The making of a trivia snob
When I was younger, I wasn't interested in "trivia" (as a game genre, say) because I thought it was all about stuffing random facts into your head to regurgitate for the game. That felt boring, not to mention a waste of time for every other purpose; looking things up is so easy! It didn't help that I was also bad at it, which was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I can't really recall what kinds of questions my younger self based his conclusion on, but I think that the kinds of trivia questions I get when just searching for "trivia questions" online are similar. "How many chromosomes are in a human cell?" "Where is the Mona Lisa displayed?" "What is Rihanna's real name?"
Who cares?
In hindsight, the waste-of-time argument isn't that strong. It's useful to know things without looking them up because that lets you connect them to other things, in brainstorming sessions or scientific research or casual conversation. However, more importantly, I didn't know what trivia questions looked like when they were written by professionals; I didn't know how much more interesting trivia questions could be.
Trivia questions can teach you interesting facts, even or sometimes especially when you know the answer.
The examples of "bad" trivia questions I gave at the beginning aren't like this. If you already know how many chromosomes are in a human cell, then you won't learn anything from being asked for that number and regurgitating it. Whereas, a contrived question that teaches you something might go like, "Who did both famous thing X and obscure thing Y?" You answer the question by recognizing X, and then you learn the fact that your answer also did Y, and hopefully Y is interesting.
Trivia questions can require you to reason the answer out rather than just know/recall a specific fact. For example, they might mention some obscure, hyperspecific names or aspects of the answer that you aren't expected to literally recognize, but that enable you to guess the answer anyway from context clues or the general "vibe".
Maybe you haven't seen the movie Cloverfield (I haven't, I just googled "movies in <city>"); but maybe if I told you that it's a horror film whose poster depicts a large green statue holding a torch, albeit with its head cut off, you can hazard a guess to the question: what city is it set in?
Trivia questions can make you feel smart by giving you a chance to use obscure knowledge from your niche interest. That might seem like it can only happen rarely, when the question writer's niche interests align exactly with yours. But good trivia writers can often write questions covering a variety of niches. Or, they may write single questions that reference many different niches and can be answered if you know about only one of them.
Quizbowl pyramidal tossups are great for this. A pyramidal tossup is a paragraph-long clue for a single answer that clues that same answer in many ways, moving from obscure to obvious; you're meant to "buzz" as soon as you know the answer. I play/read quizbowl very casually with my friends sometimes, and I'm not knowledgeable enough to buzz in first often, but it feels extra awesome when I do. I'll take my buzz from recognizing the in-universe mechanical explanation for how the Animorphs' abilities conserve mass with me to the grave.
Trivia questions can surprise you with their perspective. I might compare this to the punchline to a joke, or a cover of a song that's a different genre from the original.
I don't think every trivia question should try to tick every one of these boxes — that seems too gimmicky. But, one example that lives rent-free in my head and scores well is LL87MD24Q2.
The current location of a Chinese robot named Yutu-2 can be described by the title of an enduring rock album from the 1970s. What is that location/title?
It taught me something interesting: there's a Chinese robot in the answer location.
It made me reason out the answer: I didn't recognize the robot name and had no reason to think that I might, so I first approached the question as, "What 1970s rock album's title could describe a location where a robot might be?" I'm guessing most people who got the answer did the same.
It made me feel smart: Although I didn't use this knowledge to first arrive at the answer, I knew enough Chinese mythology to understand the robot name and become very confident in my answer afterwards.
And it took a surprising perspective: I'm sure many trivia questions have been written about many aspects of the album, from its singles and iconic cover art to its chart-topping sales and legacy. But few of them probably consider the album title as a literal description of a physical location, where a robot might be.