Survey: Do you like my surveys?

Written on March 29, 2026

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Prologue

I used my same sign from yesterday, but the back of it, because I don’t like shopping on Sundays, and because it helps cut costs. Feel free to donate a dollar or two to ChicagoSignGuy via Venmo or Cashapp if you want to support my surveys.

As I was making the sign, someone asked what the survey was going to be and I said I was open to ideas. A guy probably high on weed came up and joined our conversation and suggested it should be whether WW3 is about to start. I don’t think politics are interesting so I didn’t choose that. After he left, the first guy suggested something about aliens. That’s definitely worth considering, but I wasn’t feeling it today.

So I went with the idea I had a couple times earlier today, which was to gauge how people feel about my signs, to take a pulse.

I didn’t like how I worded it. It felt too wordy. I should have put Yes, Some, No, and What? I was getting too carried away.

Results

The final tallies. Read below for discrepancies.

If we add the first two, it’s about a three fourths approval rating! Not bad!

One young woman I’ve talked to many times assumed the Please Stop was a joke and that people would only put it for the bit. It turned out she was right but I put it being serious. It didn’t occur to me that literally none of the people who want me to stop would feel like taking the survey at all. Sometimes I’m just kinda dumb.

About a third of the Yes votes came from art school students. Another third came from people who I’ve seen before taking my surveys. The final third were random people who didn’t know what my surveys were for, sometimes asking me to explain it.

A disproportionate number of the Yes votes were women. Like 85% probably. It seems to be a naturally feminine quality to give and seek approval. To me it seems that men live by results and women live by compliments.

A few people laughed thinking it was a meta joke, taking a survey about whether you like the survey. It’s not, but I actually did want to do that at one point, and I think I wrote it down in my ideas notes, but it didn’t even occur to me how similar this one was to that one until I’m writing this on the train.

Someone said it’s like a nice little Easter egg when they go do stuff on Sundays.

Yes #9 gave me the sticker that I put near the top.

One young man said it’s like a side quest. He’s the same young man who said people love the idea of him last week. He told me he was recovering from fun last night, and always in recovery. When I said I remember those days, he lamented that he would eventually become like me. I hinted that I have the most interesting life of anyone I’ve ever met, and almost told him he doesn’t know the half of it. Truth is, he doesn’t know even 10% of it, none of you do. But I am selective about who I invite into it.

One young man put Please Stop because he misread it and then changed his answer right away to Yes. It was the first Please Stop, which I liked because I felt like it would make people more confident to put that.

One person put Yes three times in a row!

One fun young couple came up and asked me to explain it, and the young woman asked if she could put a Please Stop just to mess with people, and she put two, one far apart from the other intentionally. I like their style!

One young woman jokingly almost put Please Stop but put yes. Her friend said “I encourage young talent.” I guess I’m young now?

A policeman tallied yes, and that I got some good surveys. That was unexpected!

A good five or ten people who have done my surveys before have explicitly said while tallying yes that they love my surveys.

Someone said “please don’t quit the surveys they’re enjoyable.”

Someone, perhaps the same person who said that last thing, asked if I’m going to keep doing them in the coming months, and was happy when I said yes!

Several times, people walked by who did a double take and a visible look like “huh?” I didn’t add them though.

Many times, there were people who work or live locally who I’ve seen a bunch, who still didn’t look at my survey, or merely glanced at it briefly, not long enough to read it. They very obviously would have put Please Stop. I wanna say it was like 20.

The one and only time I asked someone “what topics” when they put Some Topics, they quickly said something that I didn’t quite catch as they were walking away, as if they didn’t really feel comfortable having a conversation, and that’s exactly why I haven’t been asking anyone follow-up questions. It’s hard for me to feel out the vibe of when someone wants to stay and chat, and when they don’t. I’ll have to practice more. Speedrunning my character arc is fun but hard.

One young woman who did the survey passed me again later and saw the Please Stops and as she walked passed shared her sympathy with me over it. That was so sweet!

Near the end, I gave some art students my business card, telling them I tried my hand at graphic design, and they gave it the art student verbal stamp of approval, saying I should go to art school! I wonder what they’d think of my first book, The Gospel by Gen Z, and all the design decisions I made throughout it. I paid attention to every single ounce of detail possible when making that book in Adobe InDesign. (I don’t even own a single copy of my book anymore lol, can you believe it?)

Politics???

Three young men came up and asked what I thought of Palestine, and I said I’m apolitical. They said by paying taxes I’m supporting genocide. Two of them said they were Jewish. I said I pay taxes to avoid going to jail and it’s not really up to me what happens to the taxes. At first they were somewhat confrontational, but after they asked about my surveys and I explained what they were like, one of them tallied yes, and they kind of changed tone. He was about to use his own pen until I said he has to use my marker. I wasn’t sure what he was going to try to write. Another of them asked if he could write his own category and I said no. We talked about our beards and then they left all friendly but said some mantra about Palestine or something.

A young black man came up fairly aggressively and asked if I supported black reparations and I said I was apolitical. He still aggressively said don’t worry I ain’t gonna smack you just be honest, and I said I already was. I wasn’t afraid of him because I believe in divine plot armor. If we try to fulfill our baptismal mission, then God will protect us from everything that’s not in it. Job was protected from death by God. There were several times people tried to kill Jesus but it wasn’t his time so they just simply couldn’t for one reason or another. So I wasn’t afraid of him and I only saw him as just another person who I was to love. I have more to do before God will let me die. Later he came back and asked what I thought about gaza and I said I didn’t know anything about it and that I don’t watch the news. He asked if I never see it on Facebook or TikTok and I said I don’t have those. As he was leaving I gave him my business card.

Epilogue

Overall I think this survey was kind of a success. Because men go by results and women by praise, I felt in retrospect that it was too feminine. I already know that people love my signs because I get hundreds of votes every day just by standing still and silently holding a sign and a marker. The proof is in the eating of the pudding as they say.

That said, it was a bit of a confidence boost. It made me feel appreciated, which is a nice feeling. Incidentally, I talked to a priest earlier today in Confession, who told me that I need to love myself more, and stop beating myself up so much in my head, and trust that God loves me and wants me to be happy, or something to that effect. And several priests have told me this over the past few months. But today this priest said it so much better, and very effectively. So I am beginning to believe in God’s love and plan for me. And seeing so much love and support from people who appreciate my surveys really helps me a ton.

This survey also had the effect of introducing many people to my signs and the idea of them, letting them know I have a website for them and the kind of topics I do. It sort of worked out as a form of advertising. Not that I should be working on Sunday, and I definitely wasn’t trying to use it as a form of advertising, but it was nice to spend my restful Sunday smoking a cigar, and also feel appreciated by a little community that we accidentally built together I guess.