Please Contact me at GenuineQuestionAlex@gmail.com for:
Interest in connecting with another participant who asked or answered a question
Questions / Comments / Suggestions about this project / site (I am a n00b)
Stay in touch and learn where this project might go next!
Hi! My name is Alex Ezorsky, I'm a filmmaker, repairman, artist, local Somervillian, and a stubbornly curious person.
For nearly a year I have been working on this idea of a Q&A conflict mediation performance art piece. I have spoken with conflict management professionals, psychologists, and friends and come up with this small step. Below are guides (that I link to in my google forms) which I've created based on my research in order to help in this effort:
Q: What lead you to create a project that connects people who normally wouldn't speak?
A: I was raised in Cambridge, MA by two loving progressives in a safe and fairly homogenous liberal community and yet I still found that fear and anger commonly created walls between people within my group and especially between mine and groups outside liberal Cambridge. Despite absorbing much of the learned fear of "the other" my curiosity about groups which I did not deeply interact with has always outweighed my fear and anger. I have always been highly in touch with my inner child and defended the innocence that comes with a childlike curiosity. I believe curiosity is a guiding light within us all that never goes out and is now more necessary than ever as social media and those who profit from fear and isolation have turned up the heat and turned down the light.
Q: Who are you to suggest I empathize with someone who has hurt me or my loved ones?
A: I understand that there are many legitimate reasons why people may choose not to engage with groups they feel disconnected from or harmed by and I understand that my own privileged background and demographic make it easier for me to approach difficult conversations with genuine curiosity. While the ultimate goal is to use a growing collective understanding to remove the need for defensiveness and anonymity I understand defense is a natural instinct behaving in it's own way in the name of love for one's self and community. While this project intends to create a space safe enough for anyone to feel openness to hearing "the other" I understand it will not be universally easy and judge no-one for walking away.
Q: How is this not just AskReddit except highly moderated by one person?
A: The original idea for this project was an exclusively live and in person collective journaling project. The plan was that I alone would read the questions and answers written by visitors to other curious visitors, acting as a human interface to replace the online one so often used in good faith to produce flaming and hateful outcomes. After being accepted to participate in FIGMENT 2026 and getting serious about the design it became clear to me that some form of digital storage would be very helpful for question askers who wished to see the resulting answers. The main aspect of this project is still the live presence and I strongly suggest live, face to face cross-group conversations over digital ones to anyone who feels ready. As ironic as it is to complain on a discussion website about how bad the internet is for discussing intense and sensitive topics I do believe this project differs from other online forums in the following ways:
Also exists as a live in person exhibit
Not a for-profit arbitrary-engagement-maxing platform
Embedded coaching process - While some moderators on Reddit may infuse guidance into their rules, Genuine-Question focuses a significant amount on how that guidance is framed, delivered, affects the user.
Single reply - Unlike forums which allow for actual debates and discussions online, Genuine Question intentionally slows the process of follow-up questions to encourage answers which need no reply, those being personal stories.
Thank you so much for taking the time to be part of this!
🙏