The number of views increased by 42 times, and "MBTI" became popular on Xiaohongshu

MBTI quickly became popular on the Internet and even became a social postcard for many people. This article introduces in detail what MBTI is, the reasons for its success and popularity, and its development prospects. I hope it will be helpful to you.

"Are you an i person or an e person?"

Recently, this sentence has become the opening remark of many young people in social occasions. Similar to this, there are also slightly special classification methods such as "f people and t people" and "j people and p people".

In fact, these "jargons" all come from the "MBTI personality test" that has been popular for several rounds. MBTI stands for "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator", which is the most popular test tool nowadays. It is a questionnaire survey that determines one's own psychological preferences through self-questioning.

It is based on four dimensions: attention direction, cognitive style, judgment style, and lifestyle. According to the different choices made by the test takers, it divides all people's personality types into sixteen categories.

Thanks to its strong social discussion and the contemporary young people's love for horoscopes and personality tests, MBTI quickly became popular all over the Internet and even became a social postcard for many people. On social platforms such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin, there are people everywhere who have expressed their personality types and want to huddle together with "other me".

So far, the #mbti topic has been viewed 2.28 billion times on Douyin, and there are more than 400,000 related notes on Xiaohongshu. While this topic has "invaded" modern people's social lives at a very fast speed, many creators have also "taken advantage of the situation to create memes" and caught up with this traffic carnival.

Is MBTI, which attracts a lot of traffic on the entire Internet, a good business?

1. There is nothing that MBTI cannot classify

“2023 new question bank, is your MBTI test really accurate?”

Last year, MBTI was very popular. At that time, most netizens had just come into contact with this personality test. They were curious about which category they belonged to and joined the "test army" in a hurry, but did not make more discussions around the 16 personalities.

The reason why MBTI has been trending on the internet recently is that there are reports that MBTI has updated its question bank, and many people have taken the test again and obtained results that are very different from the past.

Image source: @陈老师聊心理小红书 screenshot

Such words undoubtedly rekindled the curiosity of the netizens, and many of them sat in front of the screen again and patiently answered more than 100 test questions.

The difference is that after the last baptism, netizens' awareness of MBTI has been greatly enhanced. After realizing that MBTI is a rare traffic outlet, many people have started to play with MBTI on various social platforms.

The most eye-catching one is the "do e for i" joke: it means that when multiple socially anxious people are together, as long as someone is willing to grit his teeth to break the awkwardness and play the role of a social bull to ease the atmosphere, he is the warrior who does e for i.

For a time, many people with social phobia shared their moments of bravery on the platform, and in the comment section, you could often see social newbies being moved to tears by the stories of bloggers "standing up".

Many bloggers have also used the differences in behavioral cognition between people in the two categories on the four dimensions to discover many contrasting laughs:

When i-person (introvert) and e-person (extrovert) respectively made big troubles at work: i-person felt so upset that he wanted to die, and opened the job search software to find another job at night. He regretted it so much in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep. He felt like he was going to torture when he went to work the next day; e-person had an optimistic mindset: with this little salary, no matter how well I do, the boss will make a lot of money.

When person i and person e are in a social situation where all the people are strangers: how can person i talk to each other if they don’t know each other; how can person e get to know each other if they don’t talk to each other.

Look at the difference between the mobile phone desktops of person p (perception) and person j (judgment): person p’s screen is full of red dots, while person j’s screen is strictly classified by color.

There is also the "Are you a T?" meme that has recently become popular in South Korea, where "everything can be MBTI". In fact, it is also a powerful mockery of the "indifference" of F people (emotions) towards T people (thinking).

These common situations in life have been vividly brought to the Internet through pictures, short videos, emoticons and other forms, and users who browse them have also developed emotions of empathy.

Many people spontaneously joined in this "meme feast" and created more MBTI stories, leading to more and more discussions about this personality test. Terms such as #x人与x人上xx上的区别have become frequent visitors on Weibo's hot search list recently.

In addition, many netizens, after understanding their own personality traits, have developed a sense of belonging to the same group of people , and sincerely want to get help from "people of the same kind". Among them, the distress of person i is the most obvious:

"When I work in a bank, it's really tiring. There are all kinds of interpersonal relationships and various appearances at events. It's really stressful."

"When an i-person mistakenly enters the e-crowd, a scandal occurs."

"The method proposed by person i to transform i into e..."

Image source: Xiaohongshu

Kass observed that there are many similar "i-person help posts" or "complaint posts" posted on Xiaohongshu. This situation is caused, on the one hand, by the fact that i-persons are introverts and find it difficult to express their thoughts to their family and friends in real life; on the other hand, it may be closely related to the platform characteristics of Xiaohongshu.

Kass has previously discussed that more and more people are using Xiaohongshu as their "second" Moments. This is due to two major features of the platform: First, unlike WeChat Moments, which focuses on private domains, Xiaohongshu has a huge public traffic field and distributes content based on interests. Since most of the social orientation is strangers, the pressure brought by socializing with acquaintances in Moments is also reduced, and people are more spontaneous in expression, so Xiaohongshu has become a tree hole for many people to vent their emotions.

The second is the friendly atmosphere of Xiaohongshu comments and users' pursuit of practical content . On Xiaohongshu, whether the poster wants to get comfort from others or really wants to find a solution to the problem, there will always be Xiaohongshu willing to respond sincerely. The lower content production threshold compared to other platforms also reduces everyone's creative pressure, and often gains unexpected recognition and satisfaction.

2. Why has MBTI become a social code?

Objectively speaking, the credibility of MBTI as a personality test is not the highest among similar products because the classification method used by MBTI is dichotomy.

To explain it simply with an example, judging from the results, in terms of attention tendency, both 99% of extroverts and 51% of extroverts would be classified as e-people, but from actual experience, this 51% e-person might be more similar to a 49% i-person in behavior.

Simply using a polarized answer to define everyone and labeling the test takers is the biggest reason why MBTI is not reliable. However, labeling is also the main reason why MBTI can be popular again and again.

For example, @乐葱, a blogger on Xiaohongshu, is an amateur blogger with only 2,000 followers, but the number of likes and collections of his recent notes is very impressive. The reason is that their themes are all centered around the topic of MBTI: What kind of opposite sex can make INFJ fall in love? ? Is this really ESTJ? What INTP really needs in love is an emotional value...

It can be seen that the themes of these contents are rather vague. Without MBTI as an introduction, they would easily be lost on the Internet. However, it is precisely because the blogger directly points out a certain type of people in the title that he can attract the attention of MBTI "addicts" and guide users to continue discussing in the comment section.

Image source: @乐葱小红书 screenshot

In the comment section of the MBTI video on Bilibili, a user wrote the following sentence: People like to label themselves in various ways in order to gain recognition from a certain group. The results of the MBTI just happen to be able to quickly label countless people and establish a general understanding of themselves, even if this understanding is not accurate enough.

In addition, many research institutions have mentioned that one of the characteristics of Generation Z is the circle culture. Many young people are eager to quickly find their own kind and enter a larger social circle through a certain topic, a common hobby, or something in common.

Therefore, for young people, the social significance behind the personality test is more important than the personality test itself. On various social platforms, it is normal to start a topic through MBTI:

"I'm an ENFP, looking for an INFJ to date~"

"I'm an INFP, where's the ENFJ? I heard we complement each other."

"I'm an ISTJ, my boyfriend is an ISFJ, and we're actually soul mates."

"I want to 'adopt' someone to play with."

Image source: screenshot from Xiaohongshu

Before this, the zodiac signs may have played a similar role to MBTI. Every once in a while, the zodiac fortune will be on the hot search, and there are also many active zodiac bloggers on content platforms such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin.

For example, @同道大叔, who became popular on Weibo in 2014 for his comic strips about zodiac signs, has 18.41 million followers to date, and his public account with the same name has over 100,000 readers every day. Moreover, relying on the strong zodiac signs’ strong comprehension and resonance, 同道大叔 quickly created a zodiac sign IP image and developed derivative cultural and creative products, making him a well-deserved leader in the zodiac track.

@陶白白Sensei, who has the "hot search" physique, is even more well-known to people. As a constellation celebrity in the short video field, he will re-enter people's field of vision every now and then. "Will you search for Tao Baibai for me?" has also become a soul-searching question that many people have to face.

MBTI and horoscopes, one is a personality test and the other is an astrological classification. Although they are different, they do have many similarities. The most obvious is that both have established a universal classification system that allows everyone to classify themselves, and thus have more connections with strangers and get social credentials to enter a new circle.

3. Can MBTI expand into a larger market?

A report released by Qiangua Data shows that in the second quarter of 2023, the number of views of the #MBTI topic on Xiaohongshu increased by 4239.67% month-on-month; the number of "MBTI" related notes also increased significantly compared with the previous cycle, among which the number of grass-planting notes increased by 272.53%, the total number of interactions increased by 253.57%, and the total number of shares increased by 272.77%.

Bloggers often use MBTI to combine it with emotional topics, hoping to use the "scientificity" of MBTI to explain some inexplicable emotional problems.

Image source: @Bonnies Sight Xiaohongshu screenshot

A simpler and more rude approach is to directly post an MBTI discussion that has nothing to do with the account content to achieve the purpose of attracting traffic. Even if the subsequent creations have no further connection with MBTI, at least this note can bring a brief glory to the account data.

Of course, in addition to creators, many brands have also successfully reaped the benefits brought by MBTI traffic.

For example, some time ago, Ele.me and Lelecha launched a marketing campaign called "This cup is on me" in the Shanghai Metro. Through advertising copy on large screens and subway pillars, they "taught" Shanghai workers 100 social tricks. One of the copy used the popular MBTI stalk - do e for i, which attracted the attention of many netizens.

When the domestic brand Guyu launched a new product in cooperation with Douyin e-commerce, it also demonstrated that the brand used MBTI personality as a communication entry point, innovated the "MBTI personality + skin care" communication method, and created an MBTI-themed deeply customized content marketing case.

Not only did it "take advantage" of the hot topic of MBTI personality to increase Guyu's brand awareness, it also successfully converted many MBTI interested users into brand interested users.

Today, #OnlyirenzhimuchunderstandsthegreatnessofmakingeforFengshen suddenly became a hot topic. In fact, it was also the crew of "Fengshen" using MBTI to create a meme and promote the movie.

It is worth noting that although the discussion about MBTI is still "hot", many people have already developed a rebellious mentality towards its widespread screen use.

"One IE meme every day?"

"Don't be too ridiculous. How can you use MBTI to describe everything?"

"Don't worry about your MBTI. E-ing people every day, e-ing people are not conspicuous bags, and e-ing people are not autistic!"

On the one hand, from a scientific perspective, people's perception of the "accuracy" of MBTI can actually be explained by the Barnum effect, which is that people are more likely to believe in an abstract, general personality description, even if its content is empty. In other words, MBTI is not tenable at all.

On the other hand, many people have gradually realized that a living person should not be framed by four letters, especially the stereotypes hidden behind them, which may cause harm to others.

More importantly, according to Kas’s observation, in this wave of MBTI popularity, apart from professional organizations that make money by “selling tests”, there are almost no examples of ordinary creators using it to monetize, and most people are simply “having fun.”

In an era of emerging hot spots, everyone is busy chasing the heat, but a carnival without real benefits is destined not to last long.

Author: Jiangbei

Source: WeChat public account "CaasData (ID: caasdata6)"