Genercides and Sporcle.

So this summer, I discovered sporcle.com (which for those of you do not know is a site that provides hours of procrastination with quizzes that test memory recall). One quiz on the site asks the test taker to name all of the genericides (http://www.sporcle.com/games/generonyms.php)

After completing the quiz myself, I discovered some interesting facts (spoilers ahead for those of you who want to take the quiz/not know the answers). For one, this was a fairly easy quiz. A majority of the quiz takers correctly answered somwhere between 23-25 of the questions right out of a total of 26 questions (results here: http://www.sporcle.com/games/generonyms_results.php). This shows just how popular these names are in our society. Most people know a tissue as a Kleenex and a cotton swab as a Q-Tip. I also found it interesting how many of the genercides listed had to deal with technology. For instance, it is true that when we refer to a search on the web, we call it a "Google," and photo enhancement software is always referred to as "Photoshop." Likewise, "Polaroid" refers to the technology of the instant image. It is interesting how the first big technology becomes a sort of umbrella for all that technology. Even with new search engines such as Bing, Google is still the one everyone refers too. Something else that I noticed is that there were genercides that I didn't even know were genercides. For instance, I always associated Rollerblade with a type of skate, I never realized they were an actual brand of skate. I also never knew that Jacuzzi was a brand, I always just thought it was another fancy name for hot tub. It just shows how brands really branch out into household names of products.