I’ve always found those online quizzes that match you with a Game of Thrones house or Hogwarts house amusing, if perhaps less insightful into someone’s soul than the quiz writers usually imply. But I was struck by a Reddit post by someone who used ChatGPT to analyze what their favorite fictional character said about them.
With the caveat that these kinds of things are at best a way of encouraging self-examination, I thought it would be fun to test out what the AI came up with about my personality based on my interest in or relation to a few of my favorite characters. I picked a character from a book and one from a TV show (Crowley from the novel Good Omens), and Stephen Toast from the show Toast of London.
For the prompt, I slightly modified the one shared on Reddit and told ChatGPT: “You are a character psychologist. I’m going to tell you about one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. Your job is to analyze what my emotional connection to this character says about me and give me a thoughtful reflection on how this character mirrors parts of my identity. Be introspective, insightful, and kind.”
Demon inside
I began with Crowley, who, if you haven’t read Good Omens, is described as a demon who didn’t fall so much as “saunter vaguely downwards.” When I asked ChatGPT about my personality based on that, it went into a brief description of the character before saying it suggested I’m someone drawn to characters who defy easy categorization but are “morally flexible individuals with a strong aesthetic sense and deep existential questions.”
The AI then went really deep, pointing out that liking a character with an anti-authoritarian streak who doesn’t “follow rules just because they exist” might suggest I prize autonomy and personal judgment over conformity and that I have “a healthy skepticism of institutions and may often find yourself pushing back, gently or sharply, against systems that expect blind obedience. And yet, like Crowley, you may also find yourself forming unlikely, deeply meaningful bonds with people who ground you.”
Toasted
Then came Stephen Toast, the eternally bitter, gloriously self-serious actor from Toast of London who screams most of his lines and treats every minor career setback like eternal betrayal. According to ChatGPT, connecting with him may mean that part of me resonates with the unyielding, if often delusional, commitment to a creative identity, even when the universe offers more indifference than excitement.
The AI next had a clever way of linking the character to my possible personality, pointing out how “Toast’s world is absurd and often unfair, but he meets it with theatrical defiance. If you love him, you might be someone who senses those injustices too, but handles them with biting humor, self-aware melodrama, and maybe just a whisper of righteous indignation that others don’t always notice. If you’re a Toast fan, you almost certainly share his ability to laugh at life’s absurdities, especially your own. That kind of humor requires self-awareness, intelligence, and a bit of existential bravery.”
The bit about self-aware absurdity and seeing humor in life was undoubtedly flattering, but as someone who instinctively sees jokes even when it’s inappropriate, I will say I felt as well heard as the character does during his many loud exclaimations.
None of the analyses were truly explosive in telling me things about myself. They were gentle in most ways, hardly insulting my taste or personality. But, I will give credit to the AI for generating responses that felt less shallow than I expected. Like most personality tests, it’s more about how you interpret what they say about you than anything objective about them. But, as a fun party trick, it’s probably more insightful than the paper fortune tellers we used as kids to guess our deepest desires and future fates. Also, I think it’s time for a rewatch of Toast of London.
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erichs211@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
