this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Mildly Interesting
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I feel like a lot of these numbers, both the "estimated" and "actual" are just outright fucking wrong. Every single person I grew up with was at least some level of gay or bisexual. I get what they're going for, but they're also dramatizing it by picking more extreme numbers. Like I'd bet that only 30% of people are actually, truly cishet, if not even lower.
Then there's the problem of a single number of "estimated", which can only be an average number. Which contains, likely, some juicy demographics data, assuming they actually polled enough people and kept all the information. I'd be curious to see graphs for each and every number presented here.
Have you considered you might actually be in a minority?
In which way?
The fact that you think everyone is a little gay to the point that almost no one is straight is a concept well outside the realms of what most would agree with. You and your friend group are the minority.
What a weirdly specific way to phrase that.
But anyway, a quick search popped this up: https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/23914-kinsey-scale-sexuality-millennials-2019-poll
Hey look, this post is about you
I'm mainly wondering how in the everloving fuck apparently the average guess for "live in new york city" is 30%? Surely that has to be trolls answering 100% skewing the average? The number of nyc residents i have floating around in my head is 20 million for some reason (which as it turns out is already a vast overestimation), which would be around 7% with the 330 million i have floating around for US population (which is pretty close to the real number)
I know the US education system isn't great, but surely people at least have some very basic knowledge about their own country?
The bi thing is almost certainly your bubble. Younger generations (just gonna guess you aren't beyond your mid thirties at most, if yes then I'd find your experience very surprising) skew more towards expressing non-hetero sexualities already, and being around more ideologically left-wing groups likely skews it heavily. It could also be that some people feel some same-sex attraction, but still identify as hetero.
The numbers do seem about right in general, bisexuality is a weird thing bc I'm also quite convinced some degree of it is extremely common, but that doesn't mean all those people identify that way.
This is a country where a 1/3 lb burger wasn't successful because people though the 1/4 lb burger was bigger and cost less.
We are not a smart people.
Ah. I missed the fine print part that says the actual data is from census polls, rather than what is actually likely. When you said "that doesn't mean all those people identify that way", I was like BUT THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. That does change my impression of the graph significantly, because that would not necessarily mean the numbers are "actual", but rather, should read "actual poll data".
Most of the graph I feel is about right, too. I just find it hard to believe a lot of the upper half of the stuff is so wildly wrongly estimated AND that non-hertero sexualities is still portrayed as basically legacy data, rather than trying to forecast what we all know would be if people weren't repressed by society. Again, though, it's this way to fit a narrative, thus my minor issue.