Silly questions get honest answers: why snack debates get deep replies

The hidden power of silly questions

Say your question box gets the question "Are you a Kinoko no Yama (mushroom-shaped chocolate snack) person or a Takenoko no Sato (bamboo-shoot-shaped chocolate snack) person?" It's silly. But you can't help wanting to answer. And as you answer, you get strangely heated. "Bamboo shoots, no contest. Nothing else has that crunchy cookie part. The mushrooms have too much chocolate, and I get tired of them halfway through."

Before you know it, you've written a whole paragraph about your taste in snacks. If someone asked "What's your favorite food?" you'd stop at one word like "Curry," so why do you get so talkative when it's mushrooms vs bamboo shoots?

There are several possible reasons for this. And once you understand them, you can see what kinds of questions get things going in a question box.

With no right answer, you can talk freely

When asked "What are your strengths?" many people tense up. That's because they feel pressure to give the right answer. It feels as tense as a job interview, and instead of saying what they really think, they look for a model answer of what they're supposed to say.

Mushrooms vs bamboo shoots has none of this pressure. Whichever you choose, you're right. Whichever you choose, you're wrong. Because there's no right answer, you can talk freely. Because you can talk freely, your real feelings come out.

On top of that, silly questions give you a sense of safety: "It's not embarrassing even if I get it wrong." Giving an off-target answer to "What do you value most in life?" is embarrassing, but there's no such thing as an off-target answer to mushrooms vs bamboo shoots. This sense of safety lowers your mental guard.

Silly questions show your personality

Interestingly, answers to silly questions show more of your personality than answers to serious questions.

Let's look at styles of answers to mushrooms vs bamboo shoots. Someone who answers in one line, "Bamboo shoots," may have a concise, efficient personality. Someone who explains logically, "Mushrooms. There are three reasons...," has an analytical way of thinking. Someone who answers "I like both. I hate fighting" is a pacifist at heart. Someone who offers a third option, "Actually, I'm on team Alfort (another chocolate biscuit snack)," thinks outside the box.

It's the same question, but the styles of answers are all different. With silly questions, personality shows in the style of the answer, not the content. And what followers really want to know is the style more than the content, in other words, that person's personality.

An answer to "What's your favorite movie?" gives you information about movies, but you don't see much of the person's personality. An answer to "What do you put on your fried eggs?" is worthless as information, but the person's personality seeps through.

Silly questions put everyone at ease

Silly questions have the power to soften the mood. A harmless question like "Mushrooms or bamboo shoots, which side are you on?" is easy to answer without tensing up, and the people watching can't help smiling too.

When there are only serious questions, both the people answering and the people reading get a little stiff. When a silly question slips in, the tension eases and everyone relaxes. It lightly shifts a mood that has gotten too serious.

So don't look down on silly questions as "low-level." They work like oil that loosens people up and brings them closer. It's in playful questions that you find the wisdom that warms up communication.

Use silly questions on purpose

Once you know about this effect, you can put it to use when you run your question box.

When questions aren't coming in, one option is to give a theme yourself. At times like this, silly themes tend to bring in more questions than serious ones. "What's the one ingredient you can never leave out of curry?" is easier to answer casually than "Tell me your goals for this year."

Silly questions also work well when a long run of deep questions has made the mood of your question box heavy. By sharing light Q&A like "Dogs or cats?" or "Morning person or night owl?" you can create a mood that says "It's fine to ask casual questions in this question box."

The ultimate silly question is the either-or question. "Summer or winter, which do you like?" "The beach or the mountains?" "Udon or soba, which one?" Either-or questions take the least effort to think about, and anyone can answer right away. Because people can answer right away, the hurdle to sending them is extremely low.

Don't look down on silly questions. It's silly questions that lighten the mood of a question box, draw out your followers' real feelings, and show your personality. As the oil that keeps a question box running smoothly, silly questions are something you can't do without.