Besides the fascinating arts, science and historical posts that I’ve discovered on Mastodon so far, another tremendously insightful and fun aspect of the platform are the polls and surveys.
One of the very first polls that I stumbled on asked about the age demographics of users. With nearly 2,000 participants, I was surprised to see such a large segment of users in my age group:
- 25 and under – 9%
- 26-40 – 39%
- 41-60 – 45%
- 61 and older – 8%
Another poll, with over 11,000 participants, asked how many times folks have been infected with COVID-19. Again, I was surprised to see nearly half had not been infected at all! (Yours truly has had it twice.)
- Not yet – 48%
- Once – 42%
- Twice – 8%
- 3 times or more – 2%
There was a fun one that asked, “How many physical games (board, card, dexterity, tabletop, roleplay, etc.) have you got in your collection right now?” A little less scientific with only 56 participants, I was still surprised that nearly 60% have over 100 games in their homes!
- None – I don’t need any games – 2%
- 1-25 – 9%
- 26-50 – 13%
- 51-100 – 20%
- 101 or more – 57%
After getting comfortable with how polls worked, I decided to try my own. My first asked what everyone had planned on a Friday night. Again, surprising. So many homebodies! And one guy said that Friday night is almost always homemade pizza night… “sauce is already simmering away, smells like the weekend!” Oh, yummy!
- Cozy night at home: hobbies, books music – 69%
- Out and about: fun around town – 8%
- Catchup: cleaning, errands, laundry – 15%
- Still deciding… – 8%
I discovered that over 61% were totally vegan for Thanksgiving (of course, I used a content warning for food), that 39% believe that 4 am could be both morning and night (with 34% claiming that 4 am is decidedly in the middle of the night), and a split of 42% to talk to a grandparent once a week and only a few times a year.
Along the more professional lines of discovering peoples’ thoughts on Giving Tuesday, 61% said that they’ll give to charity but not on the day, while 25% would definitely be making a gift on Giving Tuesday.
With another curiosity about the announcement of Google Surveys being shut down in November (2022), I thankfully discovered that 57% have never used Google surveys and 29% were not really sure if they’d used them in the past. So, no need to panic.
If you’d like to hop on board with Mastodon and try it out, here are a few options:
- Go to joinmastodon.org and pick a server that interests you. It doesn’t really matter which one you choose. You can still see all the content from other people on other servers. And, you can always change later. Once you create your account, search for me at: @charityjen@mindly.social
- If you don’t see a server that speaks to you, you can join mine which is mindly.social. Here is an invitation. (Note: registration might be temporarily disabled because of the influx of new accounts.) Once your account is set up, you can find me @charityjen@mindly.social.
Hope to see you on the Fediverse!