It took about an hour for anyone to notice the absurdist ads slyly placed on screens Monday at BART’s Powell station. But then came the discovery, a handful of social media posts, and the surge of a delightful viral phenomenon that has lit up group chats across the city.
“Which Line Are You?” is an online personality quiz that takes respondents through a night out in San Francisco to determine which of 16 transit lines they identify with. The results, which correspond to a Myers–Briggs type, range from the 49-Van Ness-Mission to BART’s Yellow Line to the Lyft bike-share program.
The anonymous nature of the project had some questioning if there was an AI data-scraping effort at play. Or maybe the SF Municipal Transportation Agency was using scarce tax dollars to fund what amounts to a silly game. A Reddit user wondered if it was a backdoor ad for Scientology.
Noah Finer, the 24-year-old developer and self-professed “train enjoyer” behind the project, emphatically denies that it’s a profit-making enterprise. Rather, he says, it’s an effort to inject a little whimsy into the world.
“There’s a lot of stuff out there that’s made for shareholders or getting statistics or numbers up,” Finer said. “I’m just excited that I had the opportunity to make something that I enjoyed playing and other people enjoyed playing.”
Finer moved to San Francisco three years ago and found a connection to the transit enthusiasts who dot the region. One of his most frequently worn pieces of clothing is a Muni beanie with the agency’s iconic worm logo.
A foot injury left the avid outdoorsman laid up for a few months at the beginning of the year, a break that provided time for him to dream up a game that’s now been played tens of thousands of times.
Inspired by similar projects online — including the Find Out Your Type of Peeps quiz created for the Taiwan Design Expo and a CakeResume quiz — Finer decided to create a version focused on his local interests.
That kicked off a four-month development process for the amateur artist to draw, write, and program a site featuring animated people that “didn’t look horrifying.” His girlfriend helped consult on San Francisco-specific references to snowy plovers, Marcella’s Lasagneria, and Golden Gate Park coyotes.
But Finer admits the process for matching specific personalities to transit lines was less scientific and more based on “aura.”
To market his project, he looked into billboards or wrapping a Muni bus, but that was tens of thousands of dollars beyond his price range. His one-week ad in the BART station was on brand for a transit quiz — and a somewhat reasonable $1,200.
“In a world where the ads on BART are marketing the Chase Sapphire Reserve card or WhatsApp, I feel like it’s cool to have some vibes-based software to show that you can still have fun in this world,” Finer said.
Financial assistance was provided in part by Francisco San, the anonymous fairy godmother of SF fringe culture who has doled out cash for projects ranging from scavenger hunts to a pooping robot dog.
As for which line Finer is? The Cole Valley resident said he’s burned out from taking all the test versions of the quiz and can’t go through the selection without bias.
“Aspirationally, I’d like to be the N,” he said with a laugh.