Thanks to everyone who participated in this experiment, along with everyone who offered comments and helped boost it! I feel it now fitting for me to post a "debriefing" of sorts, but I'm not going to individually reply to everyone; I just had too many replies. And that's a good thing. ;-)
I'll use all the hashtags I used for the original poll -- and I'm obviously replying to the original poll -- so hopefully that means anyone who's interested will get to see this.
To all the people saying some form of "Ha ha! You lose!" or "How does it feel to have failed?" or something like that, I will say that I did not lose, nor fail, nor was I "wrong". Remember that I offered no opinion myself on how many votes this poll would get, and I didn't vote on it myself. I was squarely on the fence, but I was curious to find out a) what the rest of the Fediverse thought, and b) how far this would go.
In fact, if I were pressed, I wouldn't have predicted a million votes either. An opinion that was re-enforced when people started pointing out that there are only about a million monthly active users on Mastodon in the first place (many of whom probably don't like polls. Or don't post in English. Or only sign in once every two weeks or so and hence wouldn't see my poll no matter how many times it got boosted).
To be fair, I was talking about the entire Fediverse, though, and that extends beyond just Mastodon... but I also didn't realise that so many people on non-Mastodon platforms would see my poll but not be able to vote in it. So that's something else I learnt.
Having said that, I was expecting more votes than I got. Maybe 50k or 100k. Not to sound unappreciative, of course. I've over-the-moon happy with the results. I've had some posts on Twitter years back that I would consider "viral" at the time, but even the most controversial of those never reached the engagement of this little post on Mastodon... and I had a lot more followers on Twitter than I now have on the Fediverse.
So what this has taught me is that it IS possible to go viral on the Fediverse. But also that it's easier to go viral on the Fediverse with a post *about* the Fediverse. And that's kinda sad, and ties in with some of the other conversations I've had this past week, about how people think that the Fediverse is too serious, too stale, not really a place for just hanging around and chatting about fun stuff. Most people on X and Threads don't spend 90% of their time talking *about* X and Threads. They just take the platform for granted and use it to chat about the stuff they want to chat about. We really need to stop talking about ourselves so much. :-P
I got a few other responses pointing out that it would never happen because it had a lot more voters than boosters, meaning many people voted but didn't boost. That's also an interesting phenomenon. Even on my other polls, I've noticed that if I don't *ask* for boosts, I don't get them. But generally speaking, if *I* vote in a poll, I'll boost it by default because I want my followers to see it too, and I want the person who posted it to get more votes. Because it's nice to get votes in your polls. :)
To the people who replied saying they hope this poll doesn't get anywhere near a million votes, or replied after the fact saying they're glad it didn't, because they don't want things going viral on Mastodon or because Mastodon is explicitly designed for things *not* to go viral, and they don't care about reach or engagement... I know some people feel that way, but I just can't wrap my head around it. I'm a writer, and like all writers, I write to be read. So the idea of writing a public post on social media and not wanting it to be seen by as many people as possible is... almost incomprehensible to me.
Ultimately, I hope that most people on the Fediverse feel the same way I do, because if they don't, then in my opinion, quite frankly the problems I mentioned above will never be resolved.
Sorry to end on a downer. Thank you very very very much again to everyone who supported me by voting, boosting, favouriting, and replying! I learnt a lot about how the Fediverse works.
#Mastodon #poll #Fediverse #polls
Graham Downs /
npub16z…emqty
2024-04-09 05:24:06
in reply to nevent1q…mzyq
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npub16z2v46v637vcyqux8vz2hpzluzrm5tt39l59f5e4p7gn2t8ag4gqremqtyPublished at
2024-04-09 05:24:06Event JSON
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"content": "Thanks to everyone who participated in this experiment, along with everyone who offered comments and helped boost it! I feel it now fitting for me to post a \"debriefing\" of sorts, but I'm not going to individually reply to everyone; I just had too many replies. And that's a good thing. ;-)\n\nI'll use all the hashtags I used for the original poll -- and I'm obviously replying to the original poll -- so hopefully that means anyone who's interested will get to see this.\n\nTo all the people saying some form of \"Ha ha! You lose!\" or \"How does it feel to have failed?\" or something like that, I will say that I did not lose, nor fail, nor was I \"wrong\". Remember that I offered no opinion myself on how many votes this poll would get, and I didn't vote on it myself. I was squarely on the fence, but I was curious to find out a) what the rest of the Fediverse thought, and b) how far this would go.\n\nIn fact, if I were pressed, I wouldn't have predicted a million votes either. An opinion that was re-enforced when people started pointing out that there are only about a million monthly active users on Mastodon in the first place (many of whom probably don't like polls. Or don't post in English. Or only sign in once every two weeks or so and hence wouldn't see my poll no matter how many times it got boosted). \n\nTo be fair, I was talking about the entire Fediverse, though, and that extends beyond just Mastodon... but I also didn't realise that so many people on non-Mastodon platforms would see my poll but not be able to vote in it. So that's something else I learnt.\n\nHaving said that, I was expecting more votes than I got. Maybe 50k or 100k. Not to sound unappreciative, of course. I've over-the-moon happy with the results. I've had some posts on Twitter years back that I would consider \"viral\" at the time, but even the most controversial of those never reached the engagement of this little post on Mastodon... and I had a lot more followers on Twitter than I now have on the Fediverse.\n\nSo what this has taught me is that it IS possible to go viral on the Fediverse. But also that it's easier to go viral on the Fediverse with a post *about* the Fediverse. And that's kinda sad, and ties in with some of the other conversations I've had this past week, about how people think that the Fediverse is too serious, too stale, not really a place for just hanging around and chatting about fun stuff. Most people on X and Threads don't spend 90% of their time talking *about* X and Threads. They just take the platform for granted and use it to chat about the stuff they want to chat about. We really need to stop talking about ourselves so much. :-P\n\nI got a few other responses pointing out that it would never happen because it had a lot more voters than boosters, meaning many people voted but didn't boost. That's also an interesting phenomenon. Even on my other polls, I've noticed that if I don't *ask* for boosts, I don't get them. But generally speaking, if *I* vote in a poll, I'll boost it by default because I want my followers to see it too, and I want the person who posted it to get more votes. Because it's nice to get votes in your polls. :)\n\nTo the people who replied saying they hope this poll doesn't get anywhere near a million votes, or replied after the fact saying they're glad it didn't, because they don't want things going viral on Mastodon or because Mastodon is explicitly designed for things *not* to go viral, and they don't care about reach or engagement... I know some people feel that way, but I just can't wrap my head around it. I'm a writer, and like all writers, I write to be read. So the idea of writing a public post on social media and not wanting it to be seen by as many people as possible is... almost incomprehensible to me.\n\nUltimately, I hope that most people on the Fediverse feel the same way I do, because if they don't, then in my opinion, quite frankly the problems I mentioned above will never be resolved.\n\nSorry to end on a downer. Thank you very very very much again to everyone who supported me by voting, boosting, favouriting, and replying! I learnt a lot about how the Fediverse works.\n\n#Mastodon #poll #Fediverse #polls",
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