Are You a Vampire Person or a Zombie Person?

Oh yeah, that’s right, it’s one of those personality type articles.

Talk to almost anyone for long enough, and you’ll find out that they’ve got a favorite vampire movie, or a favorite zombie movie — and that they have strongly-worded reasons for preferring one type of movie over the other.

Let’s talk about Vampire People and Zombie People.

By the way — let me be very clear that these aren’t two mutually exclusive categories. They’re opposite points on a wide and subtly shaded gradient, and I’ve met many people who fit in both categories, or have varying amounts of each.

Nor is this supposed to be some type of Briggs-Myers-esque personality classifier (ugh), nor do these two categories apply to every person in the world. Come on. These are just differences I’ve noticed among people, so I’m writing about them. That’s all.

Which one describes you, and the people you know?

People of the night

Vampire People watch vampire movies and shows because they identify with the vampires. This doesn’t mean they wear black suits and eyeliner, or that they literally believe they can drink blood. Not usually, anyway. They tend to be more subtle about it.

Vampire People see themselves as separate from the common run of man.

They believe they’re beyond the ordinary.

This can be for any number of reasons: they’re smarter, smoother, prettier, more cunning, better-educated, better-dressed, more hypnotically appealing.

Any of these things, or none of them, may actually be true of a given Vampire Person. The point is that the Vampire Person believes these things are true.

A Vampire Person will usually go out of his or her way to dress fashionably. This may mean designer jeans and button-downs, or slimming dresses, or socks that match the pocket square, or tailored pantsuits, or, yes, in certain cases, even full-on black-and-red Victorian garb. The main exception to this is the Tortured Poetic Vampire Person, who dresses in vintage clothes that’ve been carefully selected and coordinated to look as slapdash and disheveled as possible.

Like a vampire, your Vampire Person will act as though he or she has spent hundreds of years absorbing every nuance of culture and society. A Vampire Person peppers every conversation with references to subtleties of history, art, music, cuisine and literature — and with ten-dollar vocabulary words; some of which may be in German or French. In extreme cases, this person may even use words like “quite” and “rather” and “suppose” in casual conversation.

A Vampire Person is unlikely to participate in sports — unless they’re high-society indoor sports like fencing or tennis — but may be a superb dancer, especially in forms like salsa and ballroom dancing. As you’d expect with a vampire, a Vampire Person is likely to be boastful of his or her skills in the bedroom, and is almost certain to be a huge showoff in bed. He or she may even bite you and ask if you like it. If you want to hold onto your vampire person, you’d be wise to say yes.

If you meet a Vampire Person and you like him or her, your best bet is,

Play up areas where you’re equal.

That might mean physical endurance, literary knowledge, musical skill, or any other area where you can keep this person on his or her toes. Disdaining the majority of people on earth is hard work, and makes Vampire People very lonely, and they dream of finding someone who challenges them. Sometimes, once you get past their top-predator act, they can turn out to be very clever, interesting people.

If, on the other hand, you’ve met a Vampire Person and want to get rid of him or her, you’ll want to act completely impervious to this person’s charms, as well as to the barbs and insults.

Don’t let the Vampire Person get under your skin.

If you’re not a fellow vampire, and you’re not a viable victim either, then what are you to a Vampire Person? Just a blank feature of the landscape. The Vampire Person will grow bored with you and move on.

People of the tribe

Unlike Vampire People, most Zombie People watch zombie movies and shows not because they identify with the zombies, but because —

They identify with the survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

When zombies rule the earth, there are no more elegant dance parties. There are no more literary discussions, or banquets, or concerts, or fashion shows. The world is simpler — more raw and immediate.

Vampire People would be completely out of their element in this world. There’s nothing in it for them, so they hate the idea of it. In fact, this is one of the most sure-fire ways to find out if someone is a Vampire Person or a Zombie Person: Describe the zombie apocalypse world to them, and

See how they react to the idea.

A Zombie Person loves the idea of a world reduced down to a tight-knit tribe of dependable friends. In the Zombie Person’s fantasies, he or she isn’t the predator — he or she is the fighter, the survivor, the one person who’s too tough to take down. The Zombie Person survives not by charm or intellect, but with street smarts, practical know-how, trusted friends, and a leather-tough refusal to quit.

The Zombie Person’s style of dress isn’t as distinctive as that of the Vampire Person — though it’ll probably be less high-fashion, more durable and practical. Zombie People tend to keep the same pairs of shoes — which are usually boots — for five years or more. They’re not big fans of dressing up, and are happiest in a t-shirt and an old pair of jeans or sweatpants — or, if the weather’s right, in a temp-resistant jacket and a woven cap.

While your Zombie Person may not have much abstract knowledge of history or art, he or she may love to paint or carve wood or weld iron or play guitar — and he or she will probably be very good at it, thanks to years of practice. Ask Zombie People to talk you through the techniques of their art, and they may struggle with the words — but ask them to guide your hands,

And they’ll walk you through every step.

When a Zombie Person is athletic— and many are — he or she usually prefers wilderness sports: hiking, skiing, rafting or rock-climbing. This person may also have a talent for archery, axe-throwing, and a martial art or two. If and when you get intimate with a Zombie Person, you’ll probably find him or her to be an eager but somewhat clumsy lover — which can be very endearing — and to be genuinely interested in and responsive to what you want.

If you want to get closer to a Zombie Person you’ve met, the most effective approach is,

Simply DO things with him or her.

Don’t sit around talking about what you like, or trying to pinpoint a common interest — just say, “Hey, let’s go do this,” or join your Zombie Person for a bike ride or a wood-carving session, and let the chemistry take shape as you work and play together.

If you’d prefer to get rid of a Zombie Person you’ve met, the most direct way to do it is to nitpick, and

Focus on abstractions at every opportunity.

Tell your Zombie Person that you’d rather sit around the house today, because the weather’s too hot — or too cold, or too rainy, or to windy — to do anything fun outside. Complain that you don’t like welding because you just don’t get the theory behind it. Those kinds of things will drive the Zombie Person crazy, and he or she will flee from you.

People in balance

This gets at the most crucial, central difference between Vampire People and Zombie People.

Where the Vampire Person sees a world decaying from its former glory — a once-great civilization now reduced to a human hunting preserve — the Zombie Person sees high potential in a world of bombed-out ruins, and always holds out hope that we can build a new society, even better than the one before — maybe even turn back the zombies and make them people like us again.

And we need both viewpoints to make an interesting world.

I’m not just saying that in a vague, sappy way, so I can have a nice clean ending to this article. I mean, that would be nice and easy — but that’s not why I’m saying it.

I really, honestly believe it.

We need Vampire People to hunt down and rip up things that aren’t working, and to put our culture in wide-view context, and to remind us that it’s worth taking the time to do things elegantly. And we need Zombie People — just as much — to see new ideas in the ruins of ones that didn’t work, and to remind us to just do the things we enjoy, and forget about the cultural context, whatever that even means, and to build our world in whatever hacked-together way works best right now.

Vampire People and Zombie People really can live together, and have very happy friendships and romances, and inform each others’ views on the world.

I’ve seen it happen.

Maybe you’re a Vampire Person, or a Zombie Person, or some combination of the two, or neither one of them at all. Maybe you think this whole thing is a load of crap — which, on some level, it probably is. On another level it makes total sense, and is a lot of fun to think about.

From that level, let me ask you this:

Would you rather the next person you meet — or the next person you date — be a Vampire Person or a Zombie Person? Maybe that says more about you than you think.

I write for Scientific American, HuffPost, Discover, etc. Here’s “The Big List of Things I’ve Written.”

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