The worst red flags, according to the votes

A red flag list that isn’t just someone’s opinion

The red flag lists you find online are almost always one person’s opinion. This one comes from a game: in The Worse of Two, each player sees two behaviors and picks the worse one. Each duel moves a score; thousands of duels make a ranking.

Right now, “Hitting your dog” tops the 183 ranked behaviors, ahead of “Dumping your pet right before vacation” and “Putting your partner down in front of your friends”.

What “red flag” means, and how it differs from a green flag or a black flag: see the flag guide.

The top 20 red flags

“Worse than 95%” means 95% of ranked behaviors were judged less serious than this one. The ranks among women and among men are calculated from each group’s votes.

1. 1

   Hitting your dog

   Ranked 1st. Worse than 100% of behaviors · 532 duels · 1st among women, 1st among men

2. 2

   Dumping your pet right before vacation

   Ranked 2nd. Worse than 99% of behaviors · 636 duels · 2nd among women, 2nd among men

3. 3

   Putting your partner down in front of your friends

   Ranked 3rd. Worse than 99% of behaviors · 273 duels · 3rd among women, 5th among men

4. 4

   Forbidding your partner from seeing their friends

   Ranked 4th. Worse than 98% of behaviors · 383 duels · 4th among women, 4th among men

5. 5

   Driving drunk

   Ranked 5th. Worse than 98% of behaviors · 685 duels · 8th among women, 7th among men

6. 6

   Voting far right

   Ranked 6th. Worse than 97% of behaviors · 718 duels · 5th among women, 6th among men

7. 7

   Filming strangers on the street to roast them on TikTok

   Ranked 7th. Worse than 97% of behaviors · 646 duels · 6th among women, 9th among men

8. 8

   Starting a GoFundMe for a fake illness

   Ranked 8th. Worse than 96% of behaviors · 349 duels · 7th among women, 3rd among men

9. 9

   Leaving hate comments on people’s posts

   Ranked 9th. Worse than 96% of behaviors · 782 duels · 11th among women, 11th among men

10. 10

    Breaking stuff when they get mad

    Ranked 10th. Worse than 95% of behaviors · 319 duels · 12th among women, 13th among men

11. 11

    Being an incel

    Ranked 11th. Worse than 95% of behaviors · 821 duels · 15th among women, 24th among men

12. 12

    Being rude to waiters

    Ranked 12th. Worse than 94% of behaviors · 713 duels · 17th among women, 8th among men

13. 13

    Throwing trash out the car window

    Ranked 13th. Worse than 93% of behaviors · 482 duels · 22nd among women, 21st among men

14. 14

    Giving the silent treatment for a week as punishment

    Ranked 14th. Worse than 93% of behaviors · 347 duels · 13th among women, 12th among men

15. 15

    Saying all your exes are crazy

    Ranked 15th. Worse than 92% of behaviors · 414 duels · 14th among women, 34th among men

16. 16

    Judging everyone on their looks

    Ranked 16th. Worse than 92% of behaviors · 683 duels · 9th among women, 26th among men

17. 17

    Taking credit for other people’s work

    Ranked 17th. Worse than 91% of behaviors · 800 duels · 23rd among women, 20th among men

18. 18

    Always blaming everyone else

    Ranked 18th. Worse than 91% of behaviors · 728 duels · 24th among women, 17th among men

19. 19

    Peeing on the toilet seat and not wiping it

    Ranked 19th. Worse than 90% of behaviors · 605 duels · 28th among women, 10th among men

20. 20

    Not paying child support

    Ranked 20th. Worse than 90% of behaviors · 413 duels · 21st among women, 14th among men

Red flags according to women, according to men

The same ranking, recalculated with only each group’s votes. The sharpest disagreement is over “Voting right-wing”: women judge it much more serious, by 315 points. The gaps by age and the most divisive topics are detailed in the Observatory.

Red flags by theme

Behaviors are grouped by theme when they fit one. Here are the most serious in each: social, work, money, digital life, food, hygiene, transportation, politics, and sports.

At the other end: what almost nobody finds serious

The bottom of the ranking matters as much as the top. “Voting left-wing” is the behavior least often picked as the worse one. A behavior that loses almost all its duels isn’t a green flag for all that: for players, it’s simply harmless.

1. 183

   Voting left-wing

   Ranked 183rd. Worse than 0% of behaviors · 690 duels · 183rd among women, 182nd among men

2. 182

   Finishing everyone else’s plate

   Ranked 182nd. Worse than 1% of behaviors · 806 duels · 182nd among women, 183rd among men

3. 181

   Hoarding free samples

   Ranked 181st. Worse than 1% of behaviors · 865 duels · 181st among women, 180th among men

4. 180

   Eating cold pizza for breakfast

   Ranked 180th. Worse than 2% of behaviors · 701 duels · 175th among women, 169th among men

5. 179

   Peeing in the shower

   Ranked 179th. Worse than 2% of behaviors · 767 duels · 174th among women, 178th among men

6. 178

   Calling without texting first

   Ranked 178th. Worse than 3% of behaviors · 99 duels · 167th among women, 172nd among men

7. 177

   Voting far left

   Ranked 177th. Worse than 3% of behaviors · 832 duels · 173rd among women, 153rd among men

8. 176

   Being an esports fan

   Ranked 176th. Worse than 4% of behaviors · 688 duels · 164th among women, 179th among men

9. 175

   Wearing Crocs

   Ranked 175th. Worse than 4% of behaviors · 948 duels · 168th among women, 177th among men

10. 174

    Eating plain pasta, no sauce

    Ranked 174th. Worse than 5% of behaviors · 673 duels · 179th among women, 163rd among men

What this ranking measures, and what it doesn’t

It measures a collective judgment on everyday behaviors — hygiene, money, work, online life — often tongue-in-cheek. It doesn’t measure danger. Behavior that truly hurts someone — control, humiliation, violence — can’t be settled by a vote: the self-assessment tools (violence meter, consent meter) and helplines are there for that.

Only behaviors that have been in at least 40 duels are ranked here: below that, a score mostly reflects the luck of the first votes. Prompts in the “Love & Sex” category, played between adults, aren’t published. Players are a self-selected sample: these numbers describe the site’s community, not the French population. The math is explained in the methodology.

Move the ranking

Every duel decided moves the scores: playing The Worse of Two feeds this page. The articles take a closer look at these numbers — including what men and women don’t judge the same way at work. To find out where you stand yourself, there’s the Red Flag Test. And the full ranking can be filtered by gender, age and theme.