Written on March 16, 2026
This Sunday, I did a brief survey just for Catholics, and things went very wrong. There’s a short section at the end of this article about it. But instead of a typical survey, I had the idea for a social experiment.
Out of nowhere, I had the idea to host a piece of collaborative art. The idea is that everyone only gets a few strokes, and there’s almost no formal cooperation, yet strangers have to complete a common goal together: draw the close-up portrait of an imaginary woman.
Very shortly after I started, a group of four friends came up and each used three strokes to create the basic outline.
Then someone added clouds.
Then someone added a mouth.
Then a morbid young woman added glasses not similar to her own. And someone added another cloud. And someone added ears, but I forgot to tell them they only get three strokes, so I had to stop them after the fourth stroke.
Then three young men came up and added two lines of curly hair and a Bindi (the red forehead dot).
Then someone added a nose chain and someone added a neck line, I think.
Then a young couple added a French beret hat and the blue “wings” which I think he said were meant to be part of her flowing dress?
The woman also added eyes using one stroke each, marking the first time people started getting very creative with their “3 strokes” rule.
Then someone added I think just a red heart?
Then a young woman added a heart tattoo on the neck with an arrow through it, which looked like it could be the same thing she had peeking out under her shirt.
Then one young man, who must not have heard me explain the 3 strokes rule, added a whole suit with about 15 strokes, before I had to stop him as politely as I could.
Another young man, one that I’ve known for a few months, used his three strokes very creatively, to draw the bird perched on the blue wing thing, and the red sun peeking out from the clouds.
As he was leaving, another young couple came up, and I was distracted, and didn’t notice anything off.
The man asked about the 3 strokes rule, and I said he could get creative. So he proceeded to draw all over the whole thing.
His girlfriend looked neutral the whole time. Not angry as if he was being an asshole. Not happy as if she was in on a mean joke. Not even content, as if he had done something she approved of. Simply neutral, perhaps even bored. He also looked bored, perhaps absent.
As he finished, I noticed she had almost no teeth.
So I tore the thing down and bought a new canvas. This time I used fewer words hoping to make it easier to understand.
Then an art student drew the entire portrait himself using only 3 strokes. Clearly my 3 strokes rule was too lenient.
Lessons learned
First, only certain types of people like to do social experiments, and only when in the mood to be somewhat lighthearted.
A good number of people clearly in bad moods looked at it, read it, and looked away with no improvement to their mood. Some of them even gave a slight fake smile to me after reading it, before returning their face to its previous natural state of bad mood.
Some couples or groups of friends looked at it, a woman realizing what it was and being excited, talking to the person or people she’s with about it as they walked on, and continued walking on, clearly unable to convince them to participate.
Second, I was immediately surprised at the cartoonishness of the portrait. I thought it would be at least somewhat realistic in some of its features. I chalk this one up to me just being an idiot. In retrospect, anyone willing to participate would obviously look at this as a throwaway artpiece, not worth investing any serious amount of time or skill into.
Also, from a distance, most of the words are too small, and there are too many words. Even the title is too small. I really need to nail down the important stuff, use extremely few words, and make them all very big.
I also need to not get distracted by conversations with friends. There’s a good chance I would have recognized the problematic people if I hadn’t been distracted while they approached.
I feel like the subject I chose, “an imaginary woman’s close-up” was too limiting. Perhaps it needs to be a full body portrait. I would be hesitant to choose anything other than a person, for a few reasons. First, because people have the right balance of simplicity and complexity. Second, because everyone knows what a person looks like, but I can’t imagine any other object that’s as universally known.
Finally, I felt like the canvas was too small. This is just a gut feeling. I can’t think of any concrete issues with this one, which was about 3x2 feet.
Second Try
I’ll probably do this again next Sunday, but I have a few ideas of how to do it better.
First, use fewer words, and bigger words.
I think “Collaborative Art” is good, but needs to be 2x or 3x as big.
Most of the rules can be omitted.
I think I’ll keep 3 strokes per person, but get rid of the “per 30 minute period” and emphasize that they must be simple strokes.
I’m not sure whether the time needs to be there. Maybe “until 6:00pm today” is good enough.
I almost want to do two separate canvases, one that’s meant to be realistic, and one that’s meant to be cartoonish.
This is what I’m thinking so far:
COLLABORATIVE ART
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Can strangers draw a woman
with 3 simple strokes each?
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Social Experiment, until 6pm
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below!
Bonus content: Catholic Survey
Like last week, I again did a survey in front of St. Peter’s, the Catholic Church of the loop, before and after Mass. (I made a mistake in the subtitle, and improvised to try to fix it. My book is partly about Catholic men, women, and love.)
This time, I wanted to see how often people are in mortal sin. Obviously it’s a vulnerable question, so I didn’t expect many answers. But I got five!
All answers were from after Mass except my own (I put “daily”). Everyone simply said their answers verbally except for one man:
The first answer was a big “X” next to “never”, which an extremely confident, obese Italian man drew.
The only woman to answer said “daily” and I applaud her honesty. One man said “weekly” and another said “yearly” and that’s it.
The reason I chose this question is because I have a few theories. I believe most people probably fall into mortal sin at least monthly. I believe women probably think they sin less than men, and I think men agree. I have theories on which types of people think they sin more or less than others. I also believe priests are not actually helping most people to quit their habitual sins.
Obviously there’s a huge selection bias here. Most people aren’t going to answer this, no matter what. Others would have to be fairly comfortable with my surveys, and have some assurance of their anonymity.
Once again, I think I had too many words, and they were too small. Plus, the people of St. Peter’s aren’t used to my surveys. Very likely they thought it was a scam, begging, or something nefarious.
But here’s where things went wrong. I’ll summarize the events. If you ask me in person, I’ll tell you in more detail. I’ll almost definitely add it all to my book, too. It summarizes criticisms I have with so many Catholics, as a Catholic.
One Franciscan monk came out shortly after I started the survey, and as soon as I spoke to him, he interpreted me as being hostile, and he reciprocated with a rather confrontational and accusatory tone. As he spoke to me, the two security guards came out, one of whom I respect a lot.
I asked him if he wanted to take my survey, and he said maybe another time. The other one asked me to move off church property. I told him that standing at the edge of the sidewalk wasn’t church property. He told me that people had complained to him about feeling unsettled by me. I said it’s not my intention to unsettle anyone, and then I moved down a bit, telling him that I only intend to be a good Catholic, which he very visibly scoffed at as he went back in.
As a slight backstory, my first interaction with this particular security guard was about 3 months ago, on a day of freezing rain some time in December, when I was changing my freezing wet socks for a dry pair in their bathroom stall, while standing and holding the stall door to balance myself, which he loudly and suddenly banged on, telling me the church is closing soon. When I left the bathroom, he was there, with a face that was clearly judging and condemning me. I forgive him and I pray that God soften his heart and give him inner peace.
Later, he came out again, and I tried to get his attention several times, which he blatantly ignored, until I finally just asked if I was far enough, which he said yes to, while still ignoring me thanking him.
Next week, I want to do another survey, but I am very concerned that the one security guard would actually call the police, and even though I’m not breaking any laws as far as I’m aware of, I’m definitely not a lawyer, and I’m not willing to die on this particular hill. At least not in this way, and not so soon. I have a book to finish.
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