# Do you live in a bubble? quiz

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [March 17, 2018, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715 "2018-03-17T04:45:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/81 "2018-03-18T03:08:52Z")

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> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> Have you hitchhiked, for fifty miles or more, in the last quarter century? I’ve poked around a little and am finding it very difficult to find stats on modern hitchhiking. But I also find it very difficult to believe that a significant chunk of the population has been long-distance hitchhiking in the twenty-first century

Yeah, that’s a really archaic question. I hitchhiked more than 10,000 miles in the 1970s, but I haven’t done so in the US since then. I have hardly seen anyone hitchhiking in the last 20-30 years.

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**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/82 "2018-03-18T04:03:29Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Have you ever lived for at least a year in an American community with a population under 50,000 that is not part of a metropolitan area and is not where you went to college?

As of the 2010 census, the metropolitan areas recognized by the government contained about 85% of the population.

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**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/83 "2018-03-18T12:34:19Z")

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Excluding college, I’ve never lived for a week in a community exceeding 5,000.

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**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/84 "2018-03-18T12:55:58Z")

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> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> Jimmie Johnson, the NASCAR driver? No, he’s not trying to exclude nonwhites at all here.

it’s sort of a trick question, because there’s also another famous “Jimmy Johnson,” an ex college and NFL head coach who’s now on TV a lot as a commentator. I actually picked him as my response because I don’t follow NASCAR, and I didn’t remember if he spelled his name “Jimmy” or “Jimmie.”

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**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/85 "2018-03-18T14:28:50Z")

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I got 68, but I’m from the UK so had to substitute similar brand names and TV shows but most of the questions rang true for me. My upbringing and early years were solid north-eastern working-class. I left school at 16 and worked various jobs including factory floor and hard manual labour. Later on I educated myself and took myself through university and I now work with and alongside top industry people on a regular basis. I do think I straddle the class divide pretty thoroughly.

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**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/86 "2018-03-18T14:55:37Z")

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> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#):
>
> I do think I straddle the class divide pretty thoroughly.

Hence the name.

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**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/87 "2018-03-18T16:00:58Z")

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> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> Do you mean lower? The lower your score, the more you live in a bubble. I would assume at least the stereotype of Frasier Crane would suggest a low score. Though it sounds like he grew up in a working class family (I can’t remember–all I remember is his dad was a retired cop. I was not a dutiful watcher of the series), so a mid-range score might be possible for him.

Yeah, should’ve said “any higher and I’d be the guy from _Duck Dynasty_.”

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**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/88 "2018-03-18T17:59:19Z")

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I got a 48.

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**Author:** ![WilyQuixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@WilyQuixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilyQuixote)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/89 "2018-03-18T18:05:59Z")

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Apparently and according to the test, if you’re an American whose lifestyle is not that of Hank from King of the Hill, you’re living in a “bubble”…

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**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/90 "2018-03-18T18:14:35Z")

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> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> Let’s look at his questions, and see how he’d frame them if he weren’t trying to advance a racist/conservative project and were instead trying to figure out genuinely whether folks have a diverse social experience:
> 
> \<snip\>
> 
> This is a deeply shitty quiz.

Nice job. I was going to attempt a similar breakdown, but you beat me to it.

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**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/91 "2018-03-18T18:32:28Z")

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> [@WilyQuixote](#):
>
> Apparently and according to the test, if you’re an American whose lifestyle is not that of Hank from King of the Hill, you’re living in a “bubble”…

Ah, that’s why it had the question about propane and propane accessories. 🙂

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**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/92 "2018-03-18T19:35:15Z")

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> [@WilyQuixote](#):
>
> Apparently and according to the test, if you’re an American whose lifestyle is not that of Hank from King of the Hill, you’re living in a “bubble”…

If you look at the bell curve(!) at the bottom of the page after you finish the quiz, you will see that the large minority of poll takers are in the middle range of scores with only tiny amounts at either end. So the test fails at what it attempts to prove.

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**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/93 "2018-03-18T19:44:58Z")

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> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> Here we go, getting started: [64% of the US population is white, but 78% of the rural/small town population is white](http://www.ruralhome.org/storage/research_notes/rrn-race-and-ethnicity-web.pdf).

Curious about this I googled the nearest named town to me, and it is 95.88% white, 2.06% Native American, and 2.06% from two or more races. And it has [a population of 97](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelzer,_South_Carolina). It’s [larger sister town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Pelzer,_South_Carolina) is bulging with a population of 880–95.11% white, 3.75% African American, 0.23% Asian, 0.80% Hispanic, and 0.91% from two or more races. The area I live in is miles outside of those metropolii and with a lower population density (but probably a similar racial makeup.) Yet still I scored only 44.

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**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/94 "2018-03-18T19:51:40Z")

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45 - about what I suspected; growing up in a rural area helps, even though I don’t drink or have a pickup truck.

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**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/95 "2018-03-18T20:42:09Z")

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I got a 24, but I suspect my score is a bit “off” by being an Orthodox Jew. I don’t frequent any of the restaurant chains because they’re not kosher, and I imagine much of what they meant to measure by asking about Evangelical Christian friends would be satisfied by Orthodox Jewish friends as well, but I answered the question as asked.

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**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/96 "2018-03-18T21:10:11Z")

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> [@Colibri](#):
>
> I agree the questions are bullshit. They’re only designed to identify how much interaction/identity you have with white working class America. They don’t identify any other bubbles.
> 
> I wonder about some of the questions too. Is watching _The Big Bang Theory_ supposed to indicate you live in the bubble, or not? If you watch it, does that mean you’re an intellectual? Because some of the academics I know don’t even own TVs and have certainly never even heard of the show.

To answer the second first, ‘Big Bang’ is one of the highest rated shows on TV. But right, not only academics but professionals in urban/big metro suburbs generally are much less likely to watch it, or network TV shows generally. But a very large number of Americans do.

And again I think the ‘white’ aspect is being overdone in a lot of the posted responses, and/or those responses tend to validate the concept of a ‘bubble’. Non-white \< upper middle class people often have more in common in their tastes with their fellow members of \< upper middle class who happen to be white than they do with the upper middle class and above elite (which is disproportionately but from far entirely ‘white’). Note none of the questions are very near to ‘who do you vote for’. Non-whites of all classes and the ‘blue’ upper middle class share the characteristic of voting for the Democrats more than the Republicans. They aren’t necessarily much alike otherwise.

That said I agree a number of questions aim too specifically (again for example where I’m from plenty of people were working class and religious, but very few were evangelical Protestants; or, NASCAR is a more a Southern white than a working class thing, etc). I also agree with comments pointing out the obvious: there isn’t one single divide in US society.

However I think the top 20% or so (which again is more than proportionally ‘white’ but it doesn’t mean non-white members of that group are excluded from what makes it different) v bottom 80% or so is a significant thing, a growth of parallel cultures and self perpetuation in those two strata which wasn’t as true decades ago. IOW Murray has a point about that IMO, though it’s easy to overstate and to oversimplify.

As to the statistical distribution of quiz results, that’s presumably people who found the quiz looking at PBS’s site so would tend to be skewed toward people who’d get low scores.

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**Author:** ![BobBitchin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@BobBitchin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobBitchin)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/97 "2018-03-18T22:09:34Z")

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I got a 64.

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**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/98 "2018-03-18T22:27:18Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> There exists a new upper class that’s completely disconnected from the average white American and American culture at large, argues Charles Murray, a libertarian political scientist and author.

1. Who cares what Charles Murray thinks? How many intellectual mulligans does this guy get?

2. I agree with him about the upper class. The Kochs, the Mercers, the DeVos family - you can’t even _see_ what a normal family’s life is from way up there. And they’re the puppet masters.

3. But he’s not talking about them. He’s talking about upper middle class people.

4. A fair number of his questions made no sense. For instance, if I watch the same movies or TV programs as working-class folks do, it doesn’t give me any more idea of what their lives are like.

5. And on the flip side, huge blind spots. My wife is from a blue-collar family. I’ve been intimately acquainted with them for nearly 30 years. If other parts of my background hadn’t already given me some insight into what working-class people’s lives are like, all those years of being deeply involved in my in-laws’ lives certainly has. That got me zero points on this quiz.

6. But a more telling blind spot was the absence of any questions that would reflect any interaction with blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, east Asians, people from the Indian subcontinent. Murray’s not interested in whether you know any blacks for whom getting pulled over by the cops is just another day. He’s not interested in whether you have any connection with people who’ve lived here since they were four years old, but could be deported at any time.

If you know them, as far as Murray’s concerned, you’re still in a big old bubble. The only thing that counts in terms of not being in a bubble is whether you know the White Working Class.

Murray’s a fraud, and shame on NPR for giving him the time of day.

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**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2018, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/99 "2018-03-18T22:28:26Z")

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> [@Shodan](#):
>
> I got a 50, but I would think that either the lower \*\*or \*\*the higher your score, the more you live in a bubble - just a different bubble.

Said more succintly than others.  
Yes, this is one of those crappy Parade Magazine type quizzes that means nothing. It basically defines a particular demographic profile as “the mainstream” and tests for fit or degree of contact with them, but based on a very limited range.

As mentioned before, 85% of the population of the nation does live within one of the defined “metropolitan areas” so that question weighs against the large segment of population in _suburbia_, which would really make up far more of the mainstream than the people from rural small towns.

I agree with all those who said that one of the questions could have been better phrased as “are you friends with someone who is devoutly religious”, because if we’re talking about secularist bubbles then Hassidic works just as well as Church of Christ.

There is a question on watching popular mass market TV shows or movies but not on newspaper/magazine/book reading. There are few or no “I don’t know/Does not apply/none of the above” alternatives where there should have been. The definition of your parents having had a prestigious career is very narrow. How come in the question about whether you’ve worn a uniform in your worklife, yes for a job and yes for military service are marked as separate _and exclusive_ when both could apply to a same person? Plus as mentioned by someone else, are medical scrubs/labcoats a uniform?.

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**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\
**Post date:** [March 19, 2018, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-quiz/810715/100 "2018-03-19T00:17:25Z")

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45

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