Definition of labeling game

  Let’s find out more about labeling games through the book Trend 2021 by Kim Nan-do, a professor of department of Consumer Affairs at Seoul National University. The labeling game is a new trend where labels are ascribed to certain people to describe their personalities. The labeling games include the MBTI test, the boomer level test, and the university department test.

Labeling game trend: MBTI

  What is MBTI?
  It is a personality type test based on the psychological typology of Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. It combines four opposing preference indicators: Extroversion-Introversion(E-I), Sensory-Intuition(S-N), Thought-Emotion(T-F), and Judgement-Aware(J-P) into 16 personality types. Since 2020, MBTI boom, which has been popular since early 2020, have been shared through SNS, created MBTI memes(mimicking or reprocessing content popular on the Internet) and made MBTI media contents. It has been trending as a play culture.

  Fashionable element of MBTI
  In the book Trend 2021, labeling games are represented as quantification-comparison-sharing processes. The quantification step is to quantify a person with data that is deduced through multiple tests. This quantification decides the type of one’s personality or characteristics. It is the comparison step that asks a variety of questions in an artistic personality test, such as “Who is an artist who looks like me?” and answers them, or finds an artist who looks like you and describes who you are. The comparison goes beyond description and even distinguishes me as a special person. Therefore, comparison makes you feel deeper about the self-identity and distinguishes you from others.After labeling oneself through quantification through testing or comparison, people shared and verified the results of labeling games on SNSs like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The reason of doing MBTI is not only curiosity about the results but also the fun in sharing them. The moment you post your results and check the comments on them is more exciting and fun than the moment you check the results. The process of posting the test results about me on SNSs is the most important factor included in MBTI. This sharing step is the process of sharing another aspect of oneself, showing confidence, and leads to conversations with people of different personalities.

  Background of becoming fashion of MBTI.
  The background of the popularity of MBTI is anxiety and lack of belonging in our society. Kim Nan-do, a professor at Seoul National University’s Consumer Trend Analysis Center, analyzed in his book Trend 2021, “Instability and uncertainty that are caused by COVID-19, recession, and the rapidly changing social trends that confused people’s identity. With the development of social distancing and noncontact technology, social deficits began to weaken relatively and it became difficult to find a direction for self-identity. Therefore, modern people facing the congested situation seek self-identity tests to answer the question ‘What kind of person am I?’ in digital space.”

  What MBTI means to generation people of MZ
  MBTI is too meaningful to experience just as a passing trend. Kim Seo-yoon, a subculture researcher wrote in the Chosun Ilbo “It is hard to find a tool that explains one’s identity and others as clearly as MBTI for the MZ generation. Until the fashion of MBTI, methods of understanding others often relied on external values such as occupation, appearance, and economic ability. However, MBTI is closer to ‘essential’ values which makes people understand others than other external values. This is also a way to regain the lost relationship between generation MZ(the Millennial generation born between the early 1980s and early 2000s and Generation Z born in the mid-1990s and early 2000s). MBTI is making internal values more important and strengthening human relationships. In other words, MBTI is a process of finding happiness for the MZ generation.” After all, modern people themselves have found solutions to solve the difficult task of “Knowing yourself” through fun games that seek identity in digital space. Therefore, MBTI has a positive aspect in itself in terms of restoration of relationships.

By Jo Min-sun l seon1175@cbnu.ac.kr