BuzzFeed, Inc.
is an American digital media company. Originally founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to track viral content, it expanded into a source for viral content in its own right — the site became known for online quizzes, articles tapping into pop culture, and list-type articles ("listicles"). They have since expanded into their own video division, a short-lived podcasts division, and an investigative news division. The latter, BuzzFeed News, was active from 2011 to 2023.
The website produces daily content from staff writers and community contributors, and receives most of its traffic from social media shares.
BuzzFeed and similar websites also inspired the trope Shallow News Site Satire.
BuzzFeed-affiliated works and creators with their own pages:
- Abuela
- Buzz Feed Unsolved
- BuzzFeed Worth It
- Chikn Nuggit
- Dear Kitten
- The Good Advice Cupcake
- Ladylike
- The Land of Boggs
- Ruining History
- The Try Guysnote
Tropes found on this website:
- Baffled by Own Biology: In the video "Weird Things New Parents Worry About", a baby girl is afraid of her own farts due to not knowing how they work. Her parents have a fear-induced Fantasy Sequence of her continuing to be afraid and confused by her own farts even as a teenager.
- Cooking Show: BuzzFeed Tasty is a line of cooking videos shot from up top, showing food preparation with accompanying text.
- First Snow: "Australians See Snow For the First Time", where Australians are sent to the US to experience snow.
- Ghostly Animals: The website has a video on how to pet animals. Under "ghost dogs", it simply says, "You can't touch ghosts, dummy!".
- Grossout Fakeout: In one video, Zach accidentally walks in on Justin changing. He spends most of the video embarrassed, and at one point, he sees Justin eating a banana and, due to how it's positioned, thinks Justin is pantsless again.Zach: (screams)
Justin: "It's just a banana." - Innocent Awkward Question: On this list of strange sex questions from kids, one boy had started listening to adult music and then asked his teacher what "choking chicks" and "sodomy" meant, getting him in trouble with his teacher.
- Lookalike Lovers: Defied: showing up and realizing that your date looks like and dressed exactly like you is one of the titular "Dating Problems Every Lesbian Will Recognize".Girl: Like, I'm narcissistic but I'm not gonna have sex with myself.
- Loud Sleeper Gag: In "Sleep Talk", Zack has to share a bed with his friends Quinta and Justin. However, when he says in his sleep that he wants to murder Justin and have children with Quinta, he becomes scared of him and she worries he has a crush on her. However, he doesn't; his sleep-talking was meaningless.
- Precious Puppy: They have a line of videos where celebrities answer fan questions while playing with adorable puppies that are usually up for adoption.
- Reference Overdosed: Overall, their content will cover anything and everything pop culture-related: from this quiz about which Tiger King character you are and this quiz about sorting BTS members into Hogwarts houses, to this list of toys from the '80s.
- Silly Brain Diagram: "The World's Most Accurate Brain Map" depicts a human brain as having such areas such as "Names of Taylor Swift's Cats", "Unearned Confidence", and "Part That's No Different From a Chimp's Brain".
- Took the Wife's Name: Writer Andy Golder was né Neuenschwander and he discussed his reasons for changing his name to his wife's (wanting her to keep the name she used professionally and disliking his own last name, which he found unwieldy), as well as the Double Standard around the act (people automatically assumed his wife would change her name and are taken aback and confused by how he did instead) in this article.
