Tag Archives: classification

Bird, Horse, Muffin

I asked the informant to retell a way of classification that was very important to the informant’s friend group as a way in which they bonded with each other.

“Ok, so bird horse muffin is a way to classify people as either bird horse muffin and they can be a mix of the two, um but they can’t be all three, roughly, although this a very rough sketch is that a bird would be more reserved, a little weird, kinda flighty, a horse is very out there, controls the room uh, big type of person, muffin is very sweet and nice and has like no edge to them, um, that’s the rough outlines. Uh, I first learned it from my friend Nanase who learned it at camp, but it’s also like a real thing that you can find on like the internet. And apparently, like my friend Anna told me that it’s used uh, that it’s used in corporate team building stuff to find out what type of worker you are, and so like a horse who really drives it, but like, a horse can be hard to work with but when they’re on they’re really on. A muffin is so nice to work with but they’re not necessarily going to lead like a horse will, and then like a bird is going to be quiet but then give one really brilliant idea, and then like not do anything else, and so they were saying that you, in your company, you need a balance of these, like if you have too many horses everyone’s just going to argue all the time, if you have to many birds there’s not consistent work, if you have too many muffins like, it is fine, but you’re not doing anything brilliant if you just have muffins. and you can like explain all of world history and interpersonal relations and everyone’s family and how like bird horse muffins interact and how like, and if you’re two, if you’re bird horse in different situations your horse would come out, in different situations your bird would come out, uh, to help or hurt you in different ways”
Analysis:
Bird, Horse, Muffin is a real classification that is used in corporate world, as the informant told us, however, in my research I was not able to find a definitive source for the creation of the classification. This furthers it’s folkloric aspect, a non-authored work. The definitions are relatively the same but have definitely been changed in this case to fit the informant’s friend group. The informant would describe himself as a bird.