Today, a friend and I are launching the NORMIEMETER, a first-of-its-kind quiz that compares your political opinions to those of the median American to determine how “normal” they are.1
The quiz is 40 questions long, though there is a more comprehensive 120 question available for all you sickos out there as well. The quiz asks about a variety of political issues in a manner that has been empirically demonstrated to tease out more accurate answers than traditional issue polling. It then sorts users into one of five typologies, assigns a “normie score,” and generates a comprehensive table illustrating where they agree and disagree with the American public. If you would like to learn more about our methodology, you can look at the about page.
This quiz can be a useful tool for learning about the views of your fellow Americans. People tend to systematically believe that their views are more common than they actually are, and Americans in particular tend to exaggerate the radicalism and homogeneity of their political opponents. Simply put, we aren’t naturally great at intuiting how weird our views are. So why guess? This quiz is a fun way for people to get a better, more objective idea of how close they are to the median— a difficult task in an era when it’s easy to algorithmically curate both one’s news exposure and social circle.
We’re looking forward to future work on this project should it prove popular. If you have any feedback on the quiz or its website, as always, feel free to leave a comment under this post or to send me an email at bwj@onlytothinking.com.
Additionally, I plan on posting a more typical piece next Monday. I’ve been working on it for a hot minute, and. Well. I hope I’m happy how it turns out. It should be interesting nonetheless!
~ BWJ
To my knowledge, it’s the first anyway.