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!
What is ‘white’ exactly and why is it unfortunate?
Where I am from, we don’t make these distinctions on the color of a person. That and the fact that unless we are quantifying somehow the ‘shade’ of the skin color it’s impossible to make any serious category.
I’ve always thought that the way americans divide people by color is really dumb and very antiquated, even bordering immorality.
I wouldn’t bring that for future statistics. I don’t understand why race is important in a medium where we can’t see each others.
‘White’ is an artificially constructed privileged racial caste predicated on and necessitating anti-Black violence.
It is a legal and social ingroup whose borders expand and contract as needed to preserve itself.
Its over representation is “unfortunate” in so far as any lack of diversity-of-experience will make for a less rich community for all involved, but specifically having membership skew towards the more privileged members of a hierarchy can damage that community by having it tend toward obviousness of how its own privileges and position in society can affect its worldview.
A member from the community might, for example, say they “don’t see race” and not understand how that position itself upholds white supremacy.
They might suggest racism can be solved by not talking about race and get no pushback from a community whose members by-and-large have no experience of being subject to racial discrimination themselves.
Generally, there are things we all don’t know we don’t know and the more similar those around us are to us, the more overlap there is likely to be in those things.
A diverse community is less likely to be oblivious to its own lack of knowledge.
I’m white, and I just took that to mean they’d like to see more diversity. As in, it’s not unfortunate that members are white so much as unfortunate they haven’t attracted more diverse representation (if I’m right, I do think it could have been worded better).
And to be clear, in contexts like this, no one is dividing people “by color,” but by experience. While race may be largely imaginary biologically, it has been and continues to be a major variable related to a person’s economics, education, housing, etc. due to the external factors that do treat race as significant (i.e., as an American, we have historically and systemically discriminated against non-white people in pretty much every facet of civic and social life).
That stuff matters to…a lot of people. But it’s not at the expense of white people–we can all be happy to see diversity in our communities. It’s a net gain for everyone.
Yes - I’m white as well. It’s more so that I want to see more diverse representation because I believe that a majority white (also majority men) tends to push out people of colour as they will be a minority group.
For example, if a thread about abortion (an issue that affects mostly women) was filled with men talking about it - it’s unlikely that a women would want to comment there. I believe the same would apply with a majority of people being white in a thread about BLM for example.
I think it could’ve been worded better but I didn’t really think about the wording of these much at all.
I understand.
I guess part of me wanted to get away from the same pervasive US politics that’s plaguing reddit. I had hopes that maybe we wanted to build a less american community and more inclusive of other points of view but it seems we are going to fall back to the same thing here.
i hope you understand this but: asking whether people are white or not isn’t US politics, it might literally be the single most important sociological question in the world because whether you’re white or not for the vast majority of living human beings immediately predetermines a huge chunk of your status globally
How does wanting to increase diversity result in fewer points of view?
IMO the interesting part is that this is not American politics. Ironically out of all the western countries, the US actually talks about it the most, but the legacy of colonialism and white supremacy is still taken as the default in much of the world. Most folks in Europe are quite blind to it since it’s really taken as the default. It’s a pretty global issue, but very few places do people openly confront it.
Yeah, sorry, I gave an American example because I’m American, but Alyaza said it best… race and its significance is not an exclusively American phenomenon by a long shot. But I sympathize with American fatigue, we do dominate the discussion a lot 😀
That’s a lot of words for you to say you literally have zero understanding how the lived experience of people of color is very different.
Beehaw wants to be better than reddit, which was mostly straight white men voices at the detriment of everyone else. It’s really dishonest as even in the EU the loved experience of people of color is different.
It’s really ignorant and narrow-minded of you as white people are a minority worldwide but the majority in wealth and tech. A space that celebrates people of color is rare and why oh fucking why do you HAVE to make it about you?
i absolutely promise that your country does, whether you are conscious of that or not. whiteness, in any case, is a social construct (and even if it wasn’t, race and ethnicity are also basically arbitrary) so you’re not going to ever get a singular, satisfactory answer on this. the whole point at a sociological level is that it’s an amorphous, hegemony-based category that transcends political barriers and basically divides the world into “haves” and “have-nots”. it doesn’t make sense because it can’t ever, it’s arbitrary, and it’s not a “serious” category because it’s not really intended to be.
unfortunately, on that basis it’s also the single most important (and unambiguous) descriptor of one’s racial identity in a global context–so we’re kind of locked into using it here because it is actually really important to know what our community looks like, and we don’t literally want to use American census groupings.
So are you saying 23andme is lying about my ancestry
Honestly? Yes, kinda. Ancestry is a lot more a cultural phenomenon than a genetic one.
I meant that there is no official sanctioned discrimination (but of course there is racism in my country). If I remember correctly, in the US you have documents where you have to write your ethnicity or the color of your skin. This makes me think that there is an active effort by the government to categorize people based on the color of their skin. This for me is immoral.
It also is ridiculous because there is no definition of what ‘white’ is or how much white is white. There must be like thousands of shades of skin colors but no definition of what white is.
And I’m saying this because there also countries you may call white in Europe that are dirt poor and clearly in the have-nots bag so this ‘whites have’ and the rest ‘don’t have’ is a very american way of understanding this.
Again, just hoped for a less americanized point of view.
Uh, outside of census data, no, I don’t think ethnicity or colour of skin is in us documents. The discrimination does not come from law targeting based on ethnicity but usually the characteristics of the social group that are inherited from segregation and slavery.
Also, yes, there is no definition of white, it’s why we phrased it “do you consider yourself white?”.
It’s not as bad now, but these used to be on things like IDs/driver’s licenses and birth certificates. My parents (both born in the late 60s, one white, one biracial) have the races of both parents listed (and in the case of my maternal grandfather, still listed as ‘Negro’) on their birth certificates, while mine from the 90s does not, IIRC.
One area of official documentation that absolutely does still are tickets from cops, whether traffic or otherwise, as every traffic ticket I’ve gotten in my life has listed my race. (Amusing for me as a biracial person because I’ve gotten three different ones listed over the years, but I digress.) There’s still things in the legal system that very explicitly call out race still.
Oof, that’s awful. I didn’t know.
For recent tickets, is it actually to make sure that demographics are accounted for with police action in the hopes of countering racial profiling? As for the legal system, is it about asking a jury to be of a race similar to the defendant (is that a thing? I’m not too familiar)?
I’m not sure, but I would guess that it’s for the first, at the very least. At least for my traffic tickets, it was not something asked of me, but was written down by the ticketing officer. I have no experience with the actual trial side, but again, your assumption is mine there as well.
In this context it’s mainly shorthand for privilege because white includes most European ancestry. I can’t speak for everyone here but I absolutely love diversity and I’m thrilled we have such good representation on so many levels but this is a good potential target for improvement.
As an American, there isn’t any official paperwork I’ve ever seen in the US that requests, let alone requires, my skin tone or race, with the sole exception of the US census and the occasional optional and anonymous EEOC questionnaire that some job applications have, neither of which record anything to do with skin color or appearance.
Because people bring their personal experiences, histories, and identities to every discussion. Having a folks with a range of different experiences and identities contributing, imo, greatly benefits discussions; I want to hear multiple perspectives on an issue (within reason of course - I’m not interested in engaging with racists, transphobes, fascists, etc., for obvious reasons). If a community is very one-sided (ex. Mostly white folks, mostly men, and so on) how can I curate a well-balanced perspective on a given topic? I only know what I know, and if everybody around me is coming from a similar background and we’re all saying the same shit - what kind of discussion is that?
Good point, but then you are generalizing about ‘white’ men like they are all the same and they all have the same point of view.
And by saying that it’s unfortunate that the majority of users are ‘white’ it looks as if they wished these users weren’t here.
I’m a cis white man and I felt no offence when reading that. I also embrace diversity and I’m curious why you don’t?
We could build a community of men, each having a unique points of view, but none of them would be a woman’s.
Well said! Hope you don’t mind if I steal this for future use, I think it illustrates the point very well. Could be useful in some real-life interactions, I’m thinking.
Go ahead :)
The interesting thing about words is that we made them all up. Different people feel very differently about certain words in certain contexts. Slang and vernacular are perfect examples of this - we learn how people are using existing words in new ways all the time, and we adjust appropriately. What people don’t always recognize, however, is that words fall in and out of fashion constantly and how they are applied are also cultural artifacts. Prolific artists, famous movies, and important political figures all shape the way we interpret specific words - the cultural zeitgeist controls more than we are often aware.
Rather than assuming that unfortunate means it must be negative, because that’s the experience you’ve had when that word was used around you, I’d suggest asking questions and assuming good faith. You could ask what do you mean, when you use the word unfortunate before jumping to conclusions. Perhaps English isn’t the posters first language, or perhaps English in the country they are from use the word unfortunate in a very different way. Questions and good faith, rather than assumptions and escalation can quickly solve any questions you have and everyone leaves happy.
I think this is also a perfect example of why diversity is so amazing to be around and experience because you get exposed to so many more ways to utilize language, so many different backgrounds, and so many diverse points of view 😄
That’s true. I don’t think all white folks, or men, or any other category of people is a monolith - but just that hearing, for example, a woman’s POV - especially a Black woman’s POV, or a trans woman’s POV - on gender disparity in sports is a voice I really want to hear in that discussion, since those folks might have a very specific take on the topic. Even if everyone else in the discussion is a man - and I assume they WILL be men from a wide range of cultures, language communities, sexual orientations, etc. - still, none of them can bring the particular nuance that (in this example) a woman can.
I could get a lot more political on this, but I think that’s really the heart of the issue. I believe admins are saying “we have a majority group here in these ways, and while that’s not unexpected, it’s unfortunate that we’re pretty one-sided in those categories of folks right now - so we want to try and change that.”
However, I want to acknowledge that the tendency to single out white people and men, in particular, is kind of a thing right now, which - speaking from my lived experience as a white person - can feel real bad in the immediate moment. Nobody wants to feel unwelcome or like their existence is problematic. Unfortunately, the world is set up in ways where certain groups of folks (usually white, usually men) are repeatedly asked their opinion on things, or given the power to make decisions over the lives of people from completely different backgrounds. Assuming everybody is engaging in good faith, it’s more about making sure everybody has a seat at the table and less about “your very existence is problematic and you should be shunned.” Yes, some people mean that when they say it, but again, that does fuck all to foster a healthy discussion space (again, within reason here - fuck fascists and so on). How tf is a woman (for example), regardless of the diversity of her lived experiences, ever going to be able to speak to men’s mental issues and the crisis of care going on there? Like, a thousand women, all of them from widely different cultures and backgrounds, could never bring the personal nuance necessary to truly discuss that important issue.
Do marginalized people sometimes vent by making sweeping generalizations? Sure. Does that promote open and healthy discussion? No. But not every space is a discussion space, and I try to stay open-minded when I’m met with that energy. People are hurting; sometimes they talk shit. And this goes both ways - folks can end up defensive after hearing people talk shit constantly. That’s completely natural, but I truly don’t think that’s the case here. And Beehaw is young - there’s still lot of growing to do. That this survey was even launched makes me feel like Beehaw’s future is pretty bright.
Not everybody is from wherever you’re from. There’s a chart up there for that, too.
So you don’t care about people from other countries and you want to bring US politics to this site AGAIN like in reddit? Got it.
You seem to go out of your way to read and response to everything in the most argumentative way possible. Basically every comment I see from you is this way. In case you are not aware, people are not obligated to talk to you. Please discover a new way to interact with people.
Thank you for taking time in reading my comments even if you dislike it so much.
I think it matters if the demographics of the site skew strongly from the demographics of the countries represented, as that suggests something about the site might be offputting to certain people.
Though I don’t think this is the case based on the results?
What could be offputting about this? I don’t get it.
Maybe there have been a lot of issues with these people you call ‘white’ here but I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary.
Allowed communities, moderation styles, etc. If you find that certain demographics are not eager to participate it might suggest an issue with moderation.
I don’t think that’s the implication at all. They’re not saying ‘white’ people are bad. They’re expressing concern that they might be hosting a place that isn’t sufficiently welcoming to others.
Yeah, this whole thing REALLY rubbed me the wrong way. I’m going to get shit for this, but it comes off as really sexist, racist and - as someone who is neurodivergent - kinda condescending.
Its the same oppression olympics game they always play. They think the more disenfranchised you are the more legitimacy there is to what you are saying.
Calling it oppression Olympics to desire diverse representation is such an astonishingly bad faith interpretation and self report.
it’s astonishing how frequently the worst takes on our instance come from kbin federation chuds who don’t seem to understand where they are
So many of the comments just read like “white cishet chud is angry that Beehaw wants to be more diverse”. Then again being angry at shit they don’t understand is a default setting for white cishet chuds 🤷
The sad reality is that there is racism in more countries than the US. Even if it’s “just” subconscious racism.
Where are you from if you don’t have to deal with that?