31 but wonder how it would change if I answered some hypothetically. As in restaurants I would eat in if didn’t have celiac. On that list only outback is “friendly”. I Agee with the earlier comment about Waffle House. More well to do people I know go there than others on list. And factory floors won’t get as many yes responses in small town I lived in. Now agricultural jobs would be a big yes and would seem to target the same respondents.
@Ynotgo I too am saved by bimonthly eating out at Outback. Still around 10. I don’t watch TV.
Scored a 35. I don’t watch much TV nor go to the movies. Plus I don’t think we even have most of those dining places anywhere near where I live.
grew up with working class parents. I don’t think any of my friends had college educated parents. I am one of the few in my HS class that went to a 4 yr college. I now would probably be considered upper income.
As always, I am befuddled by these things, and PBS gives it an air of validity.
Why is my bubble somehow not American because it’s not “mainstream American”? There are many bubbles, and mine is as valid as the midwesterner who likes NASCAR and eats at the waffle house.
(No waffle houses in Seattle, and the rest of the chains aren’t my usual fare. I eat local. Is that so bad?)
Well, my husband beat my score of 70, he got a 78. Probably because he actually knows who Jimmie Johnson is, and loves Applebees. We’re highly educated (though probably not in comparison to this crowd), high income, but apparently have some low class habits. Funny though, I’d bet our kids scores are in the twenties.
It is not bad, but it is a bubble if you cannot relate to how most Americans live. Full disclosure, I got a 46.
I should have scored higher because I should have remembered who Jimmie wss from my previous read of Coming Apart, which I highly recommend as an introduction to Charles Murray.
Another Southern California resident here with a low score (12).
I do have close friends across the political spectrum (though even those folks I know on the opposite end of the political spectrum voted for the same candidate as I did this time around, so in that sense it is a bubble, I guess).
It would be interesting to go back and take the quiz, yet answer as our kids would answer and see what score they’d get (cuz I know there’s no way I’d ever get my kids to take this quiz).
I scored frighteningly low, but I expected that as soon as I read the questions. I fully recognize the bubble in which I live, but as others have said, I don’t think it is a problem that I don’t like chain restaurants and NASCAR. Perhaps it is an issue that I didn’t know Jimmie Johnson (or that there is another famous person by same name, different spelling, as pointed out in a recent post).
I also found the fishing question amusing. I do not fish, but have some friends who hire guides to accompany them when they go fishing.
I believe my siblings would score higher as they do eat in chain restaurants (although maybe not the ones listed–regional differences) and most people watch more TV than I do. Parents immigrated to this country, but father obtained three college degrees once he was here, but we all worked through HS and college, just not manual labor. On our feet all day, but not in pain from that at 18 the way I would be now.
Waffle House! There’s one near where bff lives outside DC and in later college friends and I would go for midnight breakfast. No pick-up but i did sometimes ride with DH when he drove late night airfreight between grad degrees. I can tell stories. And yup, I’ve hitchhiked in college, in that rural area. (Never told my girls.)
What struck me was how Murray seemed to lean to stereotypes. I have Evangelical friends, eg, some down south, some here in Ivy Land.
54
Got a 37. The two non-grayed results are pretty accurate. We’re the first college grads in our family. I answered “yes” on the factory job even though it was at a Motorola wafer fab during college.
“It would be interesting to go back and take the quiz, yet answer as our kids would answer and see what score they’d get (cuz I know there’s no way I’d ever get my kids to take this quiz).”
Okay, so I took it guessing how my younger son would answer, and he got a 22. I suspect my older son would get an even lower score. I’ll bet I can convince them to take it. But they know they’ve been in an upper class bubble for a long time, so I doubt it would tell them anything new.
My only time walking on a factory floor was at an Alcoa plant where I was documenting a software application used by factory workers. They flew me in so I didn’t have to drive 200 miles. I don’t think that contributes to being “outside the bubble.”
According to their website, there aren’t any Waffle Houses in California. So, that explains why I haven’t heard of it.
California essentially has single-party rule, so that also contributes to our being in the bubble.
I don’t think though that all Californians are unaware of what goes on outside the gates. Some of the issues others face are more apparent than, say, here in NE.
Waffle House is a kind of low down breakfast experience. I made sure my girls got it.
Waffle House is great! But IHOP is better, their crepes are the best.
I don’t think a low score on this particular quiz means that we Californians who scored low are unaware of the difficult issues that others face. At all.
It is kind of a silly quiz. I eat at mom and pop taquerias at least four or five times a week, but never at Applebees. Why is frequenting a small humble place owned by local immigrants more indicative of a bubble mentality than eating at a corporate conglomerate?
That is probably the effect rather than the cause of the “bubbleness” of California versus some other parts of the US. Among the usual broad racial/ethnic groups as people in the US view them, white (non Latino) people are now not even the largest one in California (having ceased to be the majority around the year 2000; the 1990s leading up to that event saw some rather contentious racial politics in California). That affects some questions like those about Waffle House, NASCAR, etc…
Of course, what Murray sees as “mainstream [white] America” may be its own bubble, albeit a large one.
I was thinking the same thing, but the whole thing does seem to be implying that.
Also, in defense of those of us in the So Cal “bubble”, we do have a very diverse experience of people of other ethnicities, races and religions which exposes us to a lot of different perspectives and experiences.
After the quiz got a lot of criticism Murray responded and is on record as agreeing that it is more “impressionistic” than “scientific.” I agree and it seems more to me as one of those COSMO quizzes that we took as teenage girls – fun but it doesn’t mean a damn thing.
He seems to focus in on class markers but they in fact miss the “mark.” I think @notelling’s post #95 illustrates that point really well.
Maybe someone thinks that you are in a bubble if you have tasty taquerias on every corner. Or maybe they are in their own bubble (perhaps large) if such a thing is an exotic novelty to them…