Interview of a JetPunker #5 - HinesBrothers
First published: Saturday November 14th, 2020
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Hello everyone!
Some of you wanted to I interview JetPunker with an impressive quizmaker rank. Isn't the case with this interview of the HinesBrothers, which the 32th quizmaker in the world?
I hope you will like this interview, which is a bit special because the two brothers, Joshua and Caleb Hines, will answer my questions. Are you ready? Go!
baptistegorce: Let’s start this interview! First, could you present yourself on JetPunk quickly for our readers who don’t know you?
Caleb: We started on Jetpunk when Joshua was studying for the Geography Bee. We made mainly geography quizzes for a while, but some of our quizzes have branched out more recently. Josh is 15, and I am 17.
baptistegorce: During the past two weeks, I think almost all people who visited JetPunk (or at least MANY people) took your quiz Win the US presidential elections. What inspired you this idea? What do you feel after this huge success?
Caleb: Just in the past two weeks it has really blown up though. As we speak, it is becoming our most taken quiz. It is neck and neck right now with Name a Valid Country #3.
Joshua: I created the quiz back in February and it was mildly popular, I think it had roughly 300 takes at the beginning of the month. I wasn't too surprised when it was featured, and thought it would be the top quiz the day it would be on the front page, but I never at all expected the degree to which it has been takes.
Caleb: Yeah. I never expected that a quiz, let alone one of ours,\ would be able to crush the takes in one day record like that quiz did.
Joshua: I didn't know it was possible for a user-created quiz to be taken over 28,000 times in a day.
baptistegorce: Do you know the user HinesBrothersFan? What do you think about him, and his pseudonym?
Caleb: Yes, I do know of him. He actually consulted us before changing his username and asked if it was okay.
Joshua: He / she is a complete stranger and it is not an alt account despite what some conspiracy theorists might think.
baptistegorce: Do you have big projects of quizzes or blogs in preparation?
Joshua: We aren't working on any MASSIVE ones like IAB's All First level Subdivions quizzes, but there are a few larger ones in progress that may or may not ever get finished. I have a lot of incomplete projects that I lose inspiration to work on.
baptistegorce: What is the most important event in your own life of JetPunker?
Joshua: Probably either the featuring of Name a Valid Country #2 or on November 5th when Win the U.S. Presidential Election smashed the single-day record for most takes by a user-created quiz.
Caleb: Yes, I agree. Or maybe when we started to get the flurry of foreign-language quizzes.
Joshua: The ones that had grammatical issues because we didn't consult a native speaker ...
Caleb: Yeah. That's true. But that really blew up our account when we were getting a feature almost every day.
baptistegorce: Difficult question... Many users consider(ed) you as just bad translators, using Google Translate, or just people copying successful quizzes series. What do you want to tell to these kind of JetPunkers?
Joshua: I think that we used to copy / continue the series of other people but we stopped doing that and don't do it anymore
Caleb: Well, I think it is true that our translation quizzes were not great translations, but I don't see us as copying successful quizzes. We have made almost the entire Name a Valid Country series with the exception of #1 and #4. And going back to the translations, there is a large gap in the number of English quizzes and quizzes in other languages. While our translations might not have been the best, its better than not having a quiz on the topic at all. For example, I'd rather take a quiz in English that was translated than not be able to take it at all.
baptistegorce: But not doing the #1 and creating quizzes for a series is what people reproach to you. Wasn't it a poblem for you?
Joshua: I don't think that I / we took the continuation of other people's series as seriously as we should have if that is what you are asking. Part of the gap is because of usership. Meaning the amount of users.
baptistegorce: If you had to choose just three JetPunkers for their quizzes, who will it be?
Joshua: For me, probably Stewart, Jiaozira, CringeDragon, dug28, IAB, and Pandora49. I'm good at counting, aren't I?
Caleb: I largely agree with Josh, but I would add WolfCam to the list.
Joshua: Oh yeah WolfCam makes good quizzes.
baptistegorce: And for their blogs?
Joshua: I think the ones I would choose for blogs would be you, Pandora49, and maybe HelveticaBold, but I'm probably forgetting some good ones.
Caleb: I would say you, Pandora49, WolfCam, even though he hasn and the official Jetpunk blogs by the quizmaster and Stewart.
baptistegorce: What are your passions in life, except JetPunk?
Joshua: I like learning about geography, history, and psychology / neurology, but also biking and kicking field goals.
Caleb: Definitely geography. I used to study that for hours when I was in the Geography Bee, but also history, and playing/making board games.
baptistegorce: You were in the JetPunk Discord server, but you left. Was it a good experience? Why? Do you have a message to pass about it?
Joshua: I came there to learn how to do SVG maps and then left when I was done. I wouldn't say it was particularly good or bad, really.
Caleb: We aren't on it because we don't use discord in general.
baptistegorce: What do you hope for JetPunk development in the next months?
Caleb: Well, I know Stewart has said this won't happen, but I do think it would be nice if it was easier for users to communicate with each other so that, for example, this interview could actually take place on the website, and so people would not have to always be leaving comments on quizzes instead.
Joshua: I have maybe a few minor things in mind that might be nice, but nothing major that I can think of right now.
baptistegorce: It was the last question of this interview, which is now finished.
Joshua: Okay. Thanks for doing this.
Caleb: Thanks for the interview!
baptistegorce: You're welcome! It's me who thank you for answering my boring questions!
It's the end of this blog. I hope you liked it. I would like to thank you all for your very kind comments you posted on the last blogs of this series. Thank you!
And thank you a lot!
I (Joshua) created the account 1Joshua2Hines3 in September 2018 for myself. Then, Caleb decided he would just use the account too for taking quizzes and stuff to increase my level because he used the site as well. In summer 2019, I went on an eight-week missions trip to Zambia where we weren't allowed to use the internet. During that time, Caleb was doing stuff on JetPunk and was a part of a community of roughly fifty elite geography masters that had done well in the Geography Bee. They were asking why he was using my account, and eventually, the same was changed to refect the account's dual usership.
But yes, I agree with the fact that it's very nice to see the points that we have in common with others JetPunkers.
Thank you a lot for your enthousiam!
Thank you a lot. All you wrote really touch me.
So nice!!! I think the next interviewee will be one of them:
@dug28
@Jiaozira
@IAB
@Stewart
@CringeDragon
I’M ANSIOUS TO THE NEXT INTERVIEW!