Incognito Polls

If there's a poll you wish someone would make, but it’s too embarrassing or awkward for you to make publicly, submit it to us and we'll post it– completely anonymously!

How to submit a poll:

Check the date! Is it the 1st or 15th? If not, hold onto your question for the next open submission period.

Include (1) a title, and (2) all of the answer choices you want the poll to list, up to a maximum of 12

Choices cannot exceed 80 characters in length, so be concise!

Send via ask or submission, not DM

Your submissions may also include: additional details, clarifying information, secondary questions, images, or anything else you think is relevant to add to the body of the post.

If your submission uses specific terminology, acronyms, etc that may not be widely known, consider including definitions so that we can ensure we understand the question you're asking, especially if those terms are not easily googleable.

What about time zones?

Asks are automatically timestamped. Any submissions timestamped with a date other than the 1st or 15th of the month will be discarded.

This blog operates on EST (UTC-5) and asks are timestamped accordingly.

In order to avoid any issues, please keep in mind any difference in time zones and adjust your submission time accordingly. If you're not sure, look up "what time is it in New York?" for a reference point.

Links:

Searchable archive

Frequently Asked Questions

Check if your poll is on-topic! Off-topic submissions may be discarded.

Other poll blogs to check out

Incognito Polls Tag Directory (Use this to browse past polls/check if your submission has been run before!)

Companion blog for answering duplicate/off-topic submissions: @incognitopolls-inbox

Results grabber if you don't want to click a button

Want to support the blog? Leave a tip on ko-fi!

Information:

If it's not a submission day, the askbox is still open for non-poll questions. The askbox being open does not mean submissions are open– check the date!

Submissions will be posted in the order received and will run for a week. Your submission may be posted weeks or months after you send it. Exceptions: if there's something obviously seasonal or a highly relevant follow-up to a recent poll, it'll probably get bumped forward, or the queue may be adjusted to space out similar topics.

All submissions are anonymous. This blog will not reveal or discuss the identity of any submitter (beyond general, non-identifying information as relevant to the poll topic).

We may modify the text of your submission slightly to add more answer choices, clarify meanings, or use more inclusive language.

Because polls are user-submitted, poll topics and/or results do not represent the social, political, or moral opinions of this blog or its operator(s). We do our best to be mindful of others when posting polls and decline to post submissions that are visibly inflammatory or harmful, but we try to exercise inclusivity and good faith about human curiosity.

Assume your friend is not the type to misgender anyone. This is not asking about the use of "guys" to address a group (e.g. 'hey guys'), this is talking about referring to one specific person as "a guy."

In general, I put the important context up front, before the poll. That's where scene setting and clarifications about meanings go. I try to keep these concise and only state the essential information here because people don't have the patience to read an entire essay before voting on a poll.

After-poll text is usually things like the following:

A preemptive response to objections about the available poll options, i.e. a thought they may have had after reading all the options (thus they've already scrolled down to where the aftertext begins)

The reason the submitter was wondering about the topic

The submitter's personal anecdote about a problem they encountered or what they think

I'm guessing the personal anecdotes are what you're talking about. Most of the time, I try to present the scenario as neutrally as I can– preserving all the relevant facts, but without feelings and opinions that might affect the way people vote (or in "what would you do if…" questions, information that you could not possibly have), because most of the time what we want from poll results is to know what people think/do currently, not to change everyone's opinion. This setup is deliberate.

Example question:

(Answer only for misspelling common words, not obscure/hard words.) Does it annoy you when someone misspells common words? • Yes, I hate it • It bugs me a little but whatever • No, it doesn't bother me • I don't notice this — (Anon is dyslexic and English is their fifth language, so no matter how hard they try they often misspell common words. People sometimes insult them or make fun of them for this, and they wonder if everyone really feels that way.)

In this example, there's no way you could possibly know that information about everyone. The question is about how you feel in real life, not what you think would be nicest in a vacuum. It's fine if your opinion changes after reading a personal anecdote. That might be a good opportunity to reflect!

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For this poll, "I used to, but I stopped" means stopping for any reason: it can mean you stopped naturally/on your own, you were trained out of it, you had a corrective surgery, you're no longer able to walk, etc.

If you do not or cannot walk, select the appropriate "No, I didn't do this" answer (or, if you used to do this but can't walk anymore, you can choose the relevant "I used to" answer).

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Do not count things that are single-gender only by coincidence (e.g. a friend group that just happens to be all the same gender except for you). This is asking only about things that are explicitly stated to be for a single gender.

Hypothetical scenario: you're in public and you see someone using a walking cane (a cane for physical support/stability, not a white cane that blind people use). They're approaching a door that has an accessible push button to open it, and instead of pressing the button with their hand, they press it with the end of their cane.

What are your thoughts on using the bottom/end of a walking cane to press one of these buttons?

If you use a mobility aid but not a cane specifically, and this specific action would not be possible with your given mobility aid, choose the fitting non-cane answer.

Anon uses a cane and does this sometimes and no one ever says anything, but they worry that maybe it bothers people and they just don't say anything. Anon had never thought about it until recently when they saw someone hit the button with their shoe and anon got grossed out. They wonder if others view it the same way as using a shoe.

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Not liking music counts as a taste in music; your taste is that you don't like it.

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You can count siblings/cousins/niblings/etc if you feel that your situation counts as babysitting.

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