MBTI: Louis Bloom- ISTJ
Another recent creation and possibly Jake Gyllenhaal’s greatest performance ever, Louis Bloom is the type of ISTJ you don’t want to run into.
While normally thought of as by the book and rigid, that’s a stereotype that’s a general truism rather than an absolute. The ISTJ you know may be by the book and rigid, but it’s still going to be by their rules and standards, not necessarily what their boss deems appropriate. You’ll see what I mean if you don’t already.
Alright so from the opening scene we know that Louis is a weirdo. Just look at him.
But aside from his stunning cheekbones and eyes that look like ping-pong balls begging to escape from his skull, Louis Bloom’s nightly activities set him apart from most of us. He’s not just a guy that’s awake when most of us sleep, but his routines consist of things that give everyone a reason to lock their doors at night. From assault to theft (And eventually worse), Louis doesn’t seem to have many boundaries. While many of his less noble traits mostly involve his apathy, what makes this guy a stick-up-his-butt Guardian?
Everybody gets boxed in and you don’t even need MBTI for that. But where the SJs tend to get boxed in is by people seeing them as just some boring prototype of a personality. Something to start with and little more. They’re then overlooked when typing unless they come across some character that’s so agonizingly boring that they must be a Guardian.
Well I’m here to tell you that Guardians are freaks too! Don’t leave them out of this.
“Ah yeah, nice and juicy, just like I like it.”
Louis Bloom doesn’t break a stereotype rather than fit into a different one perfectly- the sociopathic ISTJ. You know the one. You try to avoid him. He’s a nice guy, sure. But he’s just off in a creepy way that you can’t fully describe without the suspicion that he’s going to walk up behind you or even hear you from around several corners. And Nightcrawler is his movie whether he knows it or not.
Many have typed (and argued) for fiction and nonfiction killers and psychos to be diabolically calculating Intuitives giving way too much thought to something that’s as simple as it looks. I’ve gotten emails from Buffalo Bill of Silence of the Lambs to Norman Bates of Psycho stating that these characters are too in their own heads to be Sensors. Well, I appreciate the emails and they know this. But as I told them, it just ain’t the truth and Guardians are probably the weirdest types out there. Why? Two words- Introverted Sensing.
“If you want to win the lottery, you have to make the money to buy a ticket.”
Louis watches TV. Louis waters his plant. Louis goes out at night and commits multiple crimes in the name of making money to pay for his apartment and lifestyle that allows him to continue watching TV and watering his plant.
While Si itself doesn’t create a weirdo, it is all about the habits and routines. And if you’ve had a bizarre upbringing or were raised in an environment that let you believe what goes on around you is normal, it’s going to make for a pretty unusual individual.
While I rarely type real people, many of the most famous serial killers seem to lend themselves toward SJ preferences for the most part. As mentioned above, upbringing plays a part in a person’s life (duh) and if you’re a personality where questioning the rules doesn’t come natural to you, then why wouldn’t you think your dad beating you and feeding you dog food isn’t something that happens to the other kids at school?
Also, he doesn’t like mirrors.
Whatever Louis’ upbringing was like we don’t know but his auxiliary Te is also well represented. When he speaks to people, he speaks fluently robotic. While he’s well versed in whichever subject he’s speaking on, he doesn’t speak in a way that allows people to see his point of view past the pure logic that it is. Does logic mean he’s always right or that he’s the smartest? Nope. It just means his line of thinking isn’t from an emotional stand point but (what he at least sees as) a professional one. He doesn’t understand the people he’s talking to nearly as well as he understands the rules they abide by and he works within them.
Exoneration, manipulation, and attempted murder aren’t below Louis’ moral code in part because they’re what keep him getting paid by the lovely Nina. This is what not simply allows his behavior but promotes it. Don’t do anything to violate his way of life, his “business”, or even a good shot. He’ll do whatever he needs to do to remove you from his life. ISTJs and their routines, man, do not get in the way.
And if you’re wondering why anybody would argue to be the same type as Buffalo Bill, I couldn’t begin to tell you.
“Because I’m a STAR, that’s why.”
Zombies Ruin Everything 
11/12/2014 at 5:56 pm
You hear about it sometimes in real life when they get caught ,they had the most mundane lifestyle going. One had a family and was in involved with the local scout community! Not very Hannibal Lector I imagine.
11/12/2014 at 6:10 pm
Forgot to mention Zodiac was brilliant. Who was the killer? The mechanic? Really intelligent whoever it was. (Unfortunately).
11/13/2014 at 4:23 am
Yeah, the guy they were looking into that dies during the investigation could very well have been an ISTJ. Who knows. They say guys like this normally have high intelligence but amounted to very little in their careers and social lives.
06/03/2015 at 10:46 pm
Well, yeah.
But that could be just a facade. Some serial killers might be perceivers, but they understand from a logical stand point that routine is what will keep them out of jail.
Nobody ever suspects the boring friendly neighbor. Nobody.
(I will always suspect Ned Flanders from the Simpsons)
12/02/2014 at 11:21 pm
Saw this movie recently. I didn’t think there was any doubt that he was INTJ. I’m frankly shocked someone actually thinks he’s anything else, least of all an SJ type. His grand vision, his ambition, his long range planning, his unconventionality, his eccentricity, his eagerness to absorb new information and try new ideas and use them to his advantage, his rule-breaking, his focus on fulfilling his personal goals and carrying out his schemes, his general (and quite brilliant in a sociopathic way) Mastermind-ness – it all screams INTJ loud. I find it absolutely comical that you say Guardians are “probably the weirdest types out there” because literally nothing could be further from the truth – ISTJ is one of the most common types of all, and all SJ types far outnumber all others. And your only argument Lou Bloom is one is because you think he has a routine and routine=Si=weird? Huh? No, Lou Bloom was unequivocally an NTJ, the Ni and Te should have been extremely obvious to anyone familiar with MBTI, and he’s clearly introverted as well. Easy typing. In some sense he actually reminded me of Walter White in the manner he went about his business and strategizing and scheming.
12/03/2014 at 8:06 am
Yeah zombiesguy! Intj are the END ALL BE ALL of personalities! I mean, all other types are brain dead comatose meatbags who NEVER AMOUNT to ANYTHING! who invented the peanut butter? An intj. Who killed Kennedy? An infj. Who first stepped on the moon? That’s right, an intj.
Your ignorance on how to spot an intj is baffling! Just look around, if it isn’t squirming around on its belly struggling to remember how to breathe then its def an intj. I’m an intj hence, I wrote this reply.
#Intj!!!
12/03/2014 at 1:25 pm
How many of my articles did you read before you decided this was the worst thing you’ve ever read in your life? Jeez! I’ll skip all the rhetorical comebacks and get right to it-
There is no Ni in Bloom. He did not have a master plan nor did he “mastermind” anything. He went from job to job, hoping his run-of-the-mill sales pitch would sell himself but it’s pretty easy to see through him that something’s not right. Si gathers details as truth and Te executes using known and trusted information. Ni is long range and Bloom did not display this but simply kept moving forward. Knowing the ins and outs of the business he was eventually able to find a job in is ISTJ absolutely- despite the belief that they would sit at their computer all day laughing at the popping spit bubbles accumulating at the corners of their mouth. But for some reason you’ve skipped over this in your analysis, forgetting that Bloom loved watching his TV before he watered his single plant and wait for the night so he could go out and do his job- night after night after night. That’s a genius plan he had to make money at his job and expand where there was an opportunity, wasn’t it? Man, I bet an ISTJ would have blown their brains out if somebody pointed that out to them to move up in the world- they’ve gotta get home and watch “Everybody Loves Raymond!”
And strategizing? You don’t mess with this guy’s routine, as Rick should have known, easy as that. Try and pull an ISTJ out of their intended path, it gets awkward at best and scary at worst.
To claim that every ISTJ is boring while his INTJ preferences got him to where he wanted to go in a “brilliant” way is terribly misguided of you. The guy disregarding morality for his own benefit in and of itself does not speak to type, as anyone with Sociopathic behavior can do this to further their own agenda.
ISTJ being one of the most common of all types has nothing to do with how bizarre a character Bloom is. Do you believe Dahmer, Gein, Fish and co. to be INTJs as well simply because they were able to cover their tracks and evade the police? The same descriptions are given of many if not most serial killers in that they were so boring and milquetoast it was easy to overlook them and this is how they were able to get away with their crimes for so long.
When is Bloom shown to have any kind of “I’m in the Empire Business” type rhetoric that the Great Heisenberg has? He doesn’t. He repeats (nearly) word-for-word his sales pitch to multiple people as though he’s citing it from a text book- a great example of Si/Te. Walt had a vision, Louis just liked being good at his job. An entire day before he realized he could film crimes and get paid for it, he blatantly attacked a security guard to get his watch and construction yard materials to sell. Wonderfully executed plan, I’m sure it took a while to come up with, right?
“If you want to win the lotto, you have to make the money to buy a ticket.”
Could an INTJ blandly repeat themselves to everyone they meet in a strange routine to get to know their acquaintances and associates? Yes, they could. But they rarely do while the ISTJ is known for such behavior.
Also, I appreciate the comment. I’m interested to see your reply. No, this isn’t sarcasm.
12/11/2014 at 4:54 pm
Yeah, moreover if he really was a “mastermind/planner” he would be a ENTJ.
He’s more than willing to put himself on the frontline.
As he says at the end of the movie: “remember, I will never ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself”.
He’s NOT lying.
12/12/2014 at 3:49 am
Great, disturbing ending to a great, disturbing movie.
06/11/2016 at 6:47 pm
Louis Bloom seems he was intended to be portrayed as a sociopathic INTJ (possibly with autism), but he ends up looking more like a mixture between INFP and INTJ.
12/21/2014 at 9:46 am
Well..why doesn’t he has any sort of inhibitions for anything…inhibitions are one of the most stricking features of an istj ryt?!
12/21/2014 at 11:14 pm
Inhibitions sure, but not everyone’s inhibition’s restrict the same behavior. So while one ISTJ’s inhibitions might keep them from acting out at dinner and making a scene, one whose morals aren’t as finely tuned may not care about how they’re coming off.
12/22/2014 at 1:16 am
then how that can be called an inhibition?
12/22/2014 at 1:43 pm
The degree of inhibition is left up to each person. Different people from different upbringings have different “settings,” you could say.
07/20/2015 at 8:37 am
I have often thought that ISTJs can be compared with prions. These are single proteins that can reproduce inside of living cells by making other ‘healthy’ proteins transform in to exactly the prion itself. I thought this movie really showed this effect. At a certain point Lewis is calling the shots inside the cell (read newschannel ) just like a prion would do. I dont want to offend any ISTJs.
07/20/2015 at 11:29 am
Yeah I could see someone being offended by it. But I compared them to ants in the Brutally Honest post so I guess that’s not much better. If you’re explaining ISTJs to someone, probably better to find a different example though, heh.