I doubt it, he’s probably saying it because, if as he says, it’s a common inaccuracy proving that a lot of people here also have this inaccurate belief does nothing to support your argument.
In fact I find your decision to run a poll on this to be pretty piss poor, because if you really wanted a discussion about the facts you wouldn’t have put a poll up there as some sort of bullshit “evidence” that your side was correct.
What’s really important to note is the original pedantry you engaged in was factually wrong, and thus makes you look foolish to have done it. It is essentially inarguable fact that a rattlesnake is poisonous, and you said that was not an appropriate term. You’re factually wrong there.
On the issue of whether all poisons and venoms can be referred to interchangeably I have no real side in that fight. In personal usage I’d only use venom to refer to poison produced and delivered by animals, but the dictionary definition points to a lot more ambiguity on that matter.
What’s really important to note is when you said this:
You were 100%, unambiguously and factually incorrect, period. So I’m not too impressed that after having your hand smacked (after making a self-identified pedantic comment) you’ve decided to start a poll to try and disprove Blake. That’s actually mildly embarrassing I think, because you were quite honestly making a bald-faced factual assertion that snakes are not poisonous, and I think some degree of embarrassment over being called out on how wrong you were on that count is the reason you decided to keep arguing over the sideshow about whether the word poison and venom are more generally interchangeable and then decided to open up a poll.
I think you highly suspected that most people share the common (and probably incorrect as demonstrated by Blake and Colibri) belief that you were putting forth so you figured a poll would help you out.
While I have more faith in the Dope, I’m willing to bet that in society at large I could make the argument “did you know blood is blue inside the body?” and probably take a random poll of 10 people in the street and have a majority agree with me. That doesn’t prove that blood is blue, just that a majority of people believe a very stupid and very old inaccuracy that has perpetuated for decades. That isn’t how one proves one’s point.