Questions to ask your friends

Throughout high school, my friends and I would make surveys for each other a few times a year, where we would all answer 100s of personal questions, and then analyze the results. I brought this tradition over to my college friend group; these are all the (friendgroup nonspecific) questions I asked over the course of 6 different surveys.

Interpersonal

Tell us about your friends!

1. What's your favorite thing about your friends?
2. How homogeneous are the political opinions of your friends?
3. Tell us about someone who you only interact with in very specific and strange contexts.
4. What do you have in common with your friends?
5. How many close friends do you have?
6. How many people from high school are you still in regular contact with?
7. What were your high school friends like? Describe a few of them.
8. Out of your friends, who are you most similar to?
9. What communities are you a part of?
10. Who have you gotten to know better recently?
11. Is there someone you wish you were still in contact with?
12. If you had to pick someone, who in your life would you consider your nemesis?
13. If you had to fuse with another person, who would it be?
14. What have you learned from your friends?
15. Who do you want to know better?
16. Who do you think about the most (other than yourself)?

Socialization Habits

1. How often do you get embarrassed?
2. How do you deal with confrontation?
3. How have your socialization habits changed recently?
4. What topics are you always excited to talk about with people?
5. How would you like someone to go about being friends with you?
6. What's one thing you won't do around other people?
7. If you're having a rough day, what would you want your friends to do to make you feel better?

Group Dynamics

1. What frequent conversation topic do you find boring?
2. What is the ideal group size for a hangout?
3. Do you ever feel left out?
4. Are you in the in-group or the out-group?
5. Does your presence alter the dynamic of a group?
6. What do people say about you when you're not around?

Nature of friendships

1. How do you make friends?
2. How do you become close with someone? How long does it take?
3. How close do you have to be to someone for you to consider them a friend?
4. What's the best part about being in a relationship?
5. Deal breakers in a relationship (or friendship)?
6. Is love a feeling or a choice?
7. What qualities do you find attractive in another person?
8. How should you leave a friendship and how have you left friendships?
9. What makes you dislike someone?
10. How much do you love and support the people around you?
11. Are you good at staying in touch with people?
12. How good are you at setting boundaries?
13. Are you a good friend? What type of friend are you?
14. How much do you love and support the people around you?
15. What can we do to make your life better?

Friend Experiences

1. Describe the last time you helped someone.
2. What's the best experience you've had with someone you don't like?
3. Have you ever started a rumor?
4. What was the best piece of advice you have received in the past year?
5. Tell me about a good conversation you have had recently.
6. What's the best thing you've ever done for another person?
7. What's the worst thing you've ever done to another person?

The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known

1. What would your best friend say is your best quality?
2. How do you want people to see you?
3. Do you think your friends like you?
4. How do you vent?
5. How is your trust gained?
6. When's the last time you felt completely honest and open around another person?
7. What do you wish you could tell people?
8. Do you think other people, whether it be intimate friends or strangers, know you better than you know yourself?

Miscellaneous

So tell me about yourself!

1. Tell us about something you're interested in.
2. Share an embarassing fact about yourself.
3. What stupid talent do you have?
4. What's your escapist fantasy?
5. Do you like children? Do you plan on having kids?
6. Do you have synesthesia? If so, what kind?
7. Do you daydream? What sort of daydreams do you have?
8. Do you like wearing clothes?
9. Do you believe in astrology and horoscopes?
10. What food combination do you like the most?
11. Describe each member of your immediate family.
12. Weirdest interest you have?
13. What's the most ridiculous thing you ever believed?
14. What's something that scared you as a kid?
15. What's an odd habit you have?
16. What's the last thing that made you smile?
17. Have any interesting dreams lately?
18. How would you describe your aesthetic?
19. Tell me about something you have been into lately.
20. Do you have any recipes you'd like to share?
21. What's your relationship to drugs and alcohol?
22. What's a life skill you have recently learned?
23. What is something you did when you were younger that you thought was cool, but actually wasn't?
24. Do you read text messages in the voice of the person that sent them?
25. What do you do when you have no energy?
26. How many times in a day do you look in a mirror?
27. What's something you say a lot?
28. How quickly does time pass for you?
29. What's something about you most people who know you would be surprised to learn?
30. What's something you're been wanting to share but haven't had a good opportunity to?

Media

1. What songs have you been listening to lately?
2. What's a song that always gets you pumped up?
3. What are some of your favorite Youtube videos?
4. What's your favorite poem?
5. What's a good piece of media you've recently consumed?
6. What's your favorite book and why?
7. What's your favorite game and why?
8. What song lyric left the strongest impression on you?
9. How much does the media you consume contribute to your personality?
10. Got any good media recommendations? (books, tv shows, games, etc)
11. What's a quote from a work of fiction that has stuck with you?
12. What works of fiction have had the greatest impact on you?
13. What genres of music do you like?
14. What movie/book/media/etc do you really enjoy but don't like telling people you like?
15. What's your favorite poem? If you don't have one, write one.
16. What song have you been feeling lately?
17. How would you describe your taste in music?
18. When was the last time you told someone (or thought) “I told you so”?

Life Experiences

1. How many different countries have you been to?
2. What is the longest time you have spent in a body of water?
3. Do you take phone calls from people you don't know?
4. What's the biggest lie that you have gotten away with?
5. How many different buildings do you enter each day?
6. How often do you dream?
7. What's something silly someone has said to you that has stuck with you?
8. When was the last time someone picked you up?

Do this thing!

1. Tell a story about someone else, but don't give away who they are.
2. Poorly describe the plot of a book you like.
3. Tell us a joke with a punchline only you would understand.
4. Provide an ambiguous sentence.
5. Tell me an animal fact.
6. What's a book that you remember details of but not the name of?
7. Make up a band name, and tell me about the kind of music they would make.
8. Tell us an embarrassing fact about yourself.

Hypotheticals

1. If you could choose a flavor to be the default in your mouth (i.e. you can taste other things, but when you're not this is the flavor you experience) what would it be?
2. If you were an animal, what animal would you be?
3. If you could redesign humans, what would you change?
4. What would the "worst man" and "maid of dishonor" contribute to a wedding?
5. If you could have a small creature to be your friend what would they be like?
6. If you had to give a TED Talk right this very moment, what would it be on?
7. If you had to do a Drunk History episode what is the topic you'd talk about? Who would you cast for the reenactment?
8. If someone pointed at you and shouted "Stop! What's in your mouth?" what is most likely to be in your mouth?
9. If a genie gave you 3 wishes, what would you wish for?
10. If you could commit one crime and get off scott free, what would it be?
11. In some cultures, people were buried with the items they would need in the afterlife. What would you want buried with you for use in the afterlife?

Favorites

1. Favorite article of clothing you own?
2. Describe your dream fashion aesthetic.
3. Why is your favorite color?
4. Favorite language?
5. Favorite region and era in terms of aesthetics?
6. What is your least favorite trope in fiction?
7. What's your favorite piece of furniture?
8. What is your favorite thing to cook?
9. What are some of your favorite words?

Choices

1. All molars, all incisors, or all canines?
2. Feathers or scales?
3. Fangs or claws?
4. Wings or scales?
5. Bioluminescence or dark vision?
6. Ninjas or pirates?
7. Would you rather live in an ocean floor society, a stratospheric society, or a cave system society? Why?
8. Big spoon or little spoon?
9. Can you separate art from the artist? Should you?
10. What's more important: a good story or a good argument?

Thoughts?

1. Thoughts on gender?
2. Thoughts on furries?
3. Feelings on cereal?
4. How do you feel about spreadsheets?
5. Thoughts on holidays?
6. Thoughts on sex?
7. Thoughts on weddings?

Identity and Labels

1. If you know it, what's your Myers-Briggs type?
2. Name a fictional character that has similar personality to you.
3. Do you like taking personality tests? If so, why?
4. Do you like being labeled?
5. What super power matches your personality?
6. What super power would you want?
7. Which classical element do you feel like?
8. Are you good at telling stories?
9. What is the strangest thing you do to procrastinate?
10. Which cryptid do you most closely identify with?
11. List some TV Tropes that apply to you.

Reflective

1. What would you most want to be reincarnated as?
2. What do you think you would be reincarnated as?
3. Are you a leader or a follower?
4. Do you stare at people in public spaces? Do people stare at you in public spaces?
5. What's your greatest fear?
6. What will you never get used to?
7. What's on your bucket list?
8. How is the way you type unique?
9. Who's your role model?
10. Do you like your name?
11. Are you weird? If so, what makes you weird?
12. Which one of your problems is the most ridiculous?
13. Do you like how tall you are?
14. Do you have habits or beliefs that are pretentious? What are they?
15. What is something you want to begin learning? 
16. What is something you know too much about?
17. What is something you don't know enough about?
18. In what ways do you differ from your parents?
19. How do you feel about getting older?

Introspective

Life Trajectory

1. What are your life goals?
2. What are you working towards?
3. What's one thing you want to do before you die?
4. What's something you want to do, but haven't? Why haven't you done it?
5. What have you given up on?
6. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
7. Do you think you're on the right path?
8. Are you a successful person?
9. What made you proud this year?
10. How would you like to change going forward?
11. What's the most ideal future you can imagine for yourself?

Change & Youth

1. What was your personality like as an elementary schooler?
2. What about yourself would your middle school self be most surprised by?
3. What do you miss most about being a kid?
4. If you could change any one thing about how you were raised, what would you change?
5. What do you blame your parents for?
6. Do you think of yourself as an adult yet? If not, when will you?
7. If you could speak to your past self, what would you say, and when would you say it?
8. When did you first start becoming who you are now?
9. What were you wrong about?
10. What event has changed you most in life?
11. If you could, what one memory would you erase?
12. What's your happiest memory?
13. What is one thing you would change about yourself if you could?
14. How are you working to improve yourself?

Emotions

1. Are you happier now than you were this time last year?
2. Describe a particular moment in which you were happy.
3. Do you ever enjoy being sad?
4. When's the last time you got angry?
5. Are you afraid? Why or why not?
6. What are you stressed out about?
7. How do you cope with stress?
8. What emotion do you experience the least?
9. When do you feel that most at peace?
10. What gives you hope?

Thoughts

1. What are you thinking about most of the time?
2. What do you dream about?
3. Thoughts on productivity?
4. Are you religious? Why or why not?
5. Do you find your desires more troublesome or more motivating?
6. When do you feel most alive?
7. What does it mean to be smart?
8. Is impermanence comforting or discomforting?
9. What makes life worth living?
10. What's something you wish you'd think about more?

Ideology

1. Do your actions follow an ideology or does your ideology follow your actions?
2. Is it more important to help yourself, help your family, help your society, or help the world?
3. Are you more concerned with truth, beauty, or goodness?
4. Where do your priorities lie?
5. Are your actions important?
6. Do you engage in activism?
7. How have your political views changed over time?
8. Where does your moral compass come from?
9. Summarize your world view in one sentence.
10. Is there something unique about your view of the world?
11. What should the goal of education be?
12. What are the features of a good conversation?
13. When is someone no longer human?

Differences and Social Impact

1. How is the way that you talk different from other people?
2. Do you talk about yourself or other people more often?
3. How approachable are you?
4. What does it take for you to open up about yourself?
5. Do people have a good impression of you?
6. What's an aspect of yourself that you never talk about?
7. What do you find more difficult than most people?
8. Do you internalize or externalize your pain?
9. Do you exert a positive influence on the world?
10. What do you not worry about that other people do?
11. Do you think there's a place for everyone in this world? Do you have a place?
12. How will you be remembered?

Mental Health

1. How true are your answers when someone asks "How are you?"
2. What's wrong with you?
3. What lie do you repeatedly tell yourself?
4. What will you never get over?
5. What do you regret?
6. What have you forgiven yourself for recently?
7. Current existential fear?
8. How do you deal with uncertainty?
9. Do you experience imposter syndrome?
10. Are you good at asking for help?

Personality

1. How does your projected personality differ from your underlying one?
2. How has your personality changed over time?
3. Are you someone that "tells it like it is"?
4. Do you stand up for yourself?
5. Do you like making decisions?
6. Are you a private person?
7. How do you respond to criticism?
8. What do you do when you're lonely?
9. What makes you interesting?
10. Are you a good person?
11. Are you a funny person?
12. Are you cute?
13. If you had to be someone else, who would you want to be?
14. What are your flaws?
15. When do you feel most confident?
16. What is something about your personality that you're proud of?
17. What sort of person are you at your core?
18. Do you like who you are?

Depths

1. How do you feel about secrets?
2. How does lying make you feel?
3. What's a question you wish people would ask you? Answer it.
4. What's the deepest secret you're willing to reveal as an answer to this question?
5. What kinds of questions make you uncomfortable?