Interview of a JetPunker #28 - RoxyTheQuizzer

Hi Roxy! I had a little question for you... Would you like to be my next interviewee...?

Oh, I'd absolutely love to yes!

Perfect, so let's do that. And thank you very much for having accepted!

No problem, thank you for the offer!

Haha! With pleasure! So let’s start this interview! First, could you present yourself on JetPunk quickly for our readers who don’t know you?

Is the microphone working? Is it not too loud?

I can hear you perfectly.

Okay, great.

Hi all! My name is Roxy, I’m 20 years old and I started my adventure with JetPunk 7 years ago. I'm the admin of Polish JetPunk and owner of the most popular account without a single English quiz (currently thriving at over 5 million takes).

Despite the grand successes I've achieved on it, I've mostly shown interest in working on original English creations. My projects take a lot of time and effort to make, yet the majority of them get very little takes and that's completely fine by me! I don't care for fame, I simply enjoy the process of making quizzes and gain a lot of satisfaction from the finished results.

You start your interview with a beautiful message!

As you said, most of our readers might know that you actually have two JetPunk accounts. Could you explain why exactly?

Right. I'm aware that some people might be perplexed by this fact. After all I could have one account with large total numbers of takes, subscribers and quizzes, wouldn't that be better? In fact, no.

Initially, I got a new account back in 2017 because I lost interest in making original Polish quizzes and I wanted a completely fresh start as EuropeanQuizzer. I quickly realized that I found making English quizzes more entertaining, thus I essentially abandoned my former account and spent all my time on JetPunk using the new one.

Then at some point I checked how well the Polish account was doing, purely out of curiosity. I was shocked to see that my Polish quizzes had thousands of takes – the most I'd get on a single quiz back in the day was 40! That's when I acknowledged that JetPunk had an influx of Polish users thanks to famous YouTubers promoting Polish content on the site.

That's when Stewart suggested to me that I could get into translating English featured quizzes on the site to Polish, in order to develop this language section more. I liked the idea, therefore I began translating tons of quizzes and started a proper career on Polish JetPunk, separate from the one on English JetPunk. This resulted in me being equally active on both accounts for quite a while. Stewart made the offer that he could merge my accounts, but I didn't want that. As I'm quite pedantic, I enjoy keeping things organized and mixing my English projects with Polish translations seemed like it would cause chaos. Besides, the people who like my English quizzes and don't even know Polish don't have to scroll through hundreds of quizzes to find something they'd want to take.

Haha! I know that someone else in this interview would have done well in separating his quizzes between two accounts too...

You more or less recently changed your JetPunk pseudonym twice. Would you like to explain why?

I definitely expected this question. However I'd like to clarify that I changed my name not twice, but thrice! Many people are aware that I used to be known as Saturn on JetPunk, but I'm sure most people wondered "who the hell is EuropeanQuizzer" when reading the answer to the previous question. That was indeed my name before I changed it to Saturn in 2019, because I decided it was too unoriginal and I wanted it to align with other online aliases of mine. It's rather unknown because I only had one notable quiz as EuropeanQuizzer – Largest Countries by Category.

Now let's talk about the recent name changes. I rejected the name Saturn because there's a common tendency among internet users to assume that everyone is male, and using my real name would surely eliminate that problem. I wasn't bothered by this until recently, as it took me years to figure out that I'm a transgender woman and fully accept myself as one. Although I am indecisive, therefore two name changes happened rather than one. The first female name I chose was Jenny, I liked it quite a bit but it wasn't perfect. After a year of using it, I changed my name to what I currently go by – Roxy. I'm pretty sure that I won't change it again.

Now let’s talk about the Polish section (again). You are the trusted user associated with it. What can you say about its current situation and development? Do you have any projects for it?

Polish JetPunk has been developing greatly and I can't hide that I'm very proud of all Polish content creators. Unfortunately I'm pretty inactive on the Polish section, which is mainly caused by the fact that I have a job soaking up a lot of my time and I'm not motivated to do Polish projects in my free time. I did finish updating all of my Polish featured quizzes last week, which took a ton of time. I can't say I'm upset that I had to put all that effort into it, after all I feel that it's my obligation. I have a huge number of quizzes on the site and not keeping them up to date would cause Polish JetPunk to seem disorganized and improfessional – as the admin of it I obviously wouldn't want that.

I don't expect myself to contribute much more than this. As much as I want Polish JetPunk to keep thriving, I also want to prioritize my own needs and desires, as I value happiness a lot in life. Regardless of this, looking at the wonderful job the community members have done at keeping the Polish section active, I'm sure it will do just fine without me.

And you have already done an incredible part of the work, for which Polish JetPunkers can definitely thank you.

This year, mostly thanks to Pandryf, the Polish blog section grew up a lot, with many good blogs and so likes. Do you think that’s positive? Could you eventually consider publishing a blog in your native language?

Absolutely, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I'm truly glad that there is someone invested in making Polish blogs, there has been practically zero activity in our blog section before Pandryf started working on them. I admit that I've never cared too much for blogs on JetPunk, they simply never sparked my interest. Although I do still think that they're an important, inseparable part of JetPunk. Without them the site isn't complete and therefore I'm pleased that Pandryf filled in the missing piece of the Polish section. Personally I don't think it matters that not too many people read them in the first place. There's always the minority that enjoys them that we need to keep entertained.

As a story writer, I felt inclined a couple times to write a blog on JetPunk, but I doubt it would be in Polish. Frankly writing in Polish is more difficult for me (yes, it is my native language), so I'd likely resort to making more English blogs, if I ever feel like it.

One of your quizzes, All 100k+ Cities in Europe on a Map, recently got defeatured. That’s an exceptional, if it’s not unique, situation. Could you precise why it happened, and if you know if the quiz will be refeatured soon?

Actually the quiz has already been refeatured by now, albeit I admit that it was defeatured for quite a while. Quite simply there was an issue with the SVG where the dots wouldn't turn green upon guessing the cities, because I didn't connect the paths with the answers properly. I thought Quizmaster would refeature it much sooner, as I fixed the issue with the quiz pretty quickly. Oh well, it's in the past now.

What is your own quiz you are the proudest of?

Surprisingly it didn't take a lot of time to think through the answer to this, despite the enormous amount of quizzes I've made. It has to be Common Geography on a Map – the quiz that marked the proper beginning of my adventure with SVG maps. I did make SVG quizzes before that one, however they didn't require any knowledge about Inkscape – I made them using the dot placer tool. But then in April 2021 I got the idea to combine the most guessed answers across popular JetPunk quizzes into one megaquiz. All parts of making it were very fun to do – especially designing the SVG. I had to figure out ways to include every answer on the SVG, even things that can't be marked by location, such as languages or currencies. I was very satisfied with the result, as I previously didn't expect myself to ever make a neat looking SVG quiz. This quiz has also achieved the record of nominations on the site and held it for quite a while, which gave me a lot of joy. I can safely say that out of all quizzes I've ever made, I'm proud of Common Geography on a Map the most.

Do you have big projects of quizzes in preparation?

Yes, actually! I'm glad you asked. I'm currently working on researching and calculating the population numbers of all first-level administrative subdivisions of the world. I'm attempting to align the numbers with the data of country populations listed on this page, which will allow me to make them as up-to-date as possible. In the upcoming next few weeks you can expect to see quite a few quizzes on the most populated subdivisions worldwide, by continent and by other criteria. Stay tuned if you're interested!

There's also the Countries Surrounding Capitals quiz series I started. I'm intending to finish it at some point but right now I just don't feel the motivation to do so.

What is the most important event in your life of JetPunker?

I'm unsure if you can call it an event, but I want to say it was me joining the JetPunk Discord server. Thanks to it I became very close with the quizzing community, I made friends with many great people and received crucial support on my JetPunk adventure. The server not only improved my quizmaking skills, but also my life in general, as I met some people on there who were able to help me out when I was going through serious downs in my personal life. I'm very happy I found the invite to the server 4 years ago and got to experience all the amazing moments on it.

If you had to resume your JetPunk adventure in one word, what would it be?

Determination. If I were to give up instantly whenever I struggled to keep a project going, I wouldn't have finished so many creations I'm proud of today. I tend to be determined in what I do when I genuinely care for it and I think that is the main reason why I've been able to achieve all of my successes.

Would you change something to tour JetPunk adventure, if it was possible?

Absolutely not. There have been times when I got bored of making a quiz and didn't finish it, only to notice that someone else made it a couple weeks later and received many takes on it. Naturally I felt regrets but I wouldn't go back in time and finish making those quizzes. It is just how it was meant to be. It's possible dropping my project lead to me coming up with a more successful one. Changing any timeline is a dangerous concept, as it could result in an awful turn of events. I couldn't be more content with my adventure so far.

If you had to choose just three JetPunker for their quizzes, who will it be?

Quizzer6794, Vicky and Stewart in no particular order. I spent the most time on Quizzer's quizzes back in the very early days, I enjoyed his simple text quizzes when SVG quizzes weren't too big yet. Vicky makes amazing maps – I'm impressed by the amount of time and effort she put into the world subdivision quiz. Stewart has come up with some of the most interesting quiz concepts I've ever stumbled upon on the site, his content is very entertaining.

There are so many people I'd love to include because there is a ton of talented quiz makers out there, but you clearly asked for my top 3, so I had to make a difficult decision.

Yeah, the limit is completely arbitrary, and I know that it's a difficult exercise. But your justifications and choices are very good!

And for their blogs?

Unfortunately I don't read blogs anywhere near enough to make a fair judgement here, I'm sorry.

No problem! It seems that it's the case of a significant part of my interviewees, actually...

What are your passions in life, excepting JetPunk?

My two biggest passions – geography and statistics are not strictly limited to JetPunk, yet my projects related to them typically end up being published on the site, so let's try to find something else. Hmm, writing is definitely one of them. I'm interested in psychology, therefore looking into the emotions and behavior of the characters, as well as the reasoning behind them can be commonly found in my novels. I haven't published any yet but I probably will at some point if my work gains positive reviews from my friends beforehand.

I am also a furry, which can be considered another hobby of mine. I find the concept of anthropomorphic animals (animals that act like humans) and artwork associated with it very cool and cute. I have a wolf fursona that represents me, but I don't do much for art, as I'm horrible at drawing. Regardless of stereotypes and bad representation online, we're just an innocent community with a mutual harmless interest.

"JetPunk actuality question": a Recent Taken Quizzes page has recently been added to the site. When the idea was suggested at the end of 2022, you voted in favour of an implementation of this kind. Now that it is real, what do you think about this addition? Will you often consult this page?

I'm very pleased that this page was added. In the past I'd often take a quiz and then want to retake it some time after, but I'd forget what the quiz's title was. I'd also hold off retaking a quiz for later sometimes and then completely forget that it exists. Now that this page was added I won't have these problems anymore. I can confidently say that I'll use it often when I get into frequent quiz taking again.

You are on the JetPunk Discord server, being one of its most iconic members after having been its main moderator for several years. What do you think about its community? Was it a good experience to moderate it? And finally, how do you consider your newest "Advisor" role?

As I mentioned previously, the community has always been full of kind and supportive people. Even though I'm not a moderator on it anymore and I'm a less active member now, it will always have a special place in my heart. If we talk about solely moderating, it has had its ups and downs but overall I've had an amazing time with this role. Helping the community grow and remain wholesome was a pleasure for me. However no online social group is a utopia, it could get out of hand sometimes due to trolls and toxic people.

I think I was handling it pretty well for a while, but after over three years my time has come. I retired as a moderator and proceeded to serve as an advisor instead. What this title entails is me giving insight on moderating matters and working on weekly projects, such as activity leaderboards. I think adding this role was a great idea, as I can still easily help out the community, except without the pressure to always be available, which kept growing on me at the end of my moderating days.

And I'm sure that the members of the server are happy to still have you in the mod team! At least it's my case.

You are also one of the administrators of the JetPunk Polish Discord server. What can you tell about it?

I was given the title of an admin on that server primarily to match my role on the Polish JetPunk section. I'm not really active there nor expected to do much, although I'd be happy to help the other moderators with hosting an event or anything else if requested.

I think creating a server for Polish JetPunk was a good idea, as it can help unite all its contributors and form an efficient place for discussing projects. I will say it could really use a higher count of Polish members though, as I'm sure there are still a lot of people who are struggling with making their first quiz and aren't aware that there's a server which could help them.

As the founder of the French JetPunk Discord server, I can definitely say that making the server accessible and visible to everyone is with no doubt the most difficult part of the job. But I'm sure that the Polish server will grow with time, even if it's slowly.

What do you hope for JetPunk development in the next months?

The site has been so much developing so much recently that it's hard to find things it could possibly be lacking. I can definitely at least say one thing though – as an enjoyer of linguistics and taking quizzes in different languages, I hope to see more languages becoming featured and their quizzes becoming eligible for points. Aside from that, I think an account stats page that'd compile all kinds of fun info about the progress made on one's account would also be really cool. I understand that introducing it might not be worth the effort for the admins of the site though.

Do you have a message to pass to the whole JetPunk community (or at least to the few users reading these blogs…)?

You might expect me to teach everyone a valuable lesson based on these quotes of mine: "When you make a quiz, don't think about the amount of takes it's gonna get. Remember that there will always be at least one person who will appreciate your quiz." and "Amount of takes doesn't really matter. Amount of effort you put in making a quiz is what actually matters.", While those are good things to keep in mind, I want to pass a personal message that I consider more important.

Live your life how you want and be yourself. Don't let others tell you that you're doing it wrong. Keep endeavoring to accomplish your goals and seek happiness that you deserve. Expectations of society should never matter more than your well-being.

Take care everyone, peace out.

You finish your interview as you began it: with a beautiful and profound message.

It was a pleasure for me to learn new things about you, even if it has been three years that I joined the server and so know you.

It was awesome, thanks!

You're very welcome! Thank you so much for your efforts!