It’s a Mad, Mad, Pseudo-Scientifically Determined World

Please choose the statement you feel is most applicable to you:

A) I am easily frustrated and lack motivation

B) I am afraid of what awaits me in the future

C) I get nervous thinking about talking to people I don't know

D) I’m just here for the free food, man

We will now use your response to construct a rather vague and yet perfectly relatable determination of who you are and what your value is as a person. Immediately after, we will instruct you on what to do with this information to influence your every thought and decision moving forward, like what to wear, foods to eat, and who to love for the rest of your existence (which will be long and happy, by the way, so long as you stay away from gluten and bald men with no teeth). If you have any questions concerning how to proceed, please don’t contact us. We probably won’t reply. We’re not busy; we just don’t care about whatever existential crisis you’re currently experiencing that made you come to us in the first place.

Just pay $89.99 for the full analysis of your results and be on your way. Thank you.

Side note: if you found it difficult to choose a single statement from the list above, as you felt all of them have applied to you at least once in various instances throughout your life (D especially), then…valid. Because we designed this test to be as non-specifically specific as possible. Additionally, our conclusions about you are likely to become irrelevant over time given the fact that most people are constantly discovering new things about themselves and evolving as they age.

Lastly, if you would like to submit even more incredibly personal information, we’ll subscribe you to our daily horoscope page. We have something for everyone, whether you’re ENFJ, INTP, or LMNOP. Oh, wait…no. That’s the wrong pigeonhole. Sorry, Virgos. Please excuse our behavior, we’re all just a bunch of blood-type ABs over here. And remember, forgiveness is the key to your happiness this week because of the way the planets will be aligned on your birthday five years from now.

Phew. Okay, so that all may have been slightly exaggerated, but I’m trying to get a point across here. Honestly, people, am I the only one not using horoscopes to tell me that the sky is blue these days? Or relying on that one personality test I took in college to determine the kind of career I should pursue? Personally, I think we should draw the line at letting complete strangers tell us where to travel, who to hang out with, or what to wear.

And this is an opinion that has only doubled down in its solidity over many moons of personal experience.

Flashback to three years ago when my sweet mom told me a whole month in advance that she had a super exciting surprise for my Christmas gift, and I spend the next four weeks imagining anything from author signings of my favorite books to plane tickets for international travel.

The big day comes. We arrive at my sister’s house where I’m told we’ll participate in a personality determining type evaluation that will instruct us on how to dress properly.

Okay. Fine. Interesting. Kind of strange, but whatever. Good female bonding time. Not bitter at all that the “super exciting” surprise just happened to relate to the kind of personality profiling I’d advocated against in a recent fifteen-page college essay.

Then I find out my mom paid $150 dollars. Per person. That’s $300 for the both of us, and $150 each for my two sisters and my sister-in-law—the other attendees of said surprise Christmas gift event. If my math is correct, that is $750 total for a few hours of: here, take this test. What number did you get? Okay, have a look at these slides detailing every non-essential element of your new seasonal color analysis. Dress like this and you’ll feel good and look great. Okay, that’s it! Thanks for participating.

Now, I’m not saying it was all useless information, but…let me give you a lesson—completely free of charge—that has nothing to do with seasonal colors or personality codes or any of the things I learned from my $150 analysis results and everything to do with basic common sense: wear anything that makes you feel comfortable and confident. That confidence will show in your demeanor. It will attract people to you, which will then lead to relationship growth, occupational success, one million Insta followers, or whatever it is you’re out there putting on pants to achieve.

See? Free, easy, and open to any kind of interpretation your heart so desires (that’s right, I’m lookin’ at you Socks-With-Sandals).

And sitting in my sister’s living room listening to this stranger tell me that my personality according to her charts would be best suited by a lot of black, bold ensembles (basically my entire wardrobe at the time, kudos to the analysis team), I was reminded of seventh grade Careers class.

Flash WAY back to 2004 when Bush was still president, Facebook had just been invented, and the most used web browser out there was…Internet Explorer. Our teacher distributes the renowned Color Code personality test and informs us that our colors, and their associative results, will act as a guide in understanding our true selves and how we might interact with the world around us—i.e. relationships, emotions, common situational challenges, and, yes, potential careers.

Chaos ensues.

From that moment on (for the next two weeks) our colors defined us. We couldn’t do anything without wondering if our actions represented how Blue or Yellow we were, or how Red or White our significant others turned out to be. Absolutely nothing was safe from the psychological dissecting of my peers, myself included. Loyalties were tested. We began questioning even our oldest friendships, speculating whether or not the people we closely associated with were really Best Friend Forever material, or if we should explore other cliques (in a class of under forty students)—on the search for those who might be more compatible to our color codes.

Thinking back on it now, that’s probably where it all began—my aversion to any test or type or star trying to tell me I might fit inside this box or that category. Not to get all “you can’t tell me what to do”-like, but I would very much prefer deciding where I do or don’t fit for myself, thanks.

The thing is, we tend to take these kinds of things to heart and we shouldn’t.

Just because the online personality tests are getting increasingly more detailed and sophisticated doesn’t mean that the creators know a single thing about you. And your February birthday doesn’t mean you’re not just as likely to fuss over every little thing as someone born in August.

See, the thing about people is that we’re always changing in ways so individually nuanced and complex that we end up all over the personality map (if there must be one). From one experience to the next we have these moments of understanding, epiphanies—that life is full of unpredictable places, people, and circumstances for which no test or online psychoanalysis could ever have accounted. We adapt. We move on with our lives. We completely destroy whatever algorithm or baseline these types of things typically abide by.

The same goes for astrology. Zodiacs (you knew it was coming). What does it even mean when someone asks about your star sign? Or thinks to point it out by some small discrepancy? Take the inability to choose between this or that in a timely manner, for example. That’s some serious Libra energy right there. Like…no, sis, not even close. That’s some serious indecisiveness that is common in almost everyone and not just those born in the months of September and October right there.

Don’t get me wrong…I’ll be the first to click that link for the Buzzfeed quiz that tells me I’m most like the Disney Princess Belle based on their analysis of my favorite color and what I like to do on the weekends. According to Disney.com I have dreams of adventure in the great wide somewhere and a knack for befriending teacups (unbeatable accuracy, am I right?). But if Buzzfeed told me that my job would be a scribe if I had lived in Ancient Egypt, it’s not because I was destined to be a writer. It’s because I am a writer, and the answers I chose were merely reflections of the person I’d already decided to be.

And FYI, if I was to choose between a jaguar, a goat, or a dolphin for a pet I would choose the jaguar, no contest.

The point is: none of it works. It might come close. It might even sound a little bit familiar. But it’s all guesswork and relativity. We only believe it’s true because we want it to be. When my teacher armed his seventh graders with the idea that knowledge of our selves would make those big life decisions easier to resolve, he wasn’t wrong. He was wrong to tell us that tests and colors and predetermined characterizations were the way to discovering that information when an entire world and lifetime of experiences awaited us outside of the classroom, just begging to tell us who we were and who we could be—bubble sheet not included.

You want my two cents (in addition to the other dollar and a half I’ve already given)? Our individual traits are not so easily categorized into numbers or letter sequences. Our present and futures are not written in the sky. And self-actualization does not come from knowing what color code best suits our personalities. It comes from the possibility of change—knowing we have choices against the idea of who we were raised to be, who we were in the past, who others think we should be, who we’d hoped we’d be when we were younger, and how we were told to think in response to someone else’s idea of self.

There is no shortcut. There is no test. If you want to know something about yourself, don’t ask a stranger. Don’t ask the stars or the world wide web. Don’t even ask your mama. She’s wonderful, she raised you and she loves you, but she is not you.

So wear what you want to wear.

Be what you want to be.

Screw the codes.

Ditch the charts.

Make a life so completely undefined that the pseudoscientists and the internet psychoanalysts all stand utterly baffled by you.

You’ve got this.