--- description: Politicians use polls to advise them on policy. Why shouldn't I? title: I Do What I'm Polled image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Politics](/section/politics/) # I Do What I'm Polled by [Joel Stein](/author/joel-stein/) Oct 29, 2012 4:00 AM CUT by [Joel Stein](/author/joel-stein/) Oct 29, 2012 4:00 AM CUT I am not a great decider in chief even though I have only one person to decide for. After college I sent a résumé to a magazine merely because I thought the editor was hot and wound up working for Martha Stewart for a year. I once dated a girl because five minutes into my conversation with her, a pet rat emerged from her bosom. Now my make-out résumé has an entry I remember only as Rat Girl. Also, whenever I get sick, I worry it’s bubonic plague. So I crowdsource as much of my life as possible. My lovely wife Cassandra gets furious because I follow her advice only after five other people say the same thing. Though, to be fair, I didn’t start doing this until she bought me mandals and told me to wear them to the office. But what I long for is the accuracy that politicians get from polls. They know how to feel about gay marriage, Social Security and immigration on the basis of precise numbers and can gauge how popular they will be if they express those opinions in different ways. So I was very excited when Toluna, a marketing-survey company, offered to let me poll its 1.5 million North American active users. I had a lot of things to ask America, but Toluna president George Terhanian told me America gets bored after 15 questions. So I edited my list down to the crucial topics, such as my career, raising my son and what to do about my massively receding hairline. In six hours, 1,000 people signed up online to answer questions about me, for which Toluna would charge $2,000\. I could have just asked a list of my friends for free on Toluna, except that I know my friends are not at all representative of real America. I know this from Republican speeches. America answered questions I had been needlessly torturing myself over for decades. Fifty-five percent did not want me to write columns about politics. But then I looked more closely at the results and realized that this was a key issue dividing our nation. Male America thought I should write more about politics, but female America thought I should focus on my family, followed by celebrities. Conveniently, my family contains a celebrity. I’m talking about me. And while a plurality of both men and women thought I use the word penis the exact right amount in my column, the valuable 18-to-34-year-old demographic wanted me to mention penises three times as much as people over 55 did. Americans of all demographics wanted me to send my 3-year-old son Laszlo to public school rather than private school and nearly everyone thought I should get Laszlo music lessons over swimming, art or ballet–though the old people picked swimming over music by a narrow 0.7%. At first I thought this was because old people love swimming, which I know is true from Cocoon. But then I realized that old people just hate music because you can’t understand a damn thing they’re singing anymore. But 11% of all respondents thought Laszlo should take a class in “other.” I’m not a fan of including “other” in polls, since I never get to pick “other” in real life. There’s no “other” on a menu or my income-tax forms. Cops never ask you if you want to take a Breathalyzer, go down to the station or “other.” When the rabbi asked if I promised to love Cassandra in sickness and in health, if I had said, “Other,” I’m pretty sure the wedding would not have proceeded. Living according to poll results seemed easy: public school is free; Laszlo was excited about music classes; my editor said she thought TIME readers need my page as a break from political coverage; and penis. But I was a little nervous when I saw the responses to this question: “I am losing hair from the front of my head. Should I …” First of all, 30% said to shave my head–not realizing that when I did that once for a story, my lovely wife Cassandra said it made me look like “an accountant named Murray.” Far worse, 48% said to “keep my same hairstyle and ignore it.” Losing your hair is not something you can ignore like calls from the credit-card company, or your children. But if America wants to see the top third of my head, America is going to see it. I can’t go back to making decisions based on the vagaries of my blood sugar, level of sleep deprivation, what my friends are doing and penis. Sure, if my goal were to please myself or follow a code of honor, then making my own decisions would make sense. But the point of everything I do is to make other people like me. Except for old people. They don’t read this magazine, right? ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6642698/i-do-what-im-polled/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6642698/i-do-what-im-polled/"},"headline":"I Do What I'm Polled","datePublished":"2012-10-29T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-26T16:27:28.452Z","description":"Politicians use polls to advise them on policy. 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