Here’s a quiz from PBS about how insulated you are from mainstream American culture. What’s your score?
I got a 52
I got a 48. The ranges are incredibly wide, for example:
They also don’t well correlate with reality, even with the huge range. Based on my sample size, of 1, of course.
I got 20.
I guess owing a pickup and having a few friends that I disagree with politically saved me from being completely out of touch…
Fuck that. Gave up after two questions.
65
"You got 65 points.
The higher your score, the thinner your bubble. The lower, the more insulated you might be from mainstream American culture.
See below for scores Charles Murray would expect you to get based on the following descriptions.
48–99: A lifelong resident of a working-class neighborhood with average television and movie going habits. Typical: 77.
42–100: A first-generation middle-class person with working-class parents and average television and movie going habits. Typical: 66.
11–80: A first-generation upper-middle-class person with middle-class parents. Typical: 33."
18, yikes…
Sent from my K007 using Tapatalk
I would say I’m second-generation middle class, but I’m by no means “upper middle class.” My parents were divorced, and my dad was white-collar-wealthy and my mom was pink-collar-struggling. I’ve been a union member and regularly attended meetings, own a pick-up truck, currently own a business which has me doing manual labor (lawn & garden) so I’m sore as fuck during the spring and summer, I live in a small rural town, but it’s part of the Grand Rapids, MI metropolitan area, and I’m sure as hell not rich. I don’t have any close friends who are Republicans, but probably because, aside from my wife, I don’t like people and don’t really care to have any close friends.
I got 41.
I did it substituting “Canada” for “American” and got a 42.
“The higher your score, the thinner your bubble.”
How is that so? The chart clearly shows the highest scores to be well outside of “mainstream American culture.” If there was one thing you’d think Charles Murray could recognize, it would be a bell curve. :rolleyes:
From the questions it’s clear that this is the stereotyped “mainstream” which the media mythologized when Trump started to raise in popularity, though in fact many of Trump’s voters would score low on this test. Numerically, the cultural indices in this test don’t really represent the majority–they’re just the majority of a certain segment of white culture, (which happens to be more prevalent in those areas that gave Trump the electoral college). On the whole, it’s been shrinking, and that freaks out people like Murray, and leads them to make “tests” like these. They are in denial.
Someone who scores very high on this test is in a bubble of their own.
- I fit squarely in the top two categories - I’m a lifelong resident of a working class neighborhood and also a first generation middle class person (my parents had blue collar jobs and I have a low end white collar job) and have very average tv and movie habits.
Got a 57. Not sure what to make of it.
I got an 8. I like my bubble and would like to stay here.
I’m pretty sure I’ve taken this before, pre-Trump, and my score might be a touch higher this time around. I don’t remember for sure, and it’s hard to take it all that seriously. It’s such an incredibly narrow definition of “mainstream American culture” that it seems largely useless.
Question 1:
How in the hell am I supposed to know that?
Well, did you go to college? Because if, for four years, you lived in a dorm amidst a great many other dorms, each one housing people who — like you — of course didn’t yet have a college degree, well, then, clearly, that qualifies.
I may be doing this wrong.
Got a 44, but the questions seem to be all over the place.
Sounds like you got the right score.
Forty-four. Any higher than that and I would be Fraiser Crane.
My answer to a lot of “Have your ever …” questions would be very different if they were more like “In the last 40 years …”.
My childhood and my adulthood are two very different things, apparently.