How the 'My Taste in Women' Trend Evolved from Online Quizzes to Viral Jokes
By Robert Thorne
During the mid-2010s, personality tests dominated digital publishing. Outlets relied on personality assessments to drive social sharing, publishing interactive formats like BuzzFeed's December 2019 quiz titled "Your Taste In Women Will Determine Which Decade You Truly Belong In." These exercises treated attraction as a static formula. Pick four vintage actresses, name a favorite romantic comedy lead, and an algorithm assigned your ideal aesthetic era.
Readers treated these results as flattering reflections of their inner sophistication. Vice analyzed this psychological impulse in March 2020 with "What Your Taste in Women Says About You," arguing that men often used their stated romantic preferences as public signaling devices. Declaring an affinity for French New Wave heroines or manic pixie dream girls was less about actual partnership and more about projecting an intellectual brand.
As social media decentralized, centralized editorial tests lost ground to organic user templates. Online dating discourse migrated from publisher comment sections to platforms built on rapid image sharing, setting the stage for faster, user-generated mockery.
Robert Thorne covers electric vehicle innovations, autonomous driving systems, global mobility trends, and automotive engineering developments.
