Scientists discover astrology equivalents for men

Instead of CoStar, they have MBTI and the stocks app

By GEETIKA MAHAJAN — giamahajan@ucdavis.edu

Jake is a straight guy who hates astrology. He can be found at frat parties rolling his eyes when someone asks for his star sign or at the dining table saying, “You know that’s bulls***, right?” to his sister when she checks the horoscope section of the newspaper. He likes to use made-up words like “empirical evidence” and “pseudoscience” when the topic comes up. But the truth is, Jake thinks he’s a little too complex to be assigned character traits based on some arbitrary categorizations.

Yet, Jake tells all his dates that his love language is physical touch and that he has the same Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) as Homelander. Curious. 

From this behavior, scientists derive two conclusions: (1) Jake has never been on a second date, and (2) men have their own means of character categorization. Researchers have found that though men are likely to reject astrology, they have their own methods of symbolic identification that are “like, way more grounded in reality, actually, because it’s based on, um, logic and data and like, deeply personal vibes.”

“I first became interested in this phenomenon upon seeing thousands of men stating ‘u js like me fr’ in the comments section of a rapper with multiple Grammy nominations, two mansions and a fleet of luxury cars,” lead researcher B.S. Ingthis said.

To Ingthis, it was clear that there were some arbitrary ways in which men tended to identify themselves in relation to other people and interpret the world around them. Researchers described how one subject seemed to have some sort of spiritual revelation about himself after seeing a Christopher Nolan movie. 

“He just, like, gets me,” the subject said, upon watching a movie about a billionaire superhero. “It’s like he turned my psyche into a movie.” 

Test subjects in the same theater as him all reported feeling that he was “misunderstood and complicated, but like, a good guy, deep down.” Upon several iterations of this experiment, scientists discovered that subjects with mustaches experienced similar emotions upon watching a Wes Anderson film.

“That’s their equivalent of being an Aquarius,” another researcher said. 

Ingthis suggested that men may simply be rejecting astrology because they don’t like the idea of someone else telling them how to see the world

“Astrology is a pseudoscience that attempts to dictate events,” Ingthis said. “Men, it seems, want to do the dictating themselves, with like, stock apps and YouTube videos.”

Indeed, around 75% of the men in the study stated that they “dabbled” in financial forecasting. Among this subgroup, 98% had a “really good feeling” about Tesla this quarter. “I’m basically investing ahead of the curve” was said 54 times, and around half the participants attempted to draw a graph to demonstrate their earnings. 

Eventually, scientists concluded that breaking down identity and the surrounding world into legible symbols was something that surpassed gender discrepancies. Jake, upon hearing this, said: “That’s pseudoscience.”

He then asked the lead researcher what her MBTI was, and said, “Yeah, this is such an INTJ move.” Curious. 

Written by: Geetika Mahajan  — giamahajan@ucdavis.edu

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