I'm wondering why you, in particular, come to the16types.info?

Is your reason for coming now different than it was when you first started coming?

Mine is.


I first started coming here years ago, hoping to learn more about Socionics... I was a junior at Northwestern at the time and had become interested in MBTI. I saw potential in Socionics (i.e. inter-type relations) and was happy to find a place where people were discussing it in English.

At that time there was a lot of misinformation about Socionics, esp. given that the theory was almost entirely new to English speakers... Through translating articles and trial-and-error, a few of us ended up teaching ourselves.

Unfortunately, almost everyone who taught him/herself correctly left.

Many otherwise (relatively) intelligent people have come here hoping to learn Socionics--unfortunately, b/c of the lack of knowledgeable teachers, many got swept up in an increasingly strong tide of misinformation, (e.g. anyone who believes that Christian Bale and Gilly are the same type.)

Now those people post constantly--as they have for awhile--and champion that misinformation. (Some of them appear to have built their identities around their online personas here, which include their versions of Socionix.)

By and large, what's being talked about now at this forum is not Socionics... People use the same lingo (e.g. Te and Alpha quadra, etc,) but they've developed ideas of those things that are not actual Socionics.

For an example of this, see: the current thread in Famous People in which it's asserted as fact that Gordon Ramsey's personality does not manifest the IM element Se. (Anyone possessing only cursory knowledge of the subject and the IM elements should be able to understand that Se plays a huge part in that guy's personality.)

I keep coming to this website hoping to find someone who knows enough about Socionics to have an intelligent conversation w/ me about it...

I don't like the idea that this theory--which I think could help people in general--could languish for additional years b/c some people, for whatever reason, continue to push something that they made up themselves under the banner "Socionics." It looks like it's headed that way though--until some really incisive people are able to cut through the threads and threads of bullshit.

This is not to say I have any problem with the people who come here primarily to socialize, or to do "political" things (whatever that means--I've read "political" used as an insult by people who probably don't even know what they're criticizing, or why they're using that particular word.) I'd just rather that a message board ostensibly about Socionics actually have conversation about actual Socionics. Please?