Beehaw's Demographics survey of June 2023!

Beehaw Support@beehaw.org – 64 points – 1 years ago

Compiling this data was not as hard as I expected, let's go through the data and the shiny graphs!

Age of Beeple

Most are above 24! Seems we got an older average age compared to a lot of social media. It would be interesting to see how many came here with experiences from independent forums before Reddit.

Where Beeple reside

This one's a big graph. Though we can notice most people are from the US. Would be nice to see more countries represented though a big part of it likely has to do with language. (You will need to open the big graph in another tab, it's too big to show properly.)

Gender identity of Beeple

So, as expected, mostly men. However, less than expected which is nice to see. There should be outreach to at least equalize this.

Sexual orientation of Beeple

This is kinda surprising. It seems we managed to get a lot more LGBTQ+ people than expected considering most of you all come from Reddit - so this is nice to see. This is most likely because of our focus on a safe space.

Whiteness of Beeple

As expected, mostly white which is unfortunate. I think there's outreach to be done in that regard as well.

Neurodivergence of Beeple

We seem to have a really surprising amount of neurodivergent people! Definitely nice to see.

Beeple with disabilities

I.. have no idea how to interpret this data so I'll just say, shiny graph.

Beeple's awareness of the Fediverse

Most knew about the fediverse but still a good 20% had not heard about it so glad to see you all managed to find your way here!

How Beeple have been dealing with Beehaw

It seems most people feel relatively confident in their ability to use Beehaw and most people seem to enjoy it. That makes me really happy to see. Feels rewarding, feels good.

Conclusion

I wanna thank everyone for the feedback about the survey and its questions - we'll do better next time! I'm glad we did this survey because it shows the areas to work on in terms of outreach! Thank you all for your participation!

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As an aside: it’s also a little short sighted to assume that bucketing people in a “white” group means they aren’t diverse in their own right. I’d imagine there is quite a diverse makeup of “white people” on here-- people from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere who all have very different perspectives, cultures, and norms that they bring to the table.

this is the sort of sensitivity and white fragility--the idea that we as white people are diverse too, damnit!--that makes me think it genuinely is "unfortunate" our community is even as white as the survey suggests (and it's not that white, to be clear!). respectfully: the "diversity of opinion" between various white people in the world is not nearly as interesting as you think it is on a lot of issues, and on those issues i'm not super interested as a non-white person in getting the "diversity" of five opinions from five white people with the same privileges just because they also happen to be from five different majority-white countries.

A couple of things: It sounds like you are assuming I am white.

This response doesn't seem all that nice or inclusive. Calling someone with an, ironically, slightly different opinion than you (read: diverse), fragile and sensitive seems to be counter to the community you are trying to build here. Right? Am I crazy?

I think we need to strive to have an environment where we can have open, honest, and sometimes uncomfortable conversations about all of this stuff. Being dismissive of it as "white fragility" isn't productive or helpful.

As I said in my initial comment, I understand the intent of that section of the report, and I think more diversity is better than homogeneity, but the way that information was conveyed, and almost specifically that information, seems unwelcoming. For what its worth, I very intentionally joined Beehaw vs any other instance because I truly appreciate what you are trying to do here. So hopefully you take this in the manner it is intended: (hopefully) constructive criticism and food for thought.

A couple of things: It sounds like you are assuming I am white.

if you are not: you sound completely indistinguishable from every white poster on here who thinks the idea of not being the center of attention is some sort of attack on their identity. the fact that you immediately jump to "well, you're assuming" does not help you beat the allegations here either.

I think we need to strive to have an environment where we can have open, honest, and sometimes uncomfortable conversations about all of this stuff. Being dismissive of it as “white fragility” isn’t productive or helpful.

very bluntly: this is white fragility and you are again demonstrating to me that maybe the "unfortunate" phrasing is actually the correct one here despite all the ire it's drawn. if your "diversity" is when five white people in a room have opinions and those five white people happen to be from different countries and have distinct culture that's essentially just white people jerking themselves off. there are a million other spaces that cater to that online, so if you're interested in that i'd recommend going literally anywhere else.

if your “diversity” is when five white people in a room have opinions and those five white people happen to be from different countries and have distinct culture that’s essentially just white people jerking themselves off.

Can you elaborate on that? Like, I honestly think an American, a Russian and an Albanian having different opinions would be considered diverse. Aren’t those vastly different cultures despite the fact that they’re white?

Same thing goes for other skin colors as well. What you’re saying in my opinion is akin to calling Japanese and Chinese people “the same”. Or Persian and Arabs.

And also,

that’s essentially just white people jerking themselves off.

Please, is this the language we’re using here? The person above is clearly not trying to be a white supremacist, neither were they indecent. You could have used a better phrasing.

we've had a pretty productive convo in the Discord about this so to quickly summarize for non-IronTwo people since i think my wording there captures better what i'm getting at:

the beliefs of europeans and english-speaking peoples are some of the most hegemonically represented opinions in the world. we recognize there are incredibly distinct cultural beliefs between even these groups--but for our purposes we're not interested in the granularity of those. overwhelmingly that granularity is already represented everywhere else and in almost every conversation we have here just by virtue of the language we're using and constituency we serve. we don't need to go out of our way to find those opinions. we do for non-white opinions, voices, and community members, though; and on many issues there's opinion granularity that can't be found just by talking to europeans and english-speaking peoples.

I agree. I don't see the response of the mod (alyaza) as being productive. I feel even more alienated now. All i wanted to do was be in an environment that welcomes people and conversation and encourage productive kind conversation. This thread feels like none of that.