This thread is awesome. And I'm not being sarcastic.
Like another poster mentioned, I found this thread/site by typing intjforum in google and letting autocomplete do the rest. I was curious what was being said about intjf on the net. I'm so glad I found this thread. I've gone through the entire thread and agreed with a lot of what I read. I thought I'd address some points that I think relate to the nature of intjf.
Why is intjf so boring? Because there are a lot of intjs there, and we're kinda boring people. Not to everyone, and not all the time, but to a lot of people, we are boring. We all have different ideas of what fun is, and a lot of people have a lot of fun in intjf. (I'm not one of them... will get to that later).
So why does intjf exist? I'll speculate that someone decided that it would be cool to have a place where intjs could meet others like them. (and they probably figured that an intj forum has to be run strictly to make it really intj. more polarization.) You see, intjs grow up around everyone else without knowing that they're an intj. We just learn through (often painful) experience that we're
different - different from family, friends, teachers, pretty much everyone. The day that we discover what mbti and the intj personality is huge for us because it shows us that we aren't alone. Up until that point, many of us were alone, trying to find our place, trying to figure out who we are and why everyone else seems to different from us, yet similar among themselves (even if that's not true, we perceive it to be true because everyone else seems to be having this awesome time and we're not).
So we find a place like intjf and we think, wow, a whole bunch of people who are like me, who get me. I liken it to being dropped in a foreign country, not knowing anyone, the language, customs, and all of a sudden stumbling across a bar where everyone speaks your language and comes from the same place as you. It feels like a part of you has finally found a community that you never had before (not at school, not socially, not even at home). And this community is important, because, at this point in our lives and at this point in the history of technology, most people who discover intjf are teenagers. And as we all know, adolescence is tough.
Too many people and too many of them too young.
I agree. Many, many young people, and the older have to tolerate the young, knowing that they're just starting and trying to figure out who they are. And the young have to tolerate being told that a topic or issue has already been discussed X months ago and shouldn't be brought up again. I think an age range of 18-60 is difficult in the best of circumstances; among intjs, it's a recipe for difficulty. (There was once a facebook group for intjs over 30 because the more elderly didn't want to re-hash every topic that's ever been done. Do we really need an argument over the logic of being an atheist? Well I might now, but to the person who's asking the question, maybe they do)
Anyways, once in the intjf, the intj can be themselves, and who knows what the hell they'll be. They can be anything. They're free to be the person they want to be, something they can't always fulfill in the real world. Plus they like to argue, and be silly, and argue. We do that to figure out what we think. We have ideas and we want to figure out if we're right. The challenge for the intj is to remain open despite the polarization that happens in groups (all groups) when you get like-minded people together. And these are often young people, so they're even more impressionable and stubborn.
So for a lot of intjs, like me, we just don't find that intjf is a good fit. Now I have trouble making friends. period. so an intj forum should be a better place for me to make friends or at least to make like-minded acquaintances. So i post things and usually end up just killing threads. Or start threads that are on page 4 by the time I look at it the next day after work (ie. dead). So I lurk, or to be more specific, I read other threads on topics that I find interesting and contribute the odd comment that gets no reaction. and repeat. Fun? not terribly, since it's predominantly one-way. Boring? maybe. still interesting to me sometimes. One poster made a great point about the real intjs hanging out in the private forums. That's what I tend to do. (Am I a real intj? I think so. That and the tests have always said I am.)
So it's great that there are people who enjoy intjf. I would be pleased if I were one of them. For now, I'm not, and so I lurk. And google and find a thread like this, a thread which, imho, is absolutely 100% worthy of intjf. We should be asking ourselves this question... if only it wouldn't get us banned there.
(apologies for the length... that is, if anyone reads this)