QuizUp is the Best App You Deleted

Five years ago, an app called QuizUp took America by storm. To jog your memory, QuizUp is a multiplayer game in which you challenge your friends on a variety of topics, ranging from broad “General Trivia” questions to specific facts of New York State history. The app caught on like wildfire, and we had almost a year of nonstop trivia in America. Everyone you knew was on the app, and everyone had a niche. Maybe one of your friends was top 10 in the country in Taylor Swift, or maybe you were like yours truly and won every battle of Oscars knowledge.

And then, like most technology fads, interest in QuizUp faded. Trends change, people move on, and everyone traded out for Flappy Bird. Here’s the thing though, while you likely deleted QuizUp from your phone before you even made it to Syracuse, the app actually hasn’t gone anywhere. It is still available to download, and it has a surprisingly large user-base ready to compete on a variety of subjects. The app has improved too, with more categories and titles you can earn than ever before. More importantly though, the app is really freaking fun.

There has never been a better time in human history to be stupid, with technology picking up the slack for your deficiencies and the national conversation emphasizing anti-intellectualism. Playing QuizUp is a nice reminder of how good it feels to actually know something. It’s beyond satisfying to get a question and go “oh yeah, I guess I learned something in school,” or play a category you love and knock it out because you’re passionate about the subject. It’s also a great way to bond with friends you share interests with. If you both love a television show or musician, what better way to see who really loves it more? We’re all here at college trying to attain degrees in fields, which means we should hypothetically be experts in these fields. If you have the opportunity to test your expertise in a stress-free, fun environment, why not go for it?

As I previously said, now is a better time than ever not to know things, but I think there is a real value in knowing information about the world and the subjects you are interested in. Sure, people will say that this knowledge is trivial, thus giving us the term trivia, but I think these facts show you have an awareness of the world you live in and what has come before us. QuizUp is an insanely fun way to show how much you really know about a topic, while also giving yourself the rare opportunity to learn something new in a fair way. It might have already had its 15 minutes of fame in American culture, but it is still out there ready for you to play it.