Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, known online as PewDiePie, is an internet personality and comedian known for his popular YouTube channel. What personality type is this internet influencer?
PewDiePie took a personality test in 2017, which labeled the YouTuber as an ISTJ personality type. An ISTJ personality type is someone with the introversion, sensing, thinking, and judgment personality traits.
PewDiePie is known for his often-controversial videos on YouTube and his massive following on the platform. Perhaps knowing his personality type can give us a deeper understanding of one of the world’s most influential figures.
ISTJ Personality Type
Very Well Mind reports that ISTJ personalities are reserved, practical, and quiet people. They value order and tradition in their lives and tend to gravitate to jobs with these values, such as accounting and law enforcement.
They are planners who like to follow a logical approach to projects, often placing reason over emotion. ISTJ personality types can focus on the task at hand and are often described as incredibly trustworthy and dependable people.
Other notable ISTJ personality types include Johnny Carson and Henry Ford.
Due to these personality traits, ISTJ personality types often prefer to spend their time alone or with a small group of trusted friends. They tend to be quite reserved, and although they do care about the people they love, they may struggle to demonstrate these feelings.
PewDiePie filled out a personality type quiz for his following on YouTube in 2017. Although he filled out the test, it is questionable if tests like these actually represent a person’s character.
Vox reports that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test is unreliable for many reasons. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, said of the MBTI test, “The characteristics measured by the test have almost no predictive power on how happy you’ll be in a situation, how you’ll perform at your job, or how happy you’ll be in your marriage.”
In fact, approximately half of people, when asked to take the test twice, will receive different results each time.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test is based on famed psychologist Carl Jung’s theories. The only problem — Carl Jung himself admitted that his theories were wholly unproven and simply theories that needed to be tested.
The test might as well be as accurate as one’s astrological sign!
However, that doesn’t mean that it is impossible to know someone’s personality. The best practice is to simply do it the old-fashioned way, by getting to know the person and how they behave in the world.
Who is PewDiePie?
So, what does that mean for PewDiePie?
Felix Kjellberg, who goes by the internet moniker PewDiePie, was named one of TIME Magazine’s most influential people in 2016.
In the profile, co-creator of “South Park,” Trey Parker describes PewDiePie as “charming and funny, and he knows how to edit himself. And he has turned passive gaming into active, enjoyable entertainment.”
PewDiePie boasts one of the largest audiences on YouTube, making him more popular on the website than even late-night talk show hosts and various celebrity figures. However, this broad base may come at a cost.
In a profile for The New York Times Magazine, PewDiePie discussed his rise to fame. His videos involve a lot of shock-based humor, involving rape jokes and jokes about the Holocaust.
The profile quotes PewDiePie as saying, “I think of the content that I create as entertainment, and not a place for any serious political commentary,” and that his jokes are meant in jest, “in no way supporting any kind of hateful attitudes.”
However, his behavior was shocking, as it included incidents such as paying two men to hold up signs which read, “Death to All Jews,” shouting racial slurs during a live stream, and a prominent neo-Nazi website changing its tagline to “the world’s #1 PewDiePie fansite.”
In one horrible tragedy, a white nationalist in Christchurch, New Zealand, went on Facebook live and said, “Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie,” before shooting dozens of people.
Although PewDiePie was not involved in the planning or execution of this brutal attack, he has still become a meme in alt-right circles for his remarks. Although PewDiePie insists that his jokes are meant only for shock value and not as actual endorsements of racism or antisemitism, a large portion of his fanbase sees things differently.
It’s clear to most (hopefully) that these hateful subjects are not to be taken lightly, as they can encourage others to take the “joke” seriously and normalize these behaviors.