Canadian Census: 20,000 Jedi Worshippers

Lev13than writes "Canada.com is reporting that some 20,000 Canadians listed "Jedi" as their religion in the last national census (2001). Apparently this is the offshoot of an Internet joke which originated in Australia a few years back. The results are interesting on a couple of levels. While it show that some people may have too much time on their hands, it also raises questions of privacy rights, Internet activism and data integrity. Although it's not statistically significant given Canada's population of 31.5 million, 20,000 lightsabre-wielding census-takers is nothing to sneeze at. StatsCan's full report (with no mention of Jedis) can be found here."

Comments

Originated in NZ then UK

[MrOrn]

Actually the Jedi answer for the census form started in New Zealand, then spread to the UK around April 2001. Australia's census wasn't until October.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/new_med ia /1271380.stm

A Time-Honored Tradition

[ewhac]

When I first read about this phenomonon, I thought it sounded familiar to something some prankster did many years ago. Now, in this Age of Google, I have found the original article.

The article deals with the propogation of "memes" -- infectious ideas that take on a life of their own (e.g. "All your base..."). It discusses in particular how the author faced what he thought was a rather impudent question on his college admission form -- asking for his religion -- and, with his cheeky response, inadvertently started a meme. It also discusses how the meme was extinguished by the college administration.

The religious meme thing is about one-third of the way down, but I recommend reading the whole article. It's a good read.

Schwab

Re:Go England!

[Chicane-UK]

I really wanted to put Jedi down on my Census, but the I had heard rumours that the UK government were going to fine people who put religion as Jedi so I chickened out.

As it turns out, the only part of the census the government can't fine you for is the religion option... as this snippet from a 2001 Register article says here :

We spoke to the Home Office - which was not overly entertained especially since the Census is supposed to be deadly serious. However the Home Office would not say what constituted a religion and we subsequently discovered that while you can be heavily fined for putting down false details on a census form, it does not apply to the religion question.

Ah well... I think 400,000 was more than enough anyway ;)