Travoltify Your News! Why Name Generators and Quizzes Are the New Crosswords

After Sunday’s Oscars, when John Travolta somehow arranged the phonemes of Idina Menzel’s name into “Adele Dazeem,” Slate whipped up the “Adele Dazeem Name Generator,” which invited readers to “Travoltify” their names with custom mispronunciations. It quickly became the most popular post Slate had ever done–yes, even more than thinkpieces on Jonathan Livingston Seagull!–leading Slate editor David Plotz to tweet that the coup made him feel “ambivalence.” He later clarified...

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