Politics
Nation Reminded It Cannot Name A Single Mountain It Has Heard Of
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
A weekly American Culture Quiz released Thursday has produced what researchers are calling 'a portrait of a nation,' which is a diplomatic way of saying the results were difficult to read aloud without pausing.
The quiz, which covers national traits, trends, history, and people, is designed to measure cultural literacy across the United States. What it actually measured, according to everyone who took it, was the precise distance between what Americans think they know and what they know.
That distance, it turns out, is roughly the height of a mountain nobody could name.
The Hollywood health section was the strongest category by a margin so wide it raised separate concerns. Participants correctly identified the juice cleanse favored by a actress whose name they could spell, the approximate caloric content of a celebrity trainer's signature meal plan, and the specific wellness brand endorsed by a woman who has not made a film since 2019 but remains extremely present.
"I feel like health is just something I care about," said Donna Pelchet, 44, of Tempe, Arizona, who scored a perfect nine out of nine on that section. Donna then identified the Rocky Mountains as being located "somewhere near Colorado or possibly Canada, hard to say."
The mountain missions portion of the quiz asked respondents to identify basic facts about American peaks, including which state contains the highest point in the contiguous United States, what the elevation of Mount Whitney is, and whether Denali is in fact a mountain or a brand of outdoor clothing. Sixty-one percent selected the clothing option. Eleven percent selected both.
Quiz designers say they anticipated some difficulty with geography. They did not anticipate the write-in answers.
"Someone wrote 'the big one in the movie,'" said project coordinator Ellis Brandt, who declined to specify which movie because he also could not remember. "We got that answer fourteen times. Different people. Same exact phrasing. 'The big one in the movie.'"
The scoring rubric was adjusted twice during analysis. A partial credit system was introduced after it became clear that full credit would be statistically impossible to award in three of the eight mountain questions. The partial credit system was then quietly retired when participants began arguing that knowing a mountain "seems tall" should count for something.
It should not count for something. The team confirmed this in a memo.
Officials from the organization that administers the quiz described the results as "an opportunity for continued engagement with our national educational landscape," which is a sentence that contains no information but sounds like it might.
Participants were more reflective.
"I knew the Hollywood stuff because that's real life," said Marcus Threinen, 31, of Columbus, Ohio. Marcus scored a four out of twenty overall and described himself as "pretty good at trivia, honestly, just not this kind."
When asked what kind he was good at, Marcus said sports and some history. When asked a sports question and a history question, Marcus said those were hard ones.
The quiz will be administered again next week. The mountain section will remain. The Hollywood health section will be expanded by two questions, because that is where the engagement is, and engagement is what a culture ultimately chooses to measure itself by.
Mount Whitney is 14,505 feet. It is in California. This information was available the entire time.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/american-culture-quiz-test-yourself-hollywood-health-mountain-missions