Explain Like I'm 35: Are You a Soldier, Poet, or King? (February 18, 2023)

People on the internet have long been obsessed with defining themselves via increasingly niche communities. Ever since the days of GeoCities and forums, individuals have found ways to show that they're not like the other girls.

As children of the online, it was inevitable that Gen Z would take this even further than any other generation had taken it before. We only need to take a cursory look at the state of social media today to see how they are world leaders in brain-melting discourse, and now they've found something even more ridiculous to pin it to.

Remember the golden era of Buzzfeed? When every article was accompanied by approximately 34875 gifs, and they had a quiz about everything under the sun. You could spend hours down that rabbit hole, figuring out what kind of dessert you were, or if you had the same personality as your favorite Harry Potter character.

Well, one of those quizzes has become popular test among TikTokers. The Soldier, Poet, King quiz challenges participants to figure out which of the three roles fits them best. It's loosely based on a song by Oh, Hello of the same name, which is meant to be about Jesus. To no-one's surprise, TikTok has taken it completely out of context with a fervor. It didn't take long for everyone to find out their types, and to start arguing with other people about what their types were. It may be bizarre, but let's be real: it's much less annoying than that Tumblr era where everyone was arguing about introverts and extroverts.

Posted by Ally Perry