Charles Murray Maps "Bubbles" of Elitism

43, interesting

I took the test a week or so back, and got a fairly low score. I question the methodology, as it seems to place a lot of importance on things like blockbuster movies and other elements of pop culture that I don't think really represent core elements of values and lifestyle.

Wait, no, I got a high score maybe? It was the gray poupon score, at any rate. I'll have to put my butler on tracking down the number.

[edit]
My wife found it -- 28! You are all a bunch of low class losers.

I used to live in one of the Boston bubble zip codes. However, now I live in one that only abuts the bubble.

I got a 64.

I got a 64.

I got a negative score!

I took it once and got a mid-30s score, but I inadvertently skipped the last question, so I took it again. It didn't ask me some questions the second time like it did the first (e.g., when I replied that I had lived somewhere that a majority of my neighbors didn't have college degrees, the first time it asked me how long I lived there, but the second time it didn't). My second score was, ahem,...9.

I've never lived in any of the bubble zip codes, but I've lived right next door to one and have worked near the others.

Edit: a more meticulous re-take and I got...41.

Just knowing me adds 30 to your score.

I got 46. I'm not sure if the description is accurate or not.

First-generation middle-class person: Maybe. If that refers to the first generation to grow up middle class, it might be semi-accurate; my parents are college-educated but only one of my grandparents was. On the other hand, my grandparents worked in an era when you didn't have to go to college to be middle-class. My paternal grandfather worked for the post office, invested well, and was able to retire comfortably at a relatively young age. And if it refers to the first generation to be middle-class as adults, it's not true. My parents certainly struggled with money when us kids were growing up, but it was because they made a conscious choice to pursue lower-paying but also more meaningful professions, and that's definitely a middle-class luxury.

With working-class parents: No, they both have white-collar professions.

With average television and moviegoing habits: Odd, since I didn't check anything except The Force Awakens.

My "non-elitist" bits probably come from having mostly lived in small towns (my current city has about 22,000 people and is the largest town I've ever lived in), from living in places where most people probably didn't go to college (although the majority of my co-workers and friends usually had), and from having started out low on the wage scale (my first full-time job paid $19,500 a year in 2002, but on the other hand that was in a town where my rent was $195 a month, and again, I had the luxury of being able to choose a meaningful career over a high-paying one).

So I'm probably more "elitist" than the test suggests. But if that means not watching Maury Povich and drinking shitty beer, I'm OK with that.

57.

I've yet to see any of the movies they asked about (though The Force Awakens is in the house now) and only one of the teevee shows (Modern Family).


And this: Have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?

Several jobs like that, including my current one.

My current job (I started in 2006) is the only job I've ever had that doesn't involve pain and discomfort on a regular basis. One exception - for about four months in the 1980's I was a security guard and there was nothing physically difficult about it.

Although that question was also answered "Yes" by David Beckham, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Richard Simmons, so it's not sufficiently narrow for the test.

That has to be the most biased stupidest internet quiz I have ever taken. I scored a 62 and I am pretty sure it is because I lived in backwoods Alabama for a few years. I really would not say my time in the land of Wal-Mart and sibling fucking made me closer to mainstream USA. I think we have to question the bubble of the test writers when they seem to feel our least populated farmlands are the mainstream viewpoint. It seems more like what the tv media thinks of its rapidly dying mainstream media viewers. Old white couch potatoes have not been mainstream since the 80 s at best.

Oh, and how the fuck does watching the big bang theory give you insight into mainstream USA. Ok obvious knowledge that US couch potatoes will watch and be amused by anything.

49 I don't watch much TV to speak of since I don't have cable, and generally tend to watch anime or read/watch stuff on the internet.

I tried to take the test but gave up after the first two questions. I have no idea how far the adults in my childhood neighborhood got in their education and I have never cared. That's something for government statisticians to fuss over. And I guess Dad eventually was farther up the office hierarchy than others, but I never have thought of him as middle management until now. I guess he qualifies, but AFAIK he was always hands-on with the work, not just ordering people around.

I scored 25.

I grew up in Piedmont, CA; around the corner from Joe Knowland, and across the street from the Bechtel's.
I now live in Piedmont, OK, which has recently been named "The Snobbiest City in Oklahoma".

Richard Simmons was in great shape back in the day. The average man trying to keep up with him? He'd no doubt put your dick in the dirt (no pun intended).

Score: 22. Fascinating questions but I don't seem to fit into the Flashy/Dinner Snob Scale box.

I'm just a German/Irish mutt from Bay Ridge who doesn't fit any of the "proper" snob categories, which gives me the advantage of being outside the boxes looking in and saying "How odd these creatures are"...the best gift a writer can possess.

Yeah, but a score of 22 means that you are a gray poupon eating, Polo playing, mansion owning snob like me and Cobalt.

Chuck Bell set out to design a quiz that tested whether you were an educated urbanite and decided to call it a test of whether you were an elitist living in a bubble. Woop-de-fucking-do. That's exactly the kind of idiocy you need to author The Bell Curve.

Even by internet pollster standards, Chuck Bell reeks.

Yeah, I don't get what the question about "mass market beer" is supposed to prove. Sure, I've bought some, I've also bought some craft beer. It all depends upon my circumstances at that particular time, and generally I don't buy beer all that often. I'm more inclined to buy hard liquor, namely bourbon and whiskey. (I got a 66, BTW).

I hate mustard, horses hate me, and AFAIC, a "mansion" is any place where I can have my own bathroom with a step-in shower (which I have, thankyouverymuch).

So in other words this test is really there to reinforce the idea white Christain hicks who never move out of their tiny town without the help of a flood or tornado are worldly and know everything while everyone else lives in a bubble because they don't drink cheep beer while watching NASCAR after breathing in factory fumes all day.

If you really want to up that score I know a person with a room on a farm in al you can live on for the price of an electric bill and splitting the internet.