You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Niu Henglin, joined by Steve and Yusheng, coming up soon.
There's something fascinating happening in how people understand themselves today.
We used to look for answers in experts, psychologists. doctors, systems with authority.
Now increasingly, we're turning to something fast funny, highly shareable labels that sit somewhere between truth and pure entertainment.
Let's talk about the most viral personality test in China today, the SBTI test.
Forget deep psychological profiles or ancient traditional medical wisdom.
The biggest viral trend on Chinese social media right now is a personality quiz that asks you about your type.
Your creator opened admits.
While the creator openly admits that it's not based on science at all.
It's been called the unhinged twin of the MBTI, while people used to define themselves by being an introvert or extrovert.
They're now half-jokingly identified as an ATM-er or an oh-no.
I don't even know what this means before doing the show, to be honest.
But it's based on a quiz created by a random social media user.
And this social media user has a great motive.
We'll be talking about it a little bit later.
But...
This is very interesting because we want to know how a joke like this meant to make a friend stop drinking, which is the story we're going to share.
How did it turn into a national obsession and why Gen Z loves these jokes on scientific labels and what this says about netizens.
Self-identification mean in 2026, if anything at all.
Yes Yeah, first of all, ATM-er here speaking.
I've got the test done and I've got the result of being an ATM-er.
Oh, you're an ATM-er?
No way, me too.
I always thought I would be a control because I am a control freak in so many aspects.
We'll talk about some of the results that are possible a little bit later.
But yeah, those are a couple of them, right?
Do you have a result, Steve?
Monk.
Oh, tranquil and peaceful mind?
At peace, my brother.
May peace be with you.
We'll talk about these results a bit later.
But we mentioned at the very beginning, it's about trying to persuade her friend to quit drinking.
Exactly.
That's the origin of this.
Creator called Q Routoir originally made this quiz for this very specific and funny reason to make one of his friends to quit drinking.
And she first posted in online as a casual quiz on Chinese social media.
And then she was saying that never intended for it to become a medical tool or psychological profile.
But just maybe, probably just one night.
You know, I was scrolling through my WeChat moment, my social media.
It was flooded with all of these results of my friends posting their own personality.
Which makes you want to do the test as well.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And it does kind of come across as a legit test because it has 31, 30 or 31 different questions um, which are deliberately ridiculous um, and they get.
So what you do is you go through and you answer the there's a question, and then you have multiple choice answers and then it gives you your results almost immediately.
You don't need to register.
There's nothing to sign up for.
There's no connection at all to the nine constitution types of traditional Chinese medicine.
There's no real connection to MBTI, although that seems to be kind of the Kind of the style or the inspiration.
Because the creator said that her intention was to do something that looks like MBTI.
And she wanted to trick her friends into taking the test.
Yeah.
And one that's been done because you know.
You know how you mess up a little bit, joke around with your friends and you create something.
And especially nowadays with the help of artificial intelligence, it's easier to do so.
So she created this little test.
And she wanted to mimic MBTI on purpose, because she wanted to try to con her friends into believing that this is the legitimate test so that they can take it.
And she didn't realize how popular it would be.
And only, I think, by April 10th.
Well, this test has surpassed.
Well actually, the video that she made introducing the test has surpassed 35 million views.
And with more than 15,000 concurrent viewers at peak time.
So they're watching it together, talking about it on the kind of bullet comments.
And it's definitely popular.
It's mildly controversial, I suppose.
The questions...
Some people say can be a little bit inappropriate.
There was one particular question about a young girl on the sidewalk approaching and asking a question or offering a lollipop or something.
And some people said, oh, that's not an appropriate type of question.
But from the designer's perspective, this was never intended to be something we're discussing on Roundtable here.
It was meant to be fun.
It was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
And as to why people fell in love with this test, so to speak.
Um, everything's polished these days.
Um, mbti was very serious right, kind of yeah scientific, used in job interviews um, in some companies.
But this, this will, this test will never be.
No, if this test is in a job interview, you might want to look for a different job sure yeah anyway, let's go over um Some of the results.
Some of the results.
So your result was, both of your results were ATM-er.
No, because ATM and control are quite close.
Yeah, the ATM is about you constantly giving, giving your time, your energy, even your money, to your friends, to people around you to, in my case, perhaps my job as well.
And it's less about...
How you, well, it's less about financial situation.
I think it's more about lifestyle.
So Yusheng, do you identify yourself as an ATMR?
I think so because after the personality traits that you got, the results you got, there is also another 15 dimensional evaluation after the results.
Right,
And then it rates something like your self-esteem, your confidence, your level of ambition and also your emotional dependence and boundaries.
I know you're trying to describe the test, but all of that sounds ridiculous because I do not think the test is meant to be that scientific.
I actually did.
Because some of their questions, they are quite...
I mean, some of the results of this 15-dimensional evaluation are quite accurate, because many of the questions do relate to things like your attitude when you're making decisions.
Even they're really ridiculous.
One question I remember is that If you have been sitting on the toilet for 30 minutes, what's your decision to do?
Maybe sit another 30 minutes or just go use another way.
That actually also, I think, implying to some extent the way that you make decisions.
Well, that said, there's another question that says something like This question has no meaning at all.
Choose whatever answer you want.
So, you know, take it with a grain of salt.
I got monk.
And this is what it says.
While others contemplate the entanglements of love and hate, the monk personality chooses to meditate on a profound truth at home.
I don't spend a lot of time meditating on profound truths.
But I think it's because you're serious about a number of things in your life, but then you are totally fine with the trivia details in your life.
You do not really care about the kind of brand of your clothes.
You're good at making peace with other little things in your life.
Because they do not matter.
I think it's a good quality.
I think monk is just, you know what's important to you and you ignore the other things.
But be careful, because it says if you step inside my world, you will feel a suffocating sensation from the depths of my soul.
Makes me sound like a demon.
That was mine.
There's another one.
So you said you thought you were going to be the control freak, the CTRL.
What's that about?
Well, that is they.
This result frame you as someone who likes stay in control, which I resonate to stay in control of routines, habits and probably everything else.
And it's the kind of personality, personality that disguised as a type, that exactly what people share it like an MBTI result.
You share that with your friends and you see whether or not they think you're a control freak as well.
And the thing about this test is that, yes, we talked about the procedure of doing it.
That is, you take a series of questions. and choose your answers.
But one thing about it is that you know how you choose or how you take the test, but you do not know how you're scored.
And the reason I said it's partly scientific, partly not, mainly not is because They do have this background or, let's say, the creator has the background info or the AI tool that she used has the background knowledge about how to design such tests, in the sense that there are so many different dimensions, different types of personality traits they consider.
Yeah, but in that okay.
But let's not use the word scientific too much here, because one of the personality types, one of the results is, oh no, the one you mentioned in the beginning.
Oh no, this is the type that is completely unhelpful.
To tell you how your personality is.
It doesn't explain anything at all.
Just that something is off with you.
That's what I'm talking about.
There's nothing scientific there at all.
No, no, no.
So the scientific part is that they are doing it in the kind of model that is scientifically approved.
But when they design the kind of score that you would get when you choose a certain answer, they are doing it on purposely polarized
For example, on measures such as interpersonal boundaries.
They would give half of users high scores or half of the answers really high scores.
But if you add those high scores with other scores coming from other questions, it carries a higher ratio, a higher rights, because the creator believes that there is a tendency toward social withdrawal.
People want to keep a distance with the world in their own way.
They want to keep the boundary in their own way.
And also when it comes to introvert versus extrovert.
It also tends to show that most people are introverted because on the Internet you see many people saying oh, even if, when I look like, even if I look like an extrovert, I have a very introvert side.
So people tend to identify them as introverted people, which is why I feel like this test is almost leaning towards these results, just so that people would feel like ooh, the test understands me and want to share it.
It's kind of nudging you in that direction.
Yes, yes.
I don't know.
Yuxin, what do you think?
Why did this resonate with so many people here in China?
Another thing is that, of course, the influence of social media right and people are posting these things and people.
I feel that now we're saying don't label anybody, but people just very like to label themselves when we have these kind of maybe trendy image to represent yourself, and it is a way, of course we say it to express yourself, of course, And especially when these kind of titles with a lot of these kind of humorous, self-mocking way.
And also some of the titles can be really spicy.
And we rarely describe ourselves as that kind of personality.
I think there is another one called Sexy.
And then I don't think on social media a lot of people will call themselves sexy, but they got a you know personality called okay, I'm really sexy now.
They, then it is a really good way for them to maybe share their minds with their friends or just making jokes on themselves or on their friends.
I read a comment on the internet talking about the fact that they believe nowadays people would like to show that they are a little bit abnormal.
In the sense that I do not want to be a normal, ordinary person.
I do not, excuse me, I do not want to be saying all the time.
I want to show that there's something off with me and I'm proud of it.
I'm okay with it.
It's part of my character.
Do you remember when we did the story about the hospital gift shop's Yes, that one.
And the plushie toy.
Yeah, the psychiatric ward T-shirts or plushie toys or something like that.
And those were in high demand or they were selling really well.
I think that's kind of what you're talking about.
Yeah.
So on one hand, we are fine with people with real problems and we do not see them with a pair of shoes glasses, that is colored anymore.
But on the other side, we also can start to mock self mock a little bit on that side.
And we're even proud of the little itchy element in our personality.
Is that what is happening here?
I feel like it's definitely what's happening here in China.
Is it also what's happening around the world, social media?
I think it happened a long time ago in the West, where the idea of cool used to be like The handsome high school athlete, the high school quarterback, lots of friends and things like that, whereas a long time ago the super smart kid in the class would have been called a nerd or a dork or something like that.
But I think something changed and I don't know when it changed or why it changed exactly, but now it feels like dork is the new cool, which is kind of the way it should be.
If you're a super smart person, why would you be judged socially for that?
Yeah.
So I think that trend kind of came a little while ago where being a little different or being a little quote-unquote weird started to be a trendy thing.
Yeah, having that kind of uniqueness makes you special and makes you outstanding, that kind of thing.
We've seen and even talked about a lot of different types of tests here on Roundtable.
We've talked about the kind of tests that you take psychological one before entering a job market or being hired by a company.
We've talked about MBTI.
We even talked about the kind of traditional Chinese medicine body constitution kind of test.
And there are also other types of tests, trying to find out which character you are in a movie or in a novel series.
Do you think these kind of tests will, well, what is your current favorite?
Which one?
I think all of them, because they they give you a labor, they give you a topic to talk about, they give you something to share with their friends and this is a good way for them to you, of course, Even though this one is not for commercialized, but that is a very good scheme for commercialization.
My personal favorite is a test that I took about which fruit I was in my previous life.
What were you?
I was a watermelon.
I have no idea why.
And that. brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's topics.
I'm Niu Henglin with Stephen A. Shun.
Thank you for listening.
Leave your thoughts in the comment area.
Bye.
