypical, but after all, this is not a scientific test. It is for entertainment, and what food brings Boston to mind better than chowder, or the Baltimore/DC area when it comes to crab cakes?" asked Hex.
Hex also says the cities included in the test could easily be interchanged with others that are not in the test, largely because of stereotypes.
"Often individual cities represent entire regions, including other major cities. While Detroit is unique unto itself in so many ways, it could have been used to replace Cleveland in this quiz and many of the questions would have applied very much in the same way. Are they not perceived as hard working, rock-n-roll, rust belt, beer-and-burger cities? Does Pittsburgh conjure these thoughts? Perhaps even Chicago?"
Hex admits, in fact, cities are often very different when a real scientific approach is employed.
"In the quiz, I could have replaced Memphis with Nashville for some questions, but for others it would have been difficult. Both Seattle and San Francisco take on similarities as stereotypical west coast liberal cities, but look at how many ways in which they are dissimilar, including their subcultural and historical differences. At first look, both New York and Boston could be grouped as old historic east coast cities. Yet anyone who lives there would probably argue for hours how different they are," he said.
"Perhaps it is the diverse characteristics of American cities that make this quiz the most popular of them all. Each city is poised to represent some very unique aspects of someone's personality in stark contrast to the way the other cities could, and often, these differences can change not just from person to person, but with the change of moods," Hex added.
Whatever your mood, take the "What American City Are You" test and see who ... ah ... where, or how you are.
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Written by Broderick Perkins
June 10, 2004