Quote Originally Posted by Teslobo View Post
A combination of factors:

- MBTI's dominance means Socionics is easy to be dismissed as obsolete since a lot of the structure/language is the same across the two.

- Socionics outside of Russia lacks any kind of centrally recognized authority from which the "right" interpretation flows. Attempts to put material out to the public is often met with dissenting viewpoints dragging it back down.

- The community engages in more overt pseudoscience than MBTI does (that's not to say MBTI communities don't do this too, but these practices are generally kicked out of the public eye). The prevalence of VI is especially detrimental, as well as the esoteric tangents in Augusta's work.

- Socionics is a more daunting system to learn at first glance. MBTI is usually content presenting the letter signifiers and nothing deeper, while Socionics communities often insist on the learning of elements/functions.


Those factors aren't necessarily all equal, but I think they're all very valid roadblocks in the West.
I agree with everything with the exception of the notion of VI being esoteric and overt pseudoscience. Jung himself described on multiple occasions qualitative differences in terms of gaze and function usage and all typology systems are namely based off of his cognitive function theory and for some reason many people don't know that/assume it was just another thing made up in the way.

Now, one could always argue that focusing on one aspect of Jung's work doesn't mean everything else that's part of it should be taken into account (given his spiritual proclivities and et cetera), but this is directly tied to how he describes manifestations of different cognitive functions (namely difference between the eyes of sensors versus intuitives and et cetera). And because of that alone, there are plenty of MBTI typists i've stumbled upon that have been into visual identification (Jung's influence). Again, not at all surprising because if you'll actually adhere to Jung and use his theories as a basis for any other personality type system, entirely dismissing a part of his work extending to cognitive functions specifically is kind of odd.

That's not to say that you're not allowed to disagree with it, but one can easily surmise why people are keen on picking up on it. It's not some seemingly not interconnected or mutually exclusive with analyzing how one metabolizes information in a more "classical" way (going by mostly analyzing behavioral preferences and associating it with different IE usage) thing and it seems like the most vocal VI-related criticisms mostly stem from people that think it's literally based off of concrete physical appearance features/physiognomy which is incorrect and/or people who don't really understand and cannot assimilate it very well.

I myself was a skeptic at first but tried to pick up on it and it turns out - over 95% of the people i try to VI type in my Discord server (usually strangers i have not otherwise interacted with and whose self-typing i am not familiar with) end up telling me that what i attempted to type them based on gaze and et cetera alone is actually congruent with their own self-typing. That seems to happen often enough with actually good VI typists like me, @toska and Ashton to a point where categorically discrediting the mere notion of it is strange... and more of an off-kilter and "esoteric" thing to do than adhering to VI in of itself.

Also re: Aushra's "tangents" - are we really going to act like the majority of this (Western) community actually reads any source material or is genuinely familiar with Aushra's work? "Model Aushra" as we know it has very little do to with Model Aestrivex/Ibrahim that most people around seem to label and perceive as Model A. I don't think it's actually Aushra's writing getting in the way (even if you have valid criticisms of it), in reality it's perhaps more so what passes as Socionics and Model A these days.