You know those websites that have what are basically personality tests that then map your personality traits to one of a common set of fictional characters, or some other namespace? I used to think they were cool, but after about the 30th one I sort of got fed up with the whole thing.
I think someday soon I'll come up with one, but what it will do is make you answer all these questions, and then just randomly pick something. And it will be something really stupid, like "What kind of rock are you?" or "What kind of carpeting are you?" And people will be racking their brains to figure out why they're quartz or berber or whatever, and the thing is there won't be a reason why. It's just random. Heh.
Then there's the meta polls, the 'Which `what kind of _____ are you?' are you?' that I saw a few times already. Once an online trend has crept into meta replication, it's been dead for months. Which is just about a geological epoch in internet time.
Yeah, just like AYBABTU, Mahir, the Wheeeee! video, Walter Miller, etc... fun at first, but turned into equine sado-necro-bestiality before too long. When it was personality types done based on psychological surveys, like a year or two ago, they were fun. I remember TheSpark doing a great test, but even they `jumped the shark' quickly. Of course that phrase itself did just that a couple months ago.
LiveJournal users did a cute little thing, part paying homage to the trend, part mocking it. They had LJ users creating little pictures along the lines of `What LJ user are you?' I'm
Some viewed that as mocking the trend, insisting that they were individuals instead of labels. But others argued that they really were just continuing the trend.
Not that they don't have other name generators and such supporting the craze on their site.