The Burger Meme Personality Test
Since Cerfeuil writes that the effectiveness of this game ‘will hinge entirely on how much experience the player has with the “bullshit personality quizzes” this game is based on’, it is perhaps important to start by saying that I have never made a personality test for a job in my life. In fact, all I’ve ever done in terms of personality quizzes is make some Meyers-Briggs tests online; those are fun, and can be helpful, though not for job assessment. I’ve also read Jung’s Psychological Types, the inspiration for Meyers-Briggs, and a very good book. It shows you what psychology might have become if it had decided to be close to the humanities rather than close to the natural sciences. But Jung’s book is not a test, nor does it at any point suggest that filling out a questionnaire could replace the hard work of self-interpretation. I think Jung would have been horrified by that idea.
Anyway, I wonder if there’s something very USA about The Burger Meme Personality Test? Many years ago I was in Boston at the IF Meetup that had been organised as an official side event of PAX East. I then took a bus from Boston to New York to visit a friend. At the bus station, there were large posters in front of the bus meant to inspire the bus driver with a message about how important their job was and how proud everyone should feel of the company. I had never seen anything like that, nor have I since seen anything like it. But if you dial such posters up to 11, you get some of the things that happen in The Burger Meme Personality Test, where you have to explain that you are very proud of the company and that you would let 250 people die in a trolley problem just to save the CEO. It does not feel like Dutch company culture to me, but perhaps it works as a satire of USA company culture?
Even with what might be a bit of a cultural disconnect, I could still appreciate The Burger Meme Personality Test. On a ‘normal’ playthrough, it is just very wacky, but amusing enough. Things get better – and I have to thank @dfabulich for pointing this out – when you resist the AI as much as possible, and actually make a human connection. That the entire test is not administered by a stupid AI but by somebody who wants to make an AI as stupid as possible so they can keep their job, that’s pretty funny. Civil disobedience. Worker resistance. Let’s go.
Also, this potential romantic partner has the great bon mot of the game: ‘Talking to you is like making out with Existentialism.’ As MC Frontalot, whose show I missed at PAX East that year, sings: