QuizUp Will Help You Find The Harry To Your Ginny

Have you ever wanted to find the Pikachu to your Ash, the Harry to your Ginny, the Jasmine to your Aladdin? The trivia game app QuizUp is launching a redesigned version that will allow for something that falls a little outside of the regular game-playing spectrum. Now more social network than fun time waster, QuizUp is opening up the lines of communication for users to interact more with each other. And if they happen to meet up in person and fall in love, well, even better! Think Tinder, but for trivia, the company says.

QuizUp is on an entirely new mission to play as a social network. The redesigned app will now feature newsfeeds, likes, and comments with the look and feel of Instagram kind of, and if you only want to chat or challenge a certain kind of person, you can filter them based on age, location, and what kind of topics they like. The company says you can find fans of Star Wars, World Capitals, or Spice Girls and chat with them either publicly or privately about Boba Fett, Tokyo, and what it takes to "Spice Up [My] Life." Or you can just "follow" the person, like you can with other social media, to figure out how they interact with the rest of the world, or contact them to meet up if you live near each other.

The app is now not just on iOS and Android, but on a desktop, too, so you can find a friend — or lover — who's also into Pikachu and the rest of the 150 original Pokemon, no matter where you are in the world. Talk about narrowing the playing field.

Sigmar here is clearly into sports, food, jokes, and overall trivia, so he seems like a well-rounded fellow.

Now, I generally prefer my iPhone games to feature me not having to talk to anyone at all, but I was intrigued by this turn of events that will hopefully have more than just random people saying things like "hay wut's up" or "hi how r u?" or "A/S/L?" Do people even still ask for your ASL?

So, I tried it out.

The first step was to select your interests. Mine obviously included Disney Movies, Drinks, Pokemon (I knew it'd be there), Food, Harry Potter, The Walking Dead, Spelling, and Name The Baby Animal, of course.

The next step was to OK push notifications. According to the screen, Thor wanted to challenge me in a game of Animals trivia, and if Thor means Chris Hemsworth and his long beautiful blond hair, yes, you may send me notifications 24/7.

Unsurprisingly, you then have to sign in. While I'm also usually against signing in to apps with Facebook, I figured I'd get the full communication experience by allowing it. Sigh.

Luckily, if you've played QuizUp before, all your information will transfer over. It's not a different app from the regular QuizUp, it's just an update. So, I got to keep my "Spellbound" status, as well as my level 15 in Spelling and my level 11 in Drinks.

So, if you click over to a category you want to play, you're given the chance to play, unfollow, or check your rankings compared to others, or you can continue to scroll down, where you'll see images and comments from other users. Here's where the social part comes in.

GUFFI posted this photo in the Drinks category, so they're obviously keeping things in the right location, however overplayed the sign phrase might be. It had nine "likes" and three comments.

The comments didn't particularly make me want to chat with anyone else, but let's just say I did. Let's say someone commented something smart and brilliant in the Drinks category, and I just knew he or she could teach me how to perfect making a mojito.

Then you click on their profile, and you've got the option to chat. Which is something I didn't do, because I don't particularly like talking to strangers online. But it's nice to have the option.

QuizUp is now also launching a desktop version, too. I'll give them a couple thumbs up for one main thing — the fact that it could be used as kind of a Tinder for trivia nerds appeals to me, despite my non-singleness. If there's one thing I would want to bond over while online dating, it's not going to be my religious preference and how not strong/strong it is or my desire to have/not have kids at some point in my life. It's going to be over the fact that the original 150 Pokemon are clearly the best (151 if you count Mew), and the fact that now there are Pokemon with names like Vanilluxe and Spewpa and Bronzor is absolutely absurd. That's what I want to bond over. So, the new QuizUp really has that going for them, plus the fact that trivia is huge, and the built-in social network of likes and comments will probably work out well.

But at the same time, are people going to be going to QuizUp to make friends or meet potential dates? I don't know. In a 2014 interview with writer Taj Tsonga, Thor Fridriksson (the founder of QuizUp who I'm guessing is the Thor challenger from before, and unfortunately not the gorgeous son of Odin) said the demographics are "very widespread" and are split between age and gender. A spokesperson tells Bustle the U.S. demographics of the app are about 35 percent female, 30 percent male, and 35 percent "other," and about 36 percent are between ages 18 and 32, so there seems to be a decent ratio. Plus, the most popular state for the app is California, so your luck will be even better there.

Or if you're not into it at all, maybe just keep playing like usual. The best thing about social networks is that you don't have to talk to anyone if you don't want to. Keep answering questions about Pokemon (or whatever else you're into) and ignore everyone, or get into the comments and find a love connection, whatever you want. You do you.

Images: QuizUp (11)