My husband likes to observe every now and then that astrology is rubbish. I always answer, “That is such a Scorpio thing to say.” Scorpios are stubborn—get it?

There’s no rational response to my quip that overrides its illogical certainty. You see, while I’ve always been skeptical of horoscopes, I’ve flirted with the common belief that the season of our birth influences our personality. This superstition was given a boost by incidents such as the time a friend and I met to do volunteer work, each arriving 15 minutes late. “Of course we’re late,” she said. “We’re Aquarians!” (Aquarians are also charitable, it should be noted.) What a relief it was to chalk my perennial lateness up to a fluke of the solar system, not my character. And what did I lose by labeling myself with a sign that fit me well? Independent-minded (nay, visionary, according to one poorly-written website); progressive; occasionally aloof; a little sarcastic—well, if the shoe fits…

Yet my belief was dealt a blow when another credulous friend explained that calculating my “rising sign” would open up an entirely new level of insight. I researched, only to discover that, as a rising Virgo, I’m actually supposed to have a detail-oriented, non-spontaneous and persnickety tendency. Looking at my cluttered desk and considering my unalterable tendency to gush out spur of the moment, typo-laden gchats, I had to acknowledge that my Scorpio husband was right, and astrology was hogwash.

Thankfully, a thousand online quizzes existed to give me another category to associate myself with: I am an ENFP, as determined by the decades-old Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test. ENFP, “the champion,” is the Aquarius of Myers-Briggs, also classed (by another poorly-written website) as exuberant, idealistic, and “fiercely individualistic.” ENFPs hate routine and detail, even more accurate to my personality. Finally, ENFP and my husband’s type, INFJ, are supposedly a match made in pop-psychological heaven, whereas Aquarius and Scorpio are said to be poison together. A better fit, and it sounds vaguely scientific, to boot? I'll take it.

Myers-Briggs, pioneered by the daughter-mother team of Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Briggs in the 1960s, is an accessible popularization of Jungian “type theory.” Once you determine your MB type, one of 16 four-letter possibilities, via a series of either exhaustive or quick questionnaires online, you can then spend hours on blogs and charts figuring out what it all means. The test is frequently deployed in classrooms and corporations, allegedly to help people figure out career paths based on strengths and weaknesses.

WIRED Opinion About Sarah Seltzer is a writer in New York City, and the Editor-at-Large at pop culture website Flavorwire.com. She tweets at @sarahmseltzer.

In our recent era of Buzzfeed-style quizzes as means to virtual self-definition, the MBTI quiz has morphed into a new form of astrology, a phenomenon on social media propelled along by a series of quizzes and graphics that use the MBTI test to ask such burning queries as which Harry Potter character you “are” (Tonks!), which Hunger Games character (Peeta!), or which Hobbit character (warrior she-elf Tauriel, thank goodness). The bounty of the internet offers answers to questions we didn’t know we had: How does your MB personality type define your shopping habits? What is the personal idea of hell for each personality type? Which type makes the most money? I even repeated my favorite joke when a fellow writer criticized Myers-Briggs. “Clearly written by an ISTJ,” I snarked.

The obvious criticism of this test is that it’s based on dichotomies. Are you perceiving or judging? Introverted or extroverted? You must choose. This reeks of pseudo-science. Of course, most of us don’t fall clearly on one side or the other. When the specific introvert vs. extrovert duality was a hot topic a few years ago, many writers persuasively argued against reducing socialization patterns to a simplistic either/or. Indeed, reams of psychological literature debunks MBTI as wildly inconsistent—many people will test differently within weeks—and over reliant on polarities. For instance, someone can certainly be both deeply thinking and feeling, and we all know folks who appear to be neither. “In social science, we use four standards: are the categories reliable, valid, independent, and comprehensive? For the MBTI, the evidence says not very, no, no, and not really,” organizational psychologist Adam Grant wrote in Psychology Today after reviewing all the science on MBTI. It’s pretty damning.

There will always be people who take our very human desire to put things in categories to extremes, and try to capitalize on it. The biggest problem with Myers-Briggs is what happens when any useful descriptor gets turned into dogma. Already, there are Tumblrs and career coaches alike who unwisely attempt to understand every single person and action through this reductive lens, or encourage job decisions and romantic partners solely based on MBTI. And since we know the test results change over time, it seems particularly pernicious to pigeonhole young people with a defined “type.” Imagine telling elementary-schoolers that they’re too scatterbrained to pursue math. Indeed for our entire lives, our uniqueness breaks down far further than four letters and sixteen variations, and fluctuates from day to day.

Yet simplicity can be helpful when there’s not a lot of understanding to begin with. The introvert discussion may have been reductive, but it made a lot of us more understanding people, I imagine. It certainly helped me; after listening to friends who are self-described introverts, I now accept without judgment behavior that used to seem rude to me (phone staring, clipped responses at parties). As one person put it about Myers-Briggs, “It’s cheaper than therapy.” Our fast-paced world offers few unstructured ways to self-analyze, and to help us step out of the race, intensified by social media, to manufacture a perfect existence. Inquiring about our own ways of thinking, interacting, and moving through the world serves as a shortcut to understanding our needs and accepting our shortcomings. As an ENFP, I can assure myself that I’m too busy being a keen observer, idealist and iconoclast to bother with decorating my house the way one of those other types might. It’s a relief: I don’t have to worry about measuring up, because I’m my own thing, or at least the same thing as only one-sixteenth of the population. Understanding my MB type helps justify why I forge connections to people I don’t technically have much in common with—messy, ebullient dreamers with big mouths, a MBTI bridge that holds when ages, backgrounds and tastes diverge. Essentially, wearing my ENFP badge is performing the same ritual as explaining my quick verbal delivery with “I’m a New York Jew” or justifying my Twitter obsession with “I’m an early millennial.” ENFP simply covers categories that those two can’t.

Any means for busy adults to take time to comprehend ourselves and see how our styles converge and diverge from others has a use—and more honestly, it’s fascinating. So while I remain skeptical of MBTI’s accuracy and I don't think the test should be given to children and then treated like a blueprint for their future life, I’m optimistic about its potential to make us feel less alone and less hamstrung by our imperfections. A smart aleck might observe drily that this idealistic conclusion was foreordained: “how typically ENFP of you.” Guilty as charged.