Is it OK to send yourself questions? Telltale signs and the right way

The short answer: you can send them. The problem is how you use them

You made a question box, but you have zero questions. At times like that, a thought crosses your mind: "Maybe I'll try sending one myself."

To give the conclusion first, sending a question to your own question box is, technically, perfectly possible. A question box is built so that anyone can send questions, so even if the owner sends one, the system doesn't treat it specially. The Q drop Terms of Service don't prohibit posting questions to yourself either (if you use another service, check that service's terms).

The problem is whether you use it as "a show that fools your followers" or as "a way to draw in the first questions." The former becomes staging (jien, short for jisaku jien, a one-person act where you play both roles) that costs you trust when people find out, and the latter is a healthy running technique that many people use. In this article, we first explain honestly how it gets noticed, then show you where the line is for a use you don't need to be embarrassed about.

How it gets noticed 1: traces in the system

People tend to think "It's anonymous, so no one will ever know," but the system does leave traces.

On many question box services, to deal with trolls, information that tells senders apart is shown in the owner's dashboard. In the case of Q drop, the sender's IP address is shown to the owner (this is the official spec, stated clearly in the Privacy Policy). A question you sent yourself carries your own IP, so it stays in a state where you can tell "I sent this one" by looking at your dashboard.

But the thing to think about calmly here is "who would find out." The only person who can see the dashboard is the owner, in other words, you. No sender information at all is shown to your followers. So on the system side, a question you sent to yourself basically won't be noticed by outsiders. If it does get noticed, the cause is the "behavior" described next.

How it gets noticed 2: writing style, timing, and content

The real reason people suspect staging isn't technology but human powers of observation. There are 3 common patterns.

The writing style is the same. A person's writing habits are more distinctive than they think. It shows in how you use "!", the rhythm of your punctuation, and the balance of hiragana and kanji. If the style of a question resembles the owner's normal posts, followers who are used to reading them sense that something is off.

The timing is too good. "A question on exactly the theme you seemed to want to talk about" arrives at "exactly the moment you seemed to want to talk," and a long answer follows right away. If this keeps happening, it looks like a prepared script.

The content is too specific. A question that neatly covers context only a devoted follower would know, like "About the X thing you talked about on last week's stream, how did it turn out?", can instead make people suspect "Is this the owner?"

Ironically, staging gets noticed not because "the question is badly written" but because "it's too convenient for the owner." Flip these 3 points and you get the conditions for a question that's less likely to be suspected, but rather than pushing that to the limit, using it openly as "pump priming" (yobimizu, the water you pour into a pump to get it started), as in the next section, is much easier on your mind too.

Where staging ends and pump priming begins

Even though both are "sending a question yourself," people judge them differently because the purpose is different.

What gets called staging and disliked is when there's an intent to fool your followers. Examples include putting on a show of being "a popular person who gets this many questions," sending a question that praises you and then acting modest, and making up a question that stirs up conflict to create drama. When people find out about uses like these, you lose all the trust you had built up in an instant.

On the other hand, what tends to be accepted as pump priming is when the purpose is to get things started. A question box has a psychological barrier: "It's awkward to send the first question to a box no one has asked anything in." Preparing the first 1 or 2 questions yourself and showing example answers is a way of showing your followers an example of "I can send questions at this level of detail to this question box," and it works much like a restaurant that sets out free samples right after opening, rather than hiring fake customers.

The line is simple. When you admit "This is a question I prepared myself," do your followers think "I see" or feel "I was fooled"? If it's a use you'd be fine admitting to, that's pump priming.

Steps for pump priming done openly

Doing it openly is more effective than doing it in secret, and it carries no risk. There are 3 steps.

Step 1: announce that you're writing an example answer yourself. This is the method of saying up front, "I made a question box. There are no questions yet, so I'll write 1 myself as a sample answer." It removes any element of fooling people, and it shows your followers the level of detail and the tone of your answers.

Step 2: suggest themes you want to answer about. Questions are more likely to arrive with "I can answer forever about the game I'm into lately" than with "Today I'll answer anything, about work or hobbies." Even without writing a question yourself, just suggesting a theme can often do the job of pump priming.

Step 3: ask a friend for the first question. If you feel uneasy about sending one yourself, asking a trusted friend to "send me 1 light question" is a sure way. The writing style and timing come out natural, and if you share the answer, you build a track record as "a box that gets questions."

Once the first few questions get things going, the answers you build up bring in the next questions. Think of pump priming as training wheels just for the start-up period, and the healthy way to use it is to stop once things are on track.

2 things to review before relying on staging

In many cases, the reason questions don't come in the first place isn't a problem that staging can solve.

The first is how often you announce your box. If you just put your question box URL in your profile, your followers will hardly notice it. Simply asking for questions in your timeline or Stories 1 or 2 times a week can often change things.

The second is how easy it is to ask. "Ask me anything" is actually a hard request to answer, and narrowing the theme brings in more questions. Specific ways to improve are explained in detail in the related article "Why your question box gets no questions: 7 causes and fixes for today."

If you want to understand how senders feel, or what an anonymous system shows to the owner, take a look at the related articles as well.

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