alterae

chell

@alterae

🏳️‍⚧️

  • it/its, she/her

former government employee, CS major, ski lift operator, and summer camp counselor. currently shooting for EMT certification

log inask
homepage (old)
alterae.github.io/
github
github.com/alterae
other homepage (largely deprecated)
alterae.srht.site/
homepage
alterae.online/
reposted writings, something blog-ish
alterae.prose.sh/
bluesky
bsky.app/profile/alterae.online
dreamwidth
alterae.dreamwidth.org/
fediverse
myfriendsare.gay/alterae
fediverse (again!)
tech.lgbt/@alterae
tumblr
www.tumblr.com/alternatealterae
twitter
twitter.com/_alterae
alterae
@alterae
kda
@kda
folly
@folly

every day this week i have seen a different post about this site being ubiquitously tech people. and idk about the larger cohost cohort, i don't have access to any larger numbers or data, but i don't understand this concept? I don't work in tech and I don't think more than 1 out of 10 people on my feed do. is this a true thing that I am just in the middle of a non-representative sample for, or is it just a narrative, repeated, that has been taken as gospel? it feels like the sort of thing that could serve as a folk demography... but for all i know it is a reality that I am merely not privy to

Scampir
@Scampir

reporting in as a bureaucrat, and not a tech person!

CERESUltra
@CERESUltra

Oh thank FUCK I'm not the only one feeling this

It's been grating on me as well, to the point where I almost wrote a chost about it earlier today before I got distracted by book deliveries and sweet & sour chicken. Not to say that any of us are necessarily outside of sample bias, but the overwhelming majority of people I follow on here and see rechosted onto my feed are artists and writers. I write. My Mainline job is basically a glorified car mechanic, and I try to acquire physical copies of books because for some reason it's the only way I can read them quickly. I am not a techie. Most of the people I know are not techies. Even among the techies I know, half of them would not choose to use that as a label for themselves, nor do they necessarily deserve it.

That tech people bit also usually has "queer furry" tailing behind it as well, and again, maybe it's just that artists are who I gravitate towards. I find it irritating in the same way.

Funnily enough it might also be sample bias in the reverse, where a lot of the furry people in the tech scene just assume every furry is in tech because they themselves are in tech, and think it's endemic when it really isn't.

RoxannaRachnid
@RoxannaRachnid

I'm so tech illiterate I actively count against the amount of tech knowledgeable on this site.

irisjaycomics
@irisjaycomics
This post contains 18+ content. You can view it if you're over 18.
log in
kda
@kda

Lawyer here!

I literally changed majors half way through what was initially a compsci degree because I can't code, lmao.

alterae
@alterae

i can code (i’m pretty decent at it actually) but i quit being a CS major because working in tech would kill me, and i’d much rather be doing literally anything other than desk work

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @folly's post:

toad
@toad

i dont work in tech but i have a vague impression that an outsized portion of the chosts i see are from tech people. i think i’d be equally surprised if tech people outnumbered non-tech people on here and if tech people were not overrepresented on here compared to their proportion of the general public

login to reply
ninecoffees
@ninecoffees

Yeah, good question! So:

  1. They make some great posts time to time. Like about a 10:1 ratio of tech posts to good posts I enjoy. I don't need to understand everything they're saying, I'm sure most ppl following me actually don't care when I talk about specific niche subjects too.

  2. Some of them don't post often so when I see their posts again, I don't really remember who they are. I'm not really paying attention to users or scrolling through their profiles to see whether I should unfollow them or not

  3. In the end, the tags I enjoy don't get a lot of posts or I'm literally the only one posting in those tags. I like logging onto cohost and seeing new stuff on my feed, even if it's not the stuff I particularly understand. Prior to following them, my cohost feed used to barely move, if at all.

login to reply
thaliarchus
@thaliarchus

Impressionistically, from my bookmarks feed, I’d say it does indeed feel like there’s a higher proportion of tech/STEM types here than some other places. I wouldn’t say that that characterises the people I follow, though.

The stark variation in the posting rate at different times of the European day also suggests a greater geographical concentration.

login to reply
caro
@caro

I feel like a lot of people saying this are from the site's Early Days where people were showing off fancy css tricks, so they're still following a lot of tech people from that boom.

login to reply
caro
@caro

there's also a broad definition of what counts as a "tech person"- i don't program for a living, i don't know how to database, but I know my way around GML and HTML and I technically work at a 'tech company', so depending on how you structure your census people like me could fall either way

login to reply
toothandshore
@toothandshore

i feel like even the tech or tech adjacent posters i follow or see are also frequently other things posters, though i guess i've curated my experience here to lean that way (as someone who does sort of do tech for a day job but wants to see art and creatures)

login to reply
Renpona
@Renpona

since discoverability is limited on this site and there's no algorithm, everyone's experience is different and it's impossible for anyone to have an overall sense of what the site population is like

if you come from tech circles and think tech stuff is interesting, it's easy to follow mostly tech people and then only see tech chosts

That said, I wouldn't be surprised. Cohost, by design, actively rejects appealing to the average person who uses social media, and I wouldn't be shocked if there was some demographic skew in who likes that. Especially since the site itself has a lot of technical sore points that make it more difficult to use

login to reply

in reply to @CERESUltra's post:

in reply to @kda's post:

Pinned Tags