[MBTI General] The MBTI is a Joke!

[Mal12345]

Found in a Facebook MBTI forum:

"Well its a joke, but mainly the people interested in it are the outcasts, the people who prefer things that don't add up to normal society."

Could this be true? Is an MBTI forum a joke and are the people interested in social outcasts?

 

[geedoenfj]

Well from your experience with us, do you think we're a joke? Or outcasts?
Wait don't answer that

 

[reckful]

Found in a Facebook MBTI forum:

"Well its a joke, but mainly the people interested in it are the outcasts, the people who prefer things that don't add up to normal society."

Could this be true? Is an MBTI forum a joke and are the people interested in social outcasts?

The members of MBTI forums are a population that's quite strongly skewed in the direction of N's (first and foremost) and introverts (secondarily), as dramatically illustrated by the PerC and Typology Central stats in the spoiler in this post.

And I'd say that's for the same reason that Jung and Briggs and Myers and Quenk and Berens and Nardi are all INs — because INs have a substantially greater tendency to be interested in personality types than other types.

Jung felt strongly alienated from the cultural mainstream, and it sounds to me like most of the predecessor typologists whose theories Jung reviewed in Psychological Types were fellow INs who I suspect were also, like Jung, partly moved to formulate their "different types" theories by the fact that — like a sizeable percentage of the INs in (I assume) most eras — they felt significantly alienated from the majority of their fellow men.

And if INs are the types most likely to feel alienated from "normal society," you'd expect that a not insubstantial number of INs who visit MBTI forums would be pleased to find themselves among a higher percentage of kindred spirits than they tend to find out in the so-called real world.

That has nothing to do with whether MBTI forums are "a joke," of course. On that issue, I'd just say that some posters are more joketastic than others.

 

[CitizenErased]

Found in a Facebook MBTI forum:

"Well its a joke, but mainly the people interested in it are the outcasts, the people who prefer things that don't add up to normal society."

Could this be true? Is an MBTI forum a joke and are the people interested in social outcasts?

In general lines, I agree with [MENTION=18736]reckful[/MENTION]

I'd add that the people who visit personality forums (to talk about typology, not just because they are trolls or whatever reason) tend to have/want a better understanding of the self, and how to achieve things in "the real world", which in a way (as I see it), it's pretty weird to find out there. That's my main problem with people. All the people I've ever found, except for some special snowflakes, are interested in life in a superficial way. I call them the "jellyfish" because they drift with the current. Anything that is beyond the surface is "complicating it too much". So the "outcast", term for me comes from being different that people who are interested in personalities, are willing to go beyond the surfaces of things. That doesn't mean all of us/them are dismissed and ostracized by the "jellyfish", and this doesn't mean either that the jellyfish are inferior to those who care about personality.

I don't know if this happens everywhere, but here there are some sort of clubs in which you go to watch a movie and then there's a big place in which people discuss the movie. In my metaphor, MBTI, Enneagram etc are the movie, the MBTI/Enneagram forum is the discussion after the movie and the rest of the forum is the coffee you have with a random friend you made by having something in common (having watched the movie). So, even if "real life" outcasts, there's a whole world here that works exactly like out there but where the outcasts are the ones unwilling to look at themselves.

-Taken from CitizenErased's Personality Forums Apologia, 2016​

EDIT: Your polls should have "meh" among the options, which is my default answer to anything I don't actively hate.

 

[Totenkindly]

I'd have voted for "meh."



MBTI was also useful to give a clearer awareness of the types of differences that exist in individuals and also to provide a sense of legitimacy to those who feel they are outside the social norm. (i.e., someone's mindset might not be prevalent, but there's nothing wrong with them or how they work). However, people who get too invested in it just end up limiting their own self-driven responses by what they expect their "type" to do, which wasn't the purpose either.

... not much else to say that hasn't been said already.

 

[Mal12345]

I'd have voted for "meh."



MBTI was also useful to give a clearer awareness of the types of differences that exist in individuals and also to provide a sense of legitimacy to those who feel they are outside the social norm. (i.e., someone's mindset might not be prevalent, but there's nothing wrong with them or how they work). However, people who get too invested in it just end up limiting their own self-driven responses by what they expect their "type" to do, which wasn't the purpose either.

... not much else to say that hasn't been said already.

????

The commenter only has a smattering of an idea regarding what typology is used for. You can see this in his comment. It sounds like he only met one person who was into the MBTI and that person happened to be a "social outcast" whatever that means.

 

[Pionart]

So is it like, weird people discussing a weird thing which describes weird people, like the sort who discuss weird things?

Jung did make some quite funny jokes. Or, I made funny jokes out of what Jung said. I think he most likely had a good sense of humour, though.

In The Red Book there's a funny (I assume hypothetical) conversation between himself and a psychiatrist who is calling him a schizophrenic.

(I would post the conversation if the book was in the house I'm in at the moment)

 

[Mal12345]

The members of MBTI forums are a population that's quite strongly skewed in the direction of N's (first and foremost) and introverts (secondarily), as dramatically illustrated by the PerC and Typology Central stats in the spoiler in this post.

And I'd say that's for the same reason that Jung and Briggs and Myers and Quenk and Berens and Nardi are all INs — because INs have a substantially greater tendency to be interested in personality types than other types.

Jung felt strongly alienated from the cultural mainstream, and it sounds to me like most of the predecessor typologists whose theories Jung reviewed in Psychological Types were fellow INs who I suspect were also, like Jung, partly moved to formulate their "different types" theories by the fact that — like a sizeable percentage of the INs in (I assume) most eras — they felt significantly alienated from the majority of their fellow men.

And if INs are the types most likely to feel alienated from "normal society," you'd expect that a not insubstantial number of INs who visit MBTI forums would be pleased to find themselves among a higher percentage of kindred spirits than they tend to find out in the so-called real world.

That has nothing to do with whether MBTI forums are "a joke," of course. On that issue, I'd just say that some posters are more joketastic than others.

Then for the IN types the MBTI is a way of finding people who "support" them, i.e, fellow enablers of whatever caused them to be outcasts.

 

[Pionart]

Many people mention that the MBTI was a way for them to explain to themselves and/or others why they seem to be so different from other people. So, they may take an MBTI test and see that their personality is rare and so say "aha - that's why it is!". Or, they may be the sort to naturally try and place human personality and relationships into a kind of framework, and see that typology models are an effective platform for doing so.

 

[reckful]

Then for the IN types the MBTI is a way of finding people who "support" them, i.e, fellow enablers of whatever caused them to be outcasts.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

 

[Mal12345]

So is it like, weird people discussing a weird thing which describes weird people, like the sort who discuss weird things?

Jung did make some quite funny jokes. Or, I made funny jokes out of what Jung said. I think he most likely had a good sense of humour, though.

In The Red Book there's a funny (I assume hypothetical) conversation between himself and a psychiatrist who is calling him a schizophrenic.

(I would post the conversation if the book was in the house I'm in at the moment)

I'm downloading it again at the moment.

 

[Mal12345]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

I'm a supporter of growth versus remaining static, or maintaining semi-stability. All the great psychiatrists and psychologists wanted growth. The present-day sentiment in the mental health community is to maintain. But that's because they've given up and gone along with the pharmaceuticals who want to provide maintenance drugs.

 

[Mal12345]

"As a psychiatrist I became worried, wondering if I was
not on the way to "doing a schizophrenia," as we said in
the language of those days ... I was just preparing a lecture
on schizophrenia to be delivered at a congress in Aberdeen,
and I kept saying to myself: "I'll be speaking of myself! Very
likely I'll go mad after reading out this paper." The congress
was to take place in July 1914-exactly the same period
when I saw myself in my three dreams voyaging on the
Southern seas. On July 31st, immediately after my lecture,
I learned from the newspapers that war had broken out.
Finally I understood. And when I disembarked in Holland
on the next day; nobody was happier than I. Now I was
sure that no schizophrenia was threatening me. I understood
that my dreams and my visions came to me from the
subsoil of the collective unconscious. What remained for
me to do now was to deepen and validate this discovery.
And this is what I have been trying to do for forty years."

Red Book, pp 201-2

 

[Mal12345]

Many people mention that the MBTI was a way for them to explain to themselves and/or others why they seem to be so different from other people. So, they may take an MBTI test and see that their personality is rare and so say "aha - that's why it is!". Or, they may be the sort to naturally try and place human personality and relationships into a kind of framework, and see that typology models are an effective platform for doing so.

Typology in general is useful, but only if you use it instead of just seeing it as a framework or merely for understanding why something is.

When I see someone assume that other people think the same way he does, or believes that other people should think the same way, I want to tell that person about typology.

But I know it's no use, because that person considers typology to be outside the box - you know, the little box that people call their beliefs - the collection of more-or-less consistent ideas they never bother to question.

 

[Mole]

????

The commenter only has a smattering of an idea regarding what typology is used for. You can see this in his comment. It sounds like he only met one person who was into the MBTI and that person happened to be a "social outcast" whatever that means.

We all fall under the Bell Curve. This means that most of us are normal, and a few on the right of the Curve are abnormal, and a few on the left of the Curve are subnormal.

And the few who are abnormal and subnormal are quite different except they have one thing in common: they are socially excluded.

And the socially excluded suffer a particular emotional pain and it is called loneliness.

And their emotional pain cause them to seek the causes of their emotional pain, and mbti purports to give a reasonable account of why they feel such emotional pain.

This provides some relief to our suffering but doesn't solve the problem.

 

[Luke O]

I am a social outcast but that's just a coincidence.

 

[anticlimatic]

Found in a Facebook MBTI forum:

"Well its a joke, but mainly the people interested in it are the outcasts, the people who prefer things that don't add up to normal society."

Could this be true? Is an MBTI forum a joke and are the people interested in social outcasts?

The MBTI dichotomies are kind of a joke I think, but the Jungian functions are interesting and worth discussing. Entire forums dedicated to MBTI identity tend to draw in the type of people who enjoy cliques but prefer the company of their computers to actual human beings, which is arguably one of the worst first world demographics there is, largely consisting of millennial SJW types. I've yet to be significantly impressed by any of them, present company included.

 

[evilrubberduckie]

So what if it is? Everything is a joke. Does it matter anyways? Everyone is going to die alongside with thier opinions. Just do what you enjoy doing.
Unless your opinion is something worthwhile. Then it matters.

 

[Mal12345]

The MBTI dichotomies are kind of a joke I think, but the Jungian functions are interesting and worth discussing. Entire forums dedicated to MBTI identity tend to draw in the type of people who enjoy cliques but prefer the company of their computers to actual human beings, which is arguably one of the worst first world demographics there is, largely consisting of millennial SJW types. I've yet to be significantly impressed by any of them, present company included.

They are more comfortable with their computers, but then they are attracted to online cliques of people who all think the same way about a particular topic. This forum is an example of people who think MBTI is great but it has to be JCF. Anything other than JCF is "stereotyping."

I've pointed out the problem with JCF, but it doesn't matter to them because the truth is based on group-think and not on any kind of analysis of the system.

 

[misfortuneteller]

well, there are a few oddities that a bit too obsessed with it, that they can see Hitler in themselves just because he was supposedly their MBTI type...