Instagram Accounts Add New Life To An Old Idea With "What X Are You?" Social Game

On the internet, new trends often spread rapidly out of nowhere, with few warning signs of their arrival. However, when taking a closer look at many of these viral phenomena, they sometimes bear many similarities to earlier memes that paved the way for their success. One such trend has surfaced on Instagram en masse recently, spawning numerous What Animal You Are accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers.

This latest Instagram craze consists of a series of accounts putting a name to an image and then asking a simple question, starting a comeback of a decades-old internet trend that asks people to identify with an animal, celebrity or character. These types of "What X You Are" quiz accounts surfaced in early July this year with @what_dog_you_are’s initial post of a dog named "Swetha" and a chewed-up remote.

While these contemporary trends might put a new twist on the game, their origins can be traced back to the era of pre-social-media internet, as the concept is no different. The first noted online Which Character Are You? quiz was published in July 2000 and is attributed to user Slaygirl627 on the website SelectSmart, which was titled "Which Mummy Character are you?"

This concept was popularized in the early to mid-2000s and exploded as social media began to dominate how users consumed content online. However, like many online trends, these character quizzes ultimately became oversaturated and fell out of popularity in the mid-2010s. In the summer of 2014, the search interest for these quizzes peaked and slowly fell back down to its pre-social-media level.

Although character quizzes fell out of favor, trends tend to wax and wane – later resurfacing with a new twist that revives interest. Beginning in 2020, new life was given to the concept of these quizzes with the introduction of a particular series of Instagram filters. On Instagram stories in January and February, users could select from a range of "Which X are you?" filters that would assign a character to a user's selfie video. These filters were essentially a character quiz in a randomly generated form with a new type of interaction. The filters had every pop-culture concept under the sun, and so it acted as both something novel as well as feeding into a type of nostalgia. This nostalgia would carry itself forwards into the creation of the latest “character quiz” accounts on the platform.

This new take on the trend is even simpler than earlier forms of character quizzes, as it just assigns a name to an image. But it's this simplicity that drives it, rather than hampers it. There are many more selections for users to partake in other than just dogs, as the @what_frog_you_are account has grown massively as well.

The account @whatdogyouare (a different account than the one which is credited as the first) is one of the largest examples, with a follower count of over 124,000. When asked about their growth, the account's owner told us, “The feedback has been amazing! It’s been funny to me to see how fast the account has grown & how many people are excited to see their names.” In addition to the account on Instagram, they have also since created a Twitter account under the same handle and the website whatdogyouare.co.

The trend has continued to evolve in the last two weeks since it emerged, moving beyond just types of animals as other users picked up on the popularity and created their own takes on it. Some of these depict celebrities, like @whichguyareyou, which showcases the mayor of Flavortown, Guy Fieri. We asked Whatdogyouare to give us one of their favorite versions of these and they said, “What_image_are_you because of the donation aspect.” Despite the recent craze surrounding these types of accounts, the trend itself is still in its infancy, so only time will tell if they’ll be able to reignite the old love for character quizzes at their peak.

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