Written on March 7, 2026
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The question
Originally, I wanted to do a survey on self-esteem. The goal was to figure out what people think of themselves and how they see themselves.
But then the plot idea came to me, and it just seemed to have so much more potential, even if it might be a bit flawed, so I just ran with it.
The results
The two blue dots near 0,0 are from the first person who participated. He seemed pretty high and was about to draw a line. I had to stop him and explain to him to put a dot which he put at 10,10.
Some people didn’t realize it was a grid so they put two dots along each axis, even after there were already dots in the middle area.
I tried to give red to people who seemed like biological women and blue to biological men. A few people chose a color based on liking it more. Some mixed groups just used the same marker and I didn’t correct them.
Early on I tried to explain to put a little dot. They were dots until a lady put a circle. Then some people put hearts or smiley faces. Then people started signing their names.
Many confident people put 10/10. Some put 11/10. One effeminate young man who put 11/10 for both, came back later and saw that someone outdid him, so he marked the top right most corner.
One man dressed like a lawyer who didn’t participate in it, came up to me and said this should be called find the narcissists, or something to that effect, and then left.
One person said there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. I fully agree, it’s a hard line to find.
One man asked if I was trying to find a correlation between people’s perception of their own looks and personality, and I told him I didn’t even think of that, but that yeah, there definitely might be a correlation. And in retrospect, most people did put roughly the same number, wherever it was, which you can see by there being a somewhat thick diagonal line from 0,0 to 10,10.
Someone pointed at my black dot without knowing it was me and said I feel bad for whoever put that.
One young woman with her friends said she has a bad personality because she did something petty to spite someone else she knows.
Two older women put extremely high scores and when I said I loved the confidence, one said honey I didn’t get this far in life for nothing, or something like that.
One man who didn’t seem high or drunk and was with a woman and both had rolling suitcases drew a big blue circle near the top and said somewhere in here.
It didn’t occur to me that there would be ambiguity around what having a bad personality meant. I thought it would mean boring. Some people expressed that they thought it implied bad morals.
A couple extremely high guys asked me for my cigar or for an extra one and I said no. They then came over and asked to sign my sign. They signed near the 0,0 area in big blue letters.
Some people asked where I put mine, maybe 3 or 4 people, and I showed the black dot around personality 1 and looks 4. Two or three of them said my personality should be higher simply because of the surveys I do. One said it was very unique. I made the connection to the phrase one of a kind and how people seem to believe that a unique personality means a good personality. I’m not sure. I think I have a very boring personality generally.
One young woman briefly put a heart at personality 9 and looks 2. I’m not sure she was paying full attention though because she walked by and did it so quickly that she may have meant to invert those.
Several people noted that most people who took it were very confident. I think there’s a selection bias. Someone who genuinely thinks they’re personality or looks are very low probably won’t want to come up and do the sign, they’d probably just look at it and get sad and keep walking on.
A few times, some groups of young women took turns, and each time, their friends said they should put a higher mark. One time, a group of men went up, and they teased each guy that he should put a lower mark.
Sunday
Previously I did my serious surveys on Sundays and random shenanigans on Saturdays.
But I’m too old for the funny business, that’s for younger people. I know they could make decent money on TikTok with it. I used to make a few thousand dollars per month on minimal effort TikTok videos. But I don’t think it’s ethical to keep people addicted to social media.
So I’m mixing it up, and doing serious surveys on Saturdays, and random stuff on Sundays.
This Sunday, I started a very topical survey meant to criticize failing priests. My goal is to light a fire under their rear ends by showing them that they’re failing. My goal is not to spread anti-Catholic sentiment, though I’m nervous I might accidentally be doing so.
Plus, after about 5 hours, I was just exhausted. It was probably from losing an hour’s sleep from daylight savings time.
So I drew up four index cards that I meant to hand to random people, with simple instructions: take a photo of the card (to prove you have it), post the photo to reddit, and then hand it to someone else.
I only made four, since I was exhausted tired, and handed them out to four people. The first two I gave away pretty quickly to some young art school students I already met before. One of them said he’s going to Michigan soon, but I assume he threw it away by now.
And I saw about 5 or 6 more students I knew, and excitedly told them about the experiment, but when I told them I wanted to give the last two to random strangers, they seemed disappointed, or perhaps offended, and I felt like an asshole for accidentally misleading them and leading them on by explaining it at all to them.
Later a fairly extroverted man, neither young nor old, in the midst of his friend group, took the third card as he walked by, saying it sounded interesting. He probably threw it away shortly after.
The fourth one was a young black man with a group of his friends who I had seen before. They did one of my surveys and I think saw some of my funny signs. They asked if they could interview me for their own social media the other day, and I said no, but this time I said sure. They handed me a mic and asked two questions: “what would make this city a better place?” and I said “if more people made little sacrifices to help others.” They said “very unique answer” and said “final question” (they only asked two questions), “what’s your palace, your happy place?” I said I had none. They offered some examples or suggestions, and I said “nope” “really?” “yeah I’m just tired of this life, I’m ready to go.” They tried to dap but I did a fist bump, I never learned how to dap up and I was holding their mic. Then I walked away, and they probably threw the index card out too.
Here’s the reddit thread for The Travelling Note Card. If nothing comes of it after a week, then I’ll consider it a failed experiment, but still, lessons learned.
(I also created a subreddit /r/ExplainTheJoker which is like r/ExplainTheJoke in that people post images of memes/jokes they want explained, but where every thread is just a discussion about the DC Comics character The Joker.)
I only had to stand out there for about an hour or less for this, and that was after sitting and resting at Panera for half an hour.
During that time I meant to go to Confession and Mass, which was an hour walk away, since I missed Mass earlier in order to create and do my survey outside the Catholic Church after Mass, but I was too exhausted, so I’ll have to go next week, God willing.
While I did the Survey outside the Catholic Church, I saw a young woman I’d seen at Mass once or twice before. She was one of the very few people who approached me to do the survey, and seems like a good Catholic woman. I wonder if anyone would be willing to fall in love with a man who has only a few months left, and therefore not enough time to marry and start a family, yet is also unwilling to sin. After all, Mary and Joseph were deeply in love for thirty years of marriage while both remaining lifelong virgins. Maybe a very good woman might. But how can you even ask that of someone? It’s too much to ask.
Next Weekend
It’ll probably be too cold to do one next week.
And I’m getting more tired each week.
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