Do You Remember Quizilla?

[@bananal0rd]

Noooo I'm genuinely gutted that I missed the community post, Quizilla was my gateway drug to the internet, writing, and sexuality and I have so much to say about it! Here, anonymously, because even amongst my fanfic enjoying friends I will never admit to this site lmao. The fic truly was that bad. If you're interested in one of those choose your own adventure quizzes that you can still view the results of, I actually screenshotted every bit of some? all? of the ones I made when I got the email the site was closing down, and I still have those if anyone would like to see it. My work was a bit different than the normal stuff you would have seen on there (I basically used the quizzes to run a text adventure game) but the writing and image choice is certainly... evocative of the time and place. Essay incoming: I can shed a bit more light on some of the stuff you couldn't find/said nobody knew except people who were there. Also I want to reminisce and you can't stop me. Those fandom 7 minutes in heaven quizzes all followed the same formula: there was a paragraph describing how you, a regular high school girl, were at a party with the Akatsuki or Organization XIII or whatever, and how it was your turn to pick an object out of a hat to decide who you had to be with. The quiz would consist of a single question, which object do you pick? Each corresponded to one of the boys (despite the fact that I *know* a lot of us turned out queer or knew it already, and there was plenty of queer fanfic on the site, the quizzes were exclusively M/F!reader) and then the results page would be several paragraphs of what you and the dude got up to in the closet, with varying degrees of spiciness. Something I always found funny was the choice of objects - sometimes it was pretty inscrutable who corresponded to which object, which made the game of chance more realistic but meant you might not get the guy you wanted, and sometimes it was blindingly obvious, in which case the quiz was a pointless middleman to just getting straight to the fanfic. The quiz itself didn't let you insert images but you were allowed one image per result so there would always be a sexy picture of the guy alongside the fanfic. I think most people remember the site for the fanfic but once they added the story option, original stories were by far the most popular thing. There was the occasional outlier but like 99% of them were super generic M/F high school romances, often including teen pregnancy with a happy fluffy ending. The girl was usually the POV character but it wasn't limited to second person like the quizzes, there were a lot of first and third person POV stories too. Like that one commenter said, there was no info available without clicking on them so your title had to be your elevator pitch, so most of the titles were like Falling In Love With The School's Bad Boy.... But Did I Mention He's My Best Friend's Brother?!?! They usually comprised a ton of very short chapters and the ones that hit it big had massive armies of fans. Stories did allow you to insert images so it was common practice for every story to start with a dramatis personae (it was not called that of course, we were all like 13) where you posted a photo of every character and it was almost always the same few specific photos of scene/emo kids lmao. People would also sometimes do outfit photos where they would include a Polyvore collage (remember them? If not, think Pinterest board) of photos of every piece of clothing/accessory the main girl was wearing every time she changed clothes. Imagine if Ebony had just said "I was wearing this" and then there was a photo collage of a black corset, fishnets, etc. in the middle of all the text. The censorship was HUGELY variable. Supposedly there were automatic censors in place but I never saw them work, porn and stories with Lemon or NSFW or whatever in the title showed up all the time. As far as I saw, the only time anything ever got removed was if it was manually reported by a user, which meant enforcement was spotty and could be weaponized. If you were a small time writer/quiz maker, there was almost no chance your stuff would get flagged even if you wrote a ton of super hardcore shit, but big name authors would often get reported for even one very tame T rated scene, presumably from people intentionally trying to sabotage them. God this made me nostalgic. Thanks for reading fucking War and Peace of Quizilla over here. A/N: ahHH hope u enjoyed!! ^_^;

[@DavidMChannel]

no, thanks for writing this essay-legth post! It was a privelege to read it! I love this kind of stuff! Please feel free to share the screenshots with me at least! You can send them to [e-mail]. PS: I love how My Immortal unites everyone in my comments sections to such a degree you can just say 'Ebony' and were all like 'oh right her' xD

[@ohboy-zi1yf]

teenagers writing cringy fanfiction for other teenagers to enjoy on places not built for crappy fanfiction is honestly such a wholesome and memorable experience existing on the internet in the 2000s-2010. as an anthropologist its like a prime example of how humans will always go out of their way to make art

[@DavidMChannel]

*I know right? I adore this kind of thing partially because Im an anthro major xD

[@user-ld6th3vw8e]

I like that we (the audience, although I can only speak for myself) and David both experienced "oh they're queer! delightful" to each other

[@thisisavivistanaccount7866]

I get advertised the "are you gay" quizzes lol. Ironically I took multiple quizzes on quizilla to find out if I was gay.

[@hannahfanning9585]

I still get those ads too lol

[@starlith05]

Such a universal queer experience 😂❤

[@owlskulls]

An 'am I gay' quiz on Quizilla in circa 2006 was literally the gateway for me coming to terms with myself, lmfao I'm also fairly certain this was where one of the most legendary fics I've ever read lived - it was one of those 'my mom sold me to a kidnapper & then oop we fell in love' stories, but about halfway through, out of nowhere, she inserted a subplot where they now have to fight against an evil vampire clan (this was before the Twilight movies, but the first book was out & New Moon was about to be released ). A couple of chapters later, she changed her mind & wrote it out of the plot by way of "oh this character just made it up & we fell for it, nevermind". To this day that story lives in my head rent-free.

[@GrimmDelightsDice]

Beautiful.

[@notaLolliter]

I still remember my old Quizilla username, and lucky for me, the wayback machine has grabbed a few chapters of some of my old stories. Horrendous, awful, life-ruining levels of cringe right now. Thank you for bringing back some fond memories

[@mayfallz]

not finished with the video but i cannot emphasize how much i want to hear about the club penguin armies

[@FinalGirl228]

Omggg I had mild success writing stories on Quizilla, but I felt like a celebrity at the time. I would even take requests for one-shot fanfics. If anyone read lucygirl13’s stories, I appreciated you ❤

[@RhapzodyCayneArchives]

I'm so glad you popped up on my home page because I've been thinking about my old internet days, including Quizilla. Man what a time that was lmao. I was also most definitely there for the second person/self insert Naruto fic 100%

[@kcr2294]

I saw the community post and I almost emailed... regrets. I don't know how helpful I would have been though, I didn't read that much fanfic on there. Sure, I did a few "Which character are you?" ones, but mostly I was reading intricately detailed werewolf boyfriend RPs. .........and the "Am I gay?" ones. You'll never guess the answer. Also it's extremely cool to see someone advocating for HIV preventatives, you are doing the good work.

[@katsucurry8357]

For someone born as quizilla was at its height, this video feels like a historical documentary

[@SaiiiiiiSaiiiii]

I read my first FFVII fanfic on Quizilla, shortly followed by HP. Oh, the days of my youth.

[@sapphosscullerymaid4856]

the reveal of you being a homestuck is making me rethink everything i thought i knew

[@DavidMChannel]

in my defense I got into it very late in the game and didn’t engage with the fandom outside of like one skype group with friends in it 🤷‍♂️

[@sapphosscullerymaid4856]

loving your fandom history content!! you've been covering some topics I've not seen elsewhere which is so exciting as a fandom history hobbyist, I'd never even heard of quizilla so this is enlightening!!

[@oldamongdreams]

...so Homestuck video when? /hj I would love that Club Penguin video you mentioned, that sounds facinating. My only experience with Quizilla was taking about a hundred 'Are you gay/trans' quizzes back in the day

[@manxie1897]

oh, also, if i remember correctly, the whole "i know!" thing for the favorite color question is because EVERY. SINGLE. QUIZ. seemed to have that question, and it was played out super hardcore. so, instead of coming up with a better question, quiz makers would acknowledge that it was played out in the quiz quite often ALSO, even the quizzes would get pretty nsfw. there was a "genre" of quizzes where the reader chooses an answer that gives them a picture of a hot emo boy and sets up a whole sex thing

[@DavidMChannel]

OHHHHHHH! Okay, that makes so much more sense! I thought it was just an example of like, 'rawr xd' randomness that you could find at the time. thank you!

[@Lucca111Angel]

I get CONSTANTLY advertised “are you gay” quizzes, and ones to find out if I’m depressed/bipolar :| which I am but how did they know that!! anyways, I loved this little piece of internet history! I kind of really miss early 2000s internet, it’s insane just how quickly it’s changed. makes me wonder what fanfic/social media/online communities will look like 10-20 years from now!

[@modest_meghan]

omg! i wish i knew you were reaching out for stories! i wrote fan fiction and original stories on Quizilla as a 13 year old (pretending to be 17 and using fake photos). we had a clique of popular writers and always chatted. it was a wild time

[@LiterallyScarecrow]

Oh god i thought this was a fever dream. I remember always doing those WWFFY fanfic quizzes, especially Zelda, DC, Bleach, and Marvel ones. I thought they were masterpieces

[@theevilonewholaughs]

I used Quizilla for a small portion of my early fandom years, I was an avid user of that citrus system (and I shouldn't have been) but it was easy to pass off as innocent lol I would just google pairings and find fanfic that way so Quizilla was often in that consumption rotation. I remember my older brother using Quizilla a lot and we used it to bond because he'd always bring me a weird quiz to do or just share a new "choose you own adventure" fic (he didnt think he was reading fanfic but i knew)

[@mmma5082]

i was looking thru some very old Naruto fanfics w like 100 chapters in FFN and kept seeing ''I used to post this in Quizilla'' again and again so that's how i found this video lol now i'm subscribed :)

[@DavidMChannel]

Thank you! Welcome Aboard!

[@TanyaHarries]

As I dive more into internet nostalgia videos I came to realize how much I missed in my teenage years due to not speaking english as a kid and not having full access to the internet til I was 12 lol never in my wildest dreams I could've imagined that people used quizilla to write fanfiction!

[@chaotic.content]

I'm so excited you chose to cover this! I was one of those weirdos who actually used quizilla for quizzes tho

[@ghostboy8394]

ohh wow this is a throwback. I never used the site much outside of random quizzes, but I had a friend in high school who was obsessssssed. she used it to write saucy Naruto fanfics and would send them to me over msn messenger, and the formatting (plus the fact I never watched Naruto) made it all very, very confusing.. a fun memory though!

[@lowlyworm9323]

I never experienced quizilla in this way, unfortunately. Also this is my first Christmas on my own after moving out of my childhood home. I am thousands of miles away from it and it’s weird… I don’t feel the holiday spirit at ALL. Being an adult is hard

[@DavidMChannel]

sending you love, holiday cheer, whatever needed. Being an adult is SO hard. put on something nostalgic, maybe that will help?

[@Cioara]

I used to spend hours on 2nd pov inuyasha fanfiction on quizilla

[@pretty.odd.]

same. it is my origin story lol

[@teylawhite687]

I used to read cringy anime 2nd person pov fanfic, not on quizzilla but the German-language version of a different quiz site, allthetests or something like that. I was an incredibly embarrassing 13 year old and I had the time of my life. So needless to say, while I don’t know much about this website in particular, it was still a huge blast from the past by proxy :)

[@asmrtpop2676]

The amount of am I gay/am I bi quizzes I took. It’s like I had queer imposter syndrome lolol. Also I am absolutely digging your face make up here and this is gonna live rent free in my mind as inspo for the next time I go dancing when it warms up a bit here. For the holidays the thing I am most excited for is what we got our cats: First one is getting the same heating pad that I already have so he can stop stealing it from me whenever I get up and getting upset when I take it back. Other cat is getting this toy that’s a combination of his three favourite house toys so I am hoping that absolutely rocks his socks off.

[@DavidMChannel]

I hope your cat enjoys their new toys! The holidays are a great time to spoil your pets

[@thistle3]

I remember the lemon system! Now I feel kind of old 😅 I think I must have picked it up on FFdotnet looking through the old fics for rarepairs. I haven't seen it used since I joined AO3. I guess non-censored tagging makes the lemon system redundant.

[@zevscozyplace]

ALSO have you ever heard about the Warriors Cats RP games hidden within Barnes and Noble book review sections on the website? Kids who probably were prohibited from the internet but had a Nook and were able to access one website (barnes and noble as you buy the books from the site). People will find a way to create a community in the most unexpected of places. Please, if you can, make a video about this.

[@DavidMChannel]

I've heard of them but I've no idea how to find any of these RPs so Im not sure how I'd even begin to do a video on them

[@EzrasMoon]

I never was ON quizilla but I remember seeing the companion art or works on deviantart all the time in 2007-2008, after the purge. Probably where I learned about the citrus scale. I learned about sex from a smutty portal 2 fanfic and it definitely had the same vibes. Also, sir, I see you in your black hanky. I totally know what that means from independent research and not because I have the same one for the same reason 😂

[@DavidMChannel]

I learned how babies were made from an episode of South Park when I was 15 💀so I feel ya as for the hanky, well, I’ll be pleading the fifth as to its origins, but it has spent many nights out in both back-pockets in the past 😁

[@DavidMChannel]

not sure you saw my reply on the community post but email me at [e-mail] if you want to discuss future editing :3

[@SummerSommerSummer]

I always appreciate your videos ability to make me feel like a baby. I guess I'm officially buzzfeed quiz old.

[@AmorJonatico1]

Given that my first language is Spanish, I never experienced Quizilla but I also had expierence with a site not intended for fanfiction being used for that purpose. It was literally a sort of forum for a Latin tv network (Univision) that got absolutely filled with fanfiction, mainly rpf. It’s crazy to see that tweens and teens will always find a way to create and post content, which is amazing

[@briefisbest]

OkCupid also started out as a quiz site! They had their own matchmaking quiz and allowed users to create their own quizzes as well. I did use Quizilla when it was there, though I can't remember a single specific CYOA fanfic. I think I mostly took the are you gay/which character are you/which character would date you quizzes.

[@mtver8348]

I think we would all benefit from not only the club penguin video but also a Homestuck video Also, given 7 minutes in heaven with Gerard Way I would ask him about my Black Parade theories and maybe kiss him respectfully on the forehead if he was okay with it

[@DavidMChannel]

*cries in act 6* I’d rather not but a friend of mines been working on a complete autopsy of its ending though shes not done any work on it in quite awhile now

[@MadamMelonMeow]

@@DavidMChannelis your friend reading the sequel, Homestuck^2 / Homestuck Beyond Canon? I wont get my hopes up and ask if you are

[@DavidMChannel]

we all kinda just noped out during the epilogues though they are still involved in the fandom so have kept up with a lot of the choices made and they’d likely know some of the dramas that have gone on

[@modest_meghan]

16:55 the story separation was not successful because it didn't give the readers an opportunity to react to the parts of the story, but it was cool because it had a separate top 10 stories, and they had separate picks that were not necessarily popular, but were slightly higher quality stories. (not by much, but a little bit!!)

[@DavidMChannel]

its funny how much people loved the interactive element because it's not like what you chose even altered anything? But thats really interesting, thank you!

[@modest_meghan]

@@DavidMChannel the serious writers (lol) would only have one option for each section like “Continue.”, then sometimes the less serious writers be like “ONGGGZ I CANT BELIEVE IT”, etc. for a few different options. Even though they wouldn’t alter the story, sometimes you’d get unique messages from the writers or sneak peeks on the result page!

[@ObsidianNebula00]

I was too young for Quizilla, so I don't have much to add, except to throw my vote in for the "yes of course I want to know about the Club Penguin armies!" camp. Happy holidays, David, and to everyone else down here in the comments!

[@danimoth9449]

I was already Fandom Old by the time fandom navigated towards Quizilla. I also mostly knew it for bandom and anime fandoms, neither of which I was in, so I toiled away in my small LiveJournal bubble until the rest of us Olds moved to Tumblr and then to Ao3. This sort of fanfiction still exists, in a massive way, on Tumblr. I see it for literally every fandom I'm in. So that part didn't die, at least. But it is a shame that the citrus-based fanfic hanky code didn't catch on. "Teens will always be cringy", yes, and they should be allowed to be. Being a little cringe is how we safely test boundaries and learn how to both respect and uphold them as we mature. And some just embrace the "unmitigated and earnest cringe" as a personality trait. :P

[@AislingBlack]

Fushigi Yuugi is an olllld anime. I first saw it in High School. I'm actually in the middle of making a video about the treatment and representation of one of the queer characters in the series. (It's proving to be a messy video) I used Quizilla a few times, and I was aware that there was fanfiction on there, but I never read any. But this is all quite interesting to learn about. I remember seeing Quizilla results all over LJ and myspace. Also X-Men fan here, I love the Krakoa reference, my boy Cypher who speaks to the island is one of the subjects of a lot of the fanfiction I read and wrote when I was a kid/teen :P

[@pretty.odd.]

My story was already shared in the video, but as I was watching the video, I also remembered that I had many friends on Quizilla. Some folks would post asking for friends or you'd reach out to people who's quizzes/stories/profiles you liked via the messaging feature. In hindsight, it was probably not the safest way to go about making friends but it worked! My afterschool routine was logging onto Quizilla, checking my messages, and then cycling through my fav stories to see if any updated! Anyway, thanks again for creating this safe and enthusiastic space for fandom. I love being able to celebrate the cringe and looking back on it all with fondness. Happy holidays (and sorry your family visit didn't go as well as you'd hoped)

[@fairy_gvts]

I didnt realize lemons were old school fandom language lmao. It was used alot on Wattpad when i got into fanfic (2015ish?), so thats super surprising to me. Anyways, great vid! The club penguin vid sounds very fun, would def love to know more about it.

[@DavidMChannel]

oh wow, so its really stuck around huh? Im pretty sure it originated in the 90s, so that's a long time for a term to last in the realm of online slang

[@Eriehh]

I was HUGELY into quizilla when I was like 10-12 and I specifically remember a choose your own adventure/text adventure with like... 4-6 boys in it, I swear to god one was like a fallen angel named Castiel and his pictures were always black hair and blue eyes. There was like a demon guy with red hair and maybe purple eyes? And then a couple other boys I cared less about. But I remember it starting in a graveyard at the funeral of the reader/quiz taker's father. I wish I could find it again, so badly. If anyone remembers this at all I will sob in relief, it's been so long and I wish I could remember more.

[@aval8548]

i wonder what the homestuck people are up to now, considering hiveswap 3 isn't out and i'm pretty sure it was supposed to come out two years ago lol

[@DavidMChannel]

the fandoms still somewhat active although I'm not too involved and mercifully never have been. There's been some news as there's been a change to how Hussie's approaching post-story homestuck content as well so its still around

[@MadamMelonMeow]

We’re reading Homestuck^2 and still actively creating fanfiction ourselves. James Roach & the writer team did an AMA on the homestuck subreddit yesterday!

[@MadamMelonMeow]

OH MY GOD 16:25 I HAVE THAT SHIRT BLESS YOU. btw the homestuck fandom gets a bad rap & if you made a respectful video about us, hmu. I run a server for homestuck fanfic authors (think of it like a virtual writers workshop) and if you wanted to ask Qs about the state of the fandom today from ppl still in it who still love it, we’re here.

[@DavidMChannel]

its a GREAT shirt, isnt it? its like my one piece of HS merch (besides the published books with Hussie’s commentary) and I’d consider it! Im just not sure what I’d say about the fandom.

[@LynnHermione]

So quizzilla is from my time but I didn't really read from there. In the fandom circles I was in quizzilla was seen as slop written by 12 year olds that's often not even a story. To give you an idea, FFN was considered a place to full of slop that I had to defend! Ppl called it the Pit of Voles, or The Pit for short... Anyway quizilla, I have only read from there a handful of times because they were on a recc list (and yes the reccer often went "yes it's on qz but i swear it's good")

[@narutosemails4717]

oh my god! I felt like i was alone with my memories and experiences of quizilla!! so glad to finally see a video breaking down this site, gpd that was such a fever dream of a time lmao

[@zeeelmer6290]

I used Quizilla to explore my sexuality as a young queer girl and I genuinely miss it. I’m also mad that all the fanfics I wrote are just gone forever

[@felime]

I am VERY interested in the Club Penguin thing you mentioned. Great video btw!

[@hannahfanning9585]

I forgot this site existed until I saw this thumbnail pop up. I think there used to be some decent "Which Artemis Fowl Character are you?" quizzes on there back in the day.

[@zevscozyplace]

I would LOVE to see a video of the Club Penguin Armies AS WELL as different communities using sites for very unintended purposes. (I was a Club Penguin Girlie (gender neutral) through and through.)

[@TheNightShallLast]

This was fascinating! Also, I'd love to hear about the Club Penguin army thing.

[@anniee5487]

great video! also i need to know about the club penguin armies

[@redblaquegolden]

11:49 Fuyushi Yugi is entirely unrelated to Yu-Gi-Oh. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 But I remember this.

[@Alison.Uncouth]

Really glad I found your channel. Can't wait until you blow up. Great content 🖤

[@DavidMChannel]

thank you! Please stick around, mores in the works :3

[@redblaquegolden]

Oh my god... 8:07 Wait... But what about Lemon Party?

[@white_finch]

I saw a couple comments wanting a video about Homestuck, but I must warn that Sarah Z did a video 2 years ago and she received a legal threat from the company that owns it. It was pretty much an empty threat, but it may best to keep away from it.

[@MadamMelonMeow]

There’s a completely different group of people working with Andre Hussie now from what i understand , im unsure if the legal threat person is even involved anymore.

[@DavidMChannel]

iirc the legal threat was also mainly focused on Hiveswaps development so as long as its not discussed it’d probably be ok

[@laches1123]

Damn I haven't thought of quizilla in a hot minute.

[@fenrik8178]

I don’t think I know it, but I’ll gladly watch a video about it 😅

[@midnightly7918]

Legit a great video- thank you!

[@Wh00000]

Unfortunately, I do in fact remember the hot garbage that was quizilla. It killed most of my braincells.

[@manxie1897]

omg!! so much nostalgia!!

[@jojol.2630]

I never read much fanfic as a kid. I do more in my late twenties lol

[@WitchOracle]

Yes please to club penguin!!!

[@genevievelok9496]

You don't know Fushigi Yuugi because its bad Imsorryimsorryimsorry 😂