Don’t put that there. Hold the cup like this. You are doing that wrong. You can’t do that. Don’t. No. Wrong.
Sound pleasant? Sound fun? No? Well, let me introduce you to this cup of laughs. ISTJs. I don’t know what they are good for, which is ironic because they are the most useful of all types. They tell you so serenely and assuredly where things go, where other things don’t go, what you have been doing that deserves demerits and red pen marks.
Grammarians, soldiers, good little boys and girls that are evil nonetheless. ISTJs are responsible for all the evil in the world. Who invented these little cocksuckers? They are so annoying and sterile and chiding, like robots of autocorrection. They are like fucking spellcheck running in the red all the time.
How do they see things?
Well, honestly, I have no idea. But, let’s use our imagination, the first error to an ISTJ. Better yet, let’s not use our imagination and we might have a better idea of ISTJ.
ISTJ = person minus imagination and humor.
So, I’m erasing my imagination and sense of humor. What do I see? I see things. I see objects. Momma, I’m scared.
No, be strong, you’re an ISTJ now. You know what to do.
Doing. Hmm. Yes, silly me I was imagining the possibilities of being this whole time. Silly me momma. No, I have to have my feet on the ground. Well OK, check, they are. I mean, they haven’t invented antigravity boots yet, so yes, I do.
O, that’s the thing, taking everything literally. Don’t imagine that I meant anything besides what I said. When a person says, “Doesn’t that cloud remind you of an elephant”, your fellow childhood ISTJ friend will chime in so resonantly and with a little romantic flourish, “No.”
They are upset that you even suggested that such a thing was possible. What’s wrong with you? Maybe you should see the local nursery school shrink.
No. Wrong. Faster. Tighter. To the left. Put it down. Pick it up. No. What are you, stupid?
Ah, what poetry. I personally can’t get enough of their resonant nays. I wish I could have an English book of poetry filled with the poems of “No”, “Wrong”, and “What, are you dumb or something?”
Music to my idiot ears.
ISTJs are admirable for knowing their place in the world, which is low, far away from the crazy heavens. They buckle down, knuckle down, and get stuff done. And that is useful. They carry out orders from their ESTJ overlords. Build me a bridge over the River Kwai. Do it this way. Do it by this time.
ISTJs understand this language. They are always making lists and carrying out the list items. Haven’t computers made these little buggers obsolete yet? They are like low-level assembly language. Like a computer, they don’t think about the instructions or even interpret them. They carry out exactly what you told them. If it wasn’t literal enough, they will grumpily ask you for more clarity.
Human calculators. They store facts like encyclopedias. Hasn’t Wikipedia superseded them yet? Sheesh.
ISTJ: No, we are still necessary. What computers and Wikipedia haven’t done is tell you how to live morally. If you don’t need us for our calculator abilities (which we don’t. Calculators were invented over a 100 years ago), our encyclopedic knowledge of random and unintegrated facts, then you still need us to improve you morally. Computers and Wikipedia can’t do that.
Me: O. OK. So, what does this moral improvement look like?
ISTJ: Well, basically everything that you consider fun, we are going to chide and attempt to take that away from you in the form of legal enactments, rules.
Me: O, so you basically want to make more lists of things that can’t be done?
ISTJ: Yes, er, um, no.
Me: No?
ISTJ: No.
Me: Well, pray tell what you intend to do?
ISTJ: I intend to do what my ESTJ overlord decides to arbitrarily enact on a wide-scale, but wholly objective basis, to curtail immoral and unproductive behavior on behalf of the citizenry of this geologically rich planet.
Me: What does geology have to do with it?
ISTJ: Nothing.
Meanwhile, I have developed a terrible headache and need to have a lie down. I must be English after all.
When I wake up there are ten buildings of uniform character that weren’t there before. They are called offices and they have little cubes in them for the vast majority of the workers to morally improve themselves at.
ISTJs believe in work, hard work, grinding busy work. Because it keeps you out of trouble. Work is a form of moral improvement. Idleness is the devil’s playground. And that is how most of the world works. Hey, ISTJs make the world go round. Or actually they make it go straight. They haven’t liked the world too much since it was discovered that it was round instead of flat.
What would you do without them? How would you travel across large expanses of water in your motor vehicle without the bridges they build. Exactly to spec. For that matter, how would you travel anywhere in your motor vehicle without the rigorously tightened nuts and bolts and the efficiently assembled motor without it falling to pieces so randomly and arbitrarily? Wouldn’t there be planes falling out of the sky left and right? Would not our own homes be caving in upon us right now if it weren’t for that ISTJ insistence on precision and accuracy?
Me: No, because we would still have ISTPs?
ISTJ: Yes, but ISTPs are cowboys. You can’t rely on them for uniform consistency and rigorous quality control. They don’t care if they die. You think they care if you die?
Me: O, alright, you can exist. I see your usefulness now. You are like the brick and mortar of society, the strong salty pillars that are taken for granted until they fail to hold together the large constructions that they were designed to. Fuck. I see, you’re like glue.
ISTJ: Yes, Yes.
Me: O alright, calm down. Don’t get hysterical on me.
ISTJ: No, no.
Me: Ah, music to my ears.
LOL!
I dated a tool once, who I quickly typed ISTJ. This person also had typed ISTJ on personal assessment. It was too obvious. What sucked more was the ISTJ was a Taurus. Imagine that. Being the intuitive not compatible with the bull, life was agonizing for a few months until I decided we weren’t made for each other in general. Have to give credit where due though, ISTJ was very industrious as described above, got tons done in a few months that would take me six or more.
The humor only shines through in a practical joke for them, you are lucky to coax a smile from time to time and those blips are infrequent enough to be remembered specially.
Pretty much, I cannot offer insight into the boxy ISTJ, let alone understand one much better after reading this. Great laugh, though.
Well, Nietzsche said laughter is the highest emotion, so, thanks ISTJS for helping us to experience the heights at your expense.
Had a good laugh, thank you!
That’s what its all about.
ok, I need to come to the rescue of ISTJs now 🙂 I know some ISTJs very well, and of course I had a good laugh while reading this. however, it’s not at all true they lack a sense of humor. they can have a magnificent, poignant, understatement type of humor. it helps them cope with human flaws, which is something they do really well: that’s why their stiff sense of morality comes across as genuine, non-bigoted.
Yeah, I was just kidding. Sort of. I know some ISTJs that are pretty funny. For one thing, their total obliviousness to extraverted feeling is pretty funny. But, in this case, they aren’t being funny on purpose.
No, come to think of it, I can’t think of one funny ISTJ. Unless you consider David Letterman funny. Or, gasp, Ed Sullivan.
“For one thing, their total obliviousness to extraverted feeling is pretty funny. But, in this case, they aren’t being funny on purpose.”
lolz, so true 🙂
Bob Dole type of fun 🙂 just imagine him being an English politician, and you’d get the type of humor I was thinking of 😉
Top ten reasons why David Letterman is an ISTJ….
Oh, I suppose that’s too obvious…
lmao. I have not laughed this much in some time. You have some serious talent. Goodness, my head is spinning just thinking about the terms “serious talent” from a machine language point of view. I’m an INFJ male. My dad is an ISTJ. Can you imagine the fun?
Yeah, INFJs and ISTJs get along like two peas in a space pod.
My father is an ISTJ
😄🔫
During college I was a history major who worked full time while packing on a full coarse load.
When I was pressed and couldn’t finish the 45678 assigned texts I’d call good ol’ dad.
“Hey, what happened in Burma in 1956?”
Put him on speaker, take notes, use the bits of info to funnel through my own process and voila A paper thanks to him.
Aside from that…….
We share Johny Cash.
Trying to be positive here. Too long with him will give me a stroke.
Baffles me that there is one of these inside te ENFP.
Well, not really actually.
Bye!!
My mama is istj 😋 You are so funny poet of nay lol thanks for that
Your momma is a first-class
pain in the ass
Oh my, I know these folks! I feel for them because they have few legitimate emotional resources or defenses. They were lost somehow in their piles of lists, shoulds, and to dos perhaps. No, is often the first response and you can’t even agree with them because they will automatically start defending and negating before they realize you agreed. That is how I have had fun with them anyway.
This was so much fun. I really did lol. Loved this!
@Rita
Yes! They develop such a strong sense of principle and responsibility that it is difficjlt for them to relax. They can be kind of fun when they choose to relax though. In a wacky sort of way.
Hahaha, I’m a ISTJ, and found this hilarious! Maybe a little biased, but funny anyway 🙂
> They are like fucking spellcheck running in the red all the time.
“Spellcheck” is red underlined. Stop spelling things wrong all the time! No! Bad Blake!
> Well OK, check, they are. I mean, they haven’t invented antigravity boots yet, so yes, I do.
There you go using that dangerous and untested imagination again! Tsk, tsk. Better be careful with that thing, you’re gonna get somebody hurt!
> Haven’t computers made these little buggers obsolete yet?
Coming ~2010~[strikeout] ~2015~[strikeout] 2030(we hope). Don’t you wish you had an ISTJ leading that project?
> They store facts like encyclopedias. Hasn’t Wikipedia superseded them yet?
We don’t need a wiki for our company procedures, everyone just consults the ISTJ—he is our lazy man’s wiki.
I’ve worked under two ISTJs in my career (still working under one now), and maturity makes such a huge difference. The first guy I worked for was contrary, unimaginative, and unwillingly to even consider new ways of doing things. The guy I work for now is much more experienced, he is not anywhere near as harsh, he is more open-minded and willing to yield on points if you can explain your position well enough, or present a proof of concept, etc, etc. To sum it up: he’s a good and respectful guy, and I both respect and admire his dedication to quality.
Loved the article, it was informative and humorous as usual! Keep up the good work! =)
I know two female istjs (one took the test ) that live in different countries that are like of the same subtype.
Both have very “tidy” bodies. There is no mess in their bodies. A really strange thing to say but …. Anyways both eat like so healthy.
What makes them seem to fall in the same subtype is that they are humorously detached. They actually have a delightful sense of mild humor that ties in well with this C’est la vie attitude. Both seem to have an ear for music and are somewhat artistic and are amazing with their kids. Both are remarkably patient as mothers which I don’t always associate to istj. They both are pretty good at letting unimportant Details stay that way unlike many istjs. It’s like they are intuitive istjs almost.
In both cases I have made up the explanation that they had amazing families to grow up with… And they just soaked in the way of their families.
I feel sadness for you. I hope that you learn to heal from this. Your level of anger and maybe even hatred for an entire class of people is disheartening. We must always seek to understand. Female ISTJ
There was no hatred nor anger, only humor (and a high quality sense of humor at that) .
In the future, it would be best for you not to see hatred everytime something negative is said.
The ironic thing is that you are proving him that ISTJ do not have a good sense of humor.
Or perhaps you are making a sarcastic, serious joke with your comment and I missed it?
If that is the case, you got me good. Maybe I AM an ISTJ correcting others. OH NO! Somebody help me! Can a personality change occur due to a trauma? Time for me to traumatize my own self!
I used to get really bugged with the lack of imagination of my istj mother, but time has taught me I resemble her more than I ever realized. So what? She has trouble thinking up too many unseen possibilities? She has lots of other good traits.
Time also taught me that istjs have something I don’t see much in the other types–you can count on them. Not to say all istjs can be counted on in all instances. But most can most of the time. That’s pretty awesome. A lot of other types can be counted on only once they become mature or aware or work on themselves or once they stop doing only what they feel like.
Istj is more inherently reliable.
I do quite love this about istjs:
When a person says, “Doesn’t that cloud remind you of an elephant”, your fellow childhood ISTJ friend will chime in so resonantly and with a little romantic flourish, “No.”
If they are relatively balanced. If they aren’t too far gone autistic, then the above quirk kind of just is endearing:D
If an istj never ever does Fe checks, then it can be rough. All the types that never do their checks are a bit rough.
Blake’s istj description is really cute. <3