Explain What 'Find Your Tribe' Implies About The Concept Of Identity In Todays World

After going through the findyourtribe quiz numerous times, a number of factors about identity become clear. With the explosive rise and flourishing of these tribes due to such factors as growing urbanisation, new tecnology and stemming of new sub-genres of arts such as music, film and fashion it is difficult for the multiple choice question website to easily differentiate their questions to cover these new 'tribes', which forces, as a result, the quiz must adopt a stereotypical attitude. An example of this generalised attitude occurs with the 'whats in your bag?' question, with one possible avenue to delve further into the quiz being a 'crappy old phone so I don't get jacked too much' which implies an attitude that the user is afraid of being attacked on the street rather than (a much more feasible occurence) the user simply not having much intrest in new technology or having better things to spend their money on.

It is with this generalised attitude that findyourtribe proves ineffective, the user may listen to Nirvana, for example, but that does not mean that he/she "automatically appreciate an artist after they passed away." These fixed taglines and attitudes fail to take into account the concept of fragmented identities which are much more feasible than the tribes included, which in many instances seem to be plucked out of thin air.

The ideas of Michael Maffesoli seem to apply in many aspects, who talks of mass culture in his book 'The Time of Tribes.' In his book Maffesoli argues that modern tribes are not permanent groups, but shifting and always changing and qualify non-permanent membership; this ideal seems to reveal the shallow way young people, who are forming an identity, seem to move from one group to another by observing what is the most popular style depending on what is shown in front of them or around them, whats in the magazines or in the group of people around them. Another concept of what Maffesoli calls 'identity politics' stresses the faux-importance of identity in competition with one another and reveals the hollowness of modern identity in this tribal enviroment, the idea that someones identity, taking in factors of style and attitude, can be superior over anothers is pathetic. Maffesoli underpins this hollowness, who states that social existence is conducted through fragmented tribal groupings, organised around the catchwords, brand-names and sound-bites of consumer culture, this argument reveals how social existence, just like consumer culture, is forever changing and that a persons fashion, music taste and even speech may be influenced by what is stylish at the time, for example slang such as 'safe' or 'phat' has broke into consumer culture from West-Scene rap into British society within the 'chav' tribal grouping, with lower-class youths attracted to the glamour of rap music organising their social existence to these sound-bites.

This changing consumer culture and its impact on the apparatus of a persons lifestyle is represented in findyourtribe, whose multiple-choice questions may be shown to emphasise a 'pick-n-mix' tribal lifestyle, which gives all power to the user to determine his/her identity. However multiple run-throughs of the quiz say differently, as soon as you pick an establishing question in the beginning of the quiz (for example saying you enjoy guitar music) thrusts you into a stereotype which findyourtribe pushes you further into, which makes it impossible to be labelled a chav or a clubber- thus reflecting the flaws in the multiple-choice structure which findyourtribe attempts to use to create appeal.