The New York Times had a “Can You Identify These Celebrities” quiz on its home page today, and since I’ll be up all night and I’m bored, I took it. Here’s what it showed me at the end:
Assuming they aren’t putting us on, only 86 percent of Times readers recognized Donald Trump. How is this possible? Trump has been a New York City fixture for decades and he is, as some of you may know, currently the president of the United States. I figure there are two possibilities:
- About 14 percent of Times readers are the kind of annoying twits that simply refuse to acknowledge Trump’s existence even to the extent of typing his name in a box.
- Times readers truly live in such a bubble that about 14 percent of them don’t recognize Trump.
Opinions? Other alternatives? While you’re pondering this, you might also want to ponder this:
The overall trend is clear: the younger you are, the fewer candidates you recognize, despite the fact that younger cohorts tend to be more Democratic and ought to have more interest in the Democratic primary. But only about 30 percent of Millennials recognize Elizabeth Warren and less than half recognize Joe Biden. Despite the hype, it appears that young people remain relatively uninterested in politics, just like they always have. They can “OK boomer” us all they want, but if they keep this up it’s boomers who are going to elect our next president, whether anyone likes it or not.
