Geminaut Age Survey Results
π
2025-11-22
π· Gemini
Recently, there was a poll on BBS about the approximate age of Geminauts. The poll has been open for about three weeks, with 104 responses so far, making this likely the most comprehensive survey of Gemini demographics to date.
First, what do these 104 people represent? Obviously, there is self-selection bias here as all the respondents are active users of bbs.geminispace.org. Looking at the overall capsule activity, BBS has about a hundred people posting and/or commenting per month, so we can say that most of the people currently active on BBS have now responded. This makes the results well-representative of this particular capsule. What about the wider Geminispace, though? The survey excludes anyone who just writes gemlogs or occasionally reads posts on Antenna, i.e., "passive" users. Large hubs like Midnight/Smol Pub, Flounder, and SDF are not necessarily represented at all. I don't think there is any way to accurately estimate the overall ratio of active vs. passive users, but typically online you get about an order of magnitude more passive users compared to active ones. Gemini might be somewhat different given the small size of the community and the builder/explorer mentality. After all, one gets more out of Gemini when actively participating and not just sitting back and lurking.
Other multi-user capsules do not publish active user statistics, but the number of total users is around 2000 on Station and 2500 on Astrobotany, which is roughly comparable to BBS (1500). It is plausible to assume that these other large capsules see active users in the low hundreds, too. For example, there are 240 live plants on Astrobotany, which suggests around 200 active users watering them. This gives us further leeway in viewing this survey as representing a meaningful subset of the overall Geminaut population.
The survey results are as follows:
- 34% of users β a third β are in the 40-50 range. (Including me!) This is the largest bracket of users. I would describe this as the age range most befitting Gemini. Born in 1975-1985, we grew up in the era of 8-bit home computers, listened to screeching modems while dialing into actual BBSes, witnessed first-hand the rise of the Web in the mid-90s, and used Gopher and Usenet during their heyday. And all this in our formative teenage years! I can only speak for myself, but it left quite the mark. At least I have a wealth of nostalgic appreciation for Gemini's flavor of primitive, do-it-yourself internet.
- The 20-40 range represents 40% of users. Furthermore, 40 seems to be the halfway point that splits the user base in roughly equal portions: half are younger than 40, and half older. I think this shows that Gemini appeals not only to the older crowd with experience from the 90s but also to people born in the current millennium. For these users, the web was an established component of life already at a young age. This is total speculation, but perhaps they acutely feel the decline of the modern web, as it is being overrun by commercial interests, social silos, complex software solutions, and lately, AI slop and overbearing crawlers. Gemini might represent a refreshing resprite from the madness.
- Interestingly, we have 8% of users in the teenager or younger bracket. 1 in 12 is not insignificant. I can imagine that Gemini can have a contrarian underground appeal that feels cool even if you have not experienced the early days of the web, and you've been calibrated to accept LLMs, boundless virtual worlds like Minecraft, and photorealistic games as the mundane baseline of technology. One also cannot discount the power that comes from the simple software stack, making self-hosting and homegrown software implementations feasible. Having full control of one's online presence can be attractive, at least if you have the mentality of a pioneer and don't worry too much about your peer group's attitudes and attention.
- A plausible estimate of the "student" demographic, in high school, college or university, would be the 10-30 range that covers ~20% of users. I would imagine the aforementioned technological agency being a big draw here, too. Maybe these people are relatively more active gemloggers than BBSers, though; my intuition based on exploring Geminispace somehow pegged this group as a little larger.
- Users aged 50 or older is a total of 20% as well. If I were to guess, people in this age range have more limited experiences with home computing, nowadays living a casual mobile phone & web (dare I say, Facebook) centric life, so Gemini is not something they would come across that frequently or see a need for.
That was perhaps a few too many conclusions to draw from a small survey, so take these thoughts with the appropriate grain of salt. π
I will update this post in case the results change significantly in the future.
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