OMG Girlz Don't Exist On Teh Intarweb! 225
The Escapist has a brilliant article penned by a young woman who has to deal with blatant disbelief at her existence. Why? Because there are no women on the internet. From the article: "This is the story of my internet life. (I'm not quite sure if it's a good or bad thing that I have an internet life, but internet life it is.) I'm a girl, I play games and I exist on the internet. Or so you think. Time after time, I get told I'm not a girl and that I don't exist. It's happened so much that I'm beginning to think that it's true. So, I spend some time getting to know them. Who are these mysterious creatures called girls if they don't exist on the internet? What does this mean for the men of the internet?"
In order to defeat the calls for "pics plz" (Score:3, Interesting)
Way to prove you're a girl, I suppose. Still, so much for the "I don't show my pic to random people" thing. Couldn't get much more random than that!
My Wife (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know what this guy is whining about... (Score:3, Interesting)
Girls on the internet are about as relevant (to me, at least) as girls on Jupiter. Who wants a chick that spends all of her time parked in a chair porking-out while surfing the internet all night long? Same thing I don't get about guys who want girls who are into gaming.... Why? If I want someone to game with, there are other dudes. The last thing I want is some chick that I'll never see because she'll always be online or arguing with me about who's turn it is to do something on line or spending all of our time instant messaging each other even though we're six feet apart in the same room.
I prefer chicks who don't even know what this "internet" thing is. And the ones who do, I just pretend they're guys in the first place.
City of Heroes has lots of women (Score:5, Interesting)
While it's difficult to get accurate stats on the real percentages of men and women playing games, I'm sure that different types/styles of games will tend to have a greater or lesser amount of the various sexes.
I'm not surprised to see more women playing games , as the games evolve into more of a social type of situation. I, for one, like this development, as it seems to cut down on the amount of trash talking that young teenage boys tend to do, and also broadens the game strategies (men and women definetely think differently, not that one is better than the other).
It all depends on the medium and the group (Score:5, Interesting)
- Clan/Guild members would automatically believe me, and I rarely got any odd treatment for being a female.
- Denizens in channels I'd frequent would be more reluctant to believe that I'm a female, and very often ask for pictures. When I would refuse these requests, I'd get the aforementioned flood of "U R a D00D lolololz"
- While actually playing the game on servers, I'd almost never mention that I'm a female. I learned to do this because whenever I would mention my gender, I'd get the pix requests tenfold, and the excessive chatter (sometimes inquisitive, but most often crude) would deter me from the action and ruin the experience.
This list, of course, has some exceptions. While part of a online gaming clan, I was once a ranking officer of a section of the guild responsible for playing a particular game. During a clan match, one of the members found that one of our other members was cheating, and brought the questionable screenshot to my attention. While I was in the process of bringing this to the clan leader, I was subject to a rather vicious attack, one that focused mainly around the fact that I'm female, and of course must be a "camwhore" or "extremely fat and stupid", of which I am neither. He still got ejected from the clan, but not without dealing the damage and attacking me in front of 100+ clan members.
What has all of this taught me? There are times when I can be proud of being a female gamer, and other times when sticking my neck out like that will end up with my head rolling. I learned that it's far easier to just let my gender be a mystery while playing online, instead of letting my gaming experience being ruined by asshats.
With the increasing popularity of MMORPGS, however, many female gamers are now playing games online. These female gamers are now encountering the same treatment that I've been used to for years, and are quite taken back by it. Hopefully this flood of female gamers will bring the fact to life that female gamers do exist, that we do play, and that we just want to play.
We shouldn't need to provide a picture to prove who we are.
We have several women in my gaming community... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In order to defeat the calls for "pics plz" (Score:5, Interesting)
Happens on-line, happens off-line. Happens to guys, happens to gals. What really happened is they wanted to sleep with someone and didn't care about the consequences or if it was the right person for a relationship. The thinking she's the best thing on earth is just him not being able to seperate love from lust. Fitting your preconcieved model of what you think is hot really doesn't preclude wanting to sleep with them... sometimes even out of curiosity. Sometimes this miscongruence results in people justifying their hormones by attributing the feelings to emotional bonding.
World of Warcraft = Internet (Score:2, Interesting)
-> Fritz
Re:City of Heroes has lots of women (Score:2, Interesting)
Pretty damned odd. I'm pretty sure that this situation was the exception rather than the rule.