I ran a poll on Twitter, asking people whether they had any “skeletons in their closet” that could ruin their reputation if they came out. 33% of people said they did, and 31% of people said they probably did. Only 12% of people unequivocally said no:
Because of my own history of OCD and fear of wrongdoing, I’m really interested in what percentage of people have, or think they have, some kind of reputational sword of Damocles above their head. I'd also love to know what it is. What percentage of it broadly speaking relates to “woke” concerns. Are people worried about something racist they said on tape years ago? Are men worried about getting metoo’d? Or is other stuff unrelated to the current obsession over cancellations- did they have an affair, or sleep with their first cousin, or deal drugs? How serious are the infractions people are worried about? Is there a video of them singing along to N***** in Paris? Or did they violently racially harass someone? If it’s Metoo stuff, where is it on the spectrum from “honestly misreading an intimate situation” to “rape”.
So I want to run a survey and analyze the results. What kinds of secrets are people keeping? How does that alter how they relate to the secrets of others? The only problem is that in the past when I’ve run surveys, it hasn’t always turned up interesting results. I also need to cut down on the demographic data I ask for, among other things, because it will be a priority to ensure that no one can be identified from their answers.
Anyway, I’m thinking about this stuff out loud to see if my readers have any ideas about what they’d like to see in the survey, what needs to not be in to absolutely ensure anonymity even if the dataset is made public, etc.
I’m also learning to sing. I’m sharing this with you, because I think it’s a tragedy that more people don’t try to sing. We listen to perfectly crafted, EQ altered, reverb added, audio compressed stuff by the best of the best, and then if someone doesn’t sound like that, we tell them not try. At a minimum, you can learn to sing on pitch if you aren’t tone-deaf, and you’re almost certainly not tone death. It doesn’t take all that much time out of your day either.
Here’s a piece I did acapella Futile Devices originally by Sufjan Stevens. It’s not very good. It’s still better than I was a year ago, and a year ago I was much better than I was the year before that. Any pointers would be appreciated!
A simple google form probably works fine as long as you disable the multiple-submission protection and email collection. If you want more variety and detail, you can use a single paragraph-response question as the entire form, but that risks giving enough detail for identification if the person isn't careful or you get too few submissions. If you don't mind just category data, you can make a checkbox list for things like racism/metoo'd/drugs/etc. You could even go for a bullet grid where each category is ranked as not applicable / i'd make some people unhappy / i'd lose my job / i'd lose my life.
I'd also like to propose another category: religious or political matters. Some people maintain the illusion of being a certain religion or political party to stay on good terms with their family.
I started taking voice lessons around the time lockdowns began. It's interesting to me that the rationalism has a very active community for group vocal performance (in the Bay Area, anyway) but not much emphasis on individual vocal performance.