Quiz: Which White Guy Indie Icon Are You?

Who is Your White Guy Indie Icon Spirit Animal? Graphic © the author
Who is Your White Guy Indie Icon Spirit Animal? Graphic © the author

Let’s face it: you’ve always wanted to know just what kind of person you’d become if you made it as an independent musician. And now, you can finally have an answer, thanks to Atwood’s first-ever QUIZ!

Though BuzzFeed reigns supreme in all things quiz-related, we wanted to bring back some good, old-fashioned, early Tiger Beat-style quiz questions. No fancy algorithms or generalizations based on arbitrary preferences like what your favorite brand of canned artichoke is here—just simplistic overgeneralizations based on your personality and life choices that may make you feel personally attacked! And since the music industry and various hype machines still seem to prioritize straight white guys in alternative and indie music, we had to follow suit. So buckle up, baby — and discover which straight white guy of an indie icon you are!

Which White Guy Indie Icon Are You?

1. It’s a typical day for you. What are you wearing?

A) Ah, whatever’s clean. Probably jeans and a T-shirt, plus my fave hat. As long as I look like I’m part of Mugatu’s new Derelicte campaign, I’m good. 🙂

B) Undertaker chic. Since I’m dead inside anyway.

C) Whatever I end up choosing, it’ll be black and expensive.

D) When I choose to take the form of mortals, I traditionally don a flowing white toga and a crown of ivy while carrying my thyrsus in hand. However, that’s a bit conspicuous in the modern age, so I generally go for dark pants and a jean jacket.

2. What’s most important to you when making music?

A) Encouraging people to chill out and feel good.

B) Probing my own existence, but also shooting barbed insults at listeners every so often so they know their place.

C) A E S T H E T I C

D) Capturing the language of the gods and transmuting it into song, since music-making is a fundamental and beautiful way of declaring humanity.

3. Who’s an author you admire?

A) The guy who wrote that essay on dumpster diving? Jack Kerouac? Dan Brown? Maybe all three? Picking favorites is tough, man.

B) Kurt Vonnegut. Oh, you disagree? Let’s take this outside and I’ll fight you like the literature-hating philistine you are.

C) Books are dead.

D) Who isn’t an author I admire is a better question. I do love Ovid, for obvious reasons, but I am also rather fond of Yeats at the moment.

4. What, in your opinion, is the main problem with the music industry?

A) I just wish everyone was able to get along, ya know? Just, like, legalize weed and that’ll solve everything.

B) [pulls out a thick leather-bound book] What ISN’T wrong with it? Sit down [pushes you into a chair] and read this. It’s my manifesto on what’s wrong with the industry, and with their media monkeys, too. And you better read closely, cuz there’s a test at the end. You have three minutes. Get started before I start ranting.

C) Nothing, we’ve completely eradicated both misogyny and racism in music. Which is why I can’t understand why more people won’t pay attention to me, a white guy.

D) Like any invention formed by human hands and minds, the music industry is foolish and fallible, a mere mockery of the true nature of song. You’d do better to scrap the lot of it and return to the time of poets and singers communing around bonfires together with nymphs, satyrs, and creatures long since lost to memory.

5. Pick a car.

A) A white 1997 Toyota Previa with BK Big Fish wrappers all over the floor, baby.

B) A Prius. What, you think I hate the environment?

C) A Rolls-Royce painted carbon black and with all brand logos removed so that nobody thinks I’m a capitalist.

D) A chariot pulled by leopards.

6. In the western zodiac, you are a….

A) Dunno, sorry.

B) Taurus, but hold on—[pulls out entire chart]—okay, let’s get started.

C) Provocateur.

D) Pisces. However, that’s only when I’m confined to human form. I am formed from the cool flow of the River Shannon, the blazing light of the stars, the feel of the wind that shakes the tall grass, the fertile smell of earth, and thus I am made of the same matter as the elements themselves.

7. What is your greatest fear?

A) Having to shop at an actual store for clothing.

B) Men like me don’t know fear. Don’t look at me like that: I’ve never been afraid. Of anything. Ever.

C) Someone calling me a cliché.

D) The world forgetting the power of song, as it is the power that has fueled my immortality through the ages.

8. It’s the weekend. What are you doing?

A) Chilling with friends, probs downing around a can of Blue Ribbon—you cool with bringing some extra snacks for us for after we pass the peace pipe around, my dude?

B) Sitting on the shoulder of Laurel Canyon in a borrowed (not stolen!!) ‘76 Volkswagen, sipping Crown Royal out of a paper bag while listening to the Captain & Tenille on full volume, trying to summon the ghost of Jim Morrison for inspiration. Am I high? I can’t remember. Guess we’ll just wait and see.

C) My private life is private, obviously. But generally speaking, probably ghosting a few different people, Googling what emotional labor means, and painting my nails black because I want people to be slightly reminded of Robert Smith when they see me, but not in a way that’s so obvious I get called out for being unoriginal.

D) I’m in the middle of a verdant clearing surrounded by a forest near a stream. It’s springtime and the earth is teeming with new life, and its fecundity both awakens me and reminds me that everything in this world in which I live in exile is fleeting, as are the mortals I love. As darkness falls, I start a fire and sit down to commune with the earth before the night’s revelries commence. After awhile, I hear thrashing through the tall grass, and voices made light with wine—my devotees are come. They are singing songs of old, chanting one of my many names, and lifting their thyrsi to the sky. I smile. The more the world seems to change, the more some things stay the same.

— — — —

Round up those answers, and identify which letter appeared most in your responses!

You’re Mac DeMarco!

We hope you’re tuned in and chilled out, because you’re Mac DeMarco! You’re easygoing, amiable, and voted Most Non-Threatening Friend in your friend group five years in a row. Though your style choices can sometimes be questionable and you seem to always have the munchies, it doesn’t really matter, since you’re somehow remarkably consistent. Take that Ringo-Starr-like charm and ride it all the way to the top, pal!

You’re Father John Misty!

Boy, oh boy, are you special, Father John Misty—and you’re more than willing to scream that to the world! Though you may seem like the King of Indie Hedonism itself or the Spirit of Pseudo-Intellectual LA personified, what nobody really knows is that the reason you mock yourself so senselessly is so that others won’t beat you to it. But hey—once you realize that positive self-talk that isn’t dripping with narcissism isn’t a crime, maybe folks other than college guys will start to like you more, too.
Father John Misty © Guy Lowndes
Father John Misty © Guy Lowndes

You’re Matty Healy!

Do we have time to delve into the thorny little briar patch that is your personality, Matty? Definitely not! You may call yourself a chameleon, but changing both your favorite color and everything about yourself every few years in order to get people to like you won’t work in the long run. Take a few years off from trying to curate every aspect of your personality and you’ll be worlds better for it.

TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME - The 1975

You’re Hozier!

Lucky you, Hozier — nobody’s really sure if you’re a spirit of the woods or an incarnation of something much stronger from even further back in time. But one thing that we do know is that your love and belief in the power of music compels your every action. However, your bacchantes fans seem to be the most likely to be incited into an otherworldly sort of ecstatic frenzy and rip people’s heads clean from their bodies, so always remember that with great power comes great responsibility. (Also, if we bring our own deer to sacrifice, can we come to one of the bacchanals: is that how it works? Asking for a friend.)
Andrew Hozier-Byrne © Alex Lake
Andrew Hozier-Byrne © Alex Lake
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