site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1931 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 9, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There was a time just about when Burning Crusade came out that I played WoW. My god that game kept me out of trouble (albeit my soon-to-be wife despised that I played it.) I loved it. It's the only game I ever really got into, and I was well into my 30s at the time. I thought about doing the WoW Classic when it was released but I simply don't have the time now, as a husband/dad.

Why didn’t she like it? My lady plays with me hehehe

I don't know. My first reaction would be that it's because she's female, but I suppose girls and women do take to games. Just not her thing, I guess, and the vision of me sitting there gazing at a screen for hours was sufficiently far from the man I guess she thought she was involved with that she balked.

Wow is about half women, although the raiding scene used to be more like 25% (I haven't raided since 2016, no idea about now).

Interesting. The study I have seen said more than 80% were male but may be dated, to say nothing of the methodological issues. Personally I've never known IRL a woman who regularly played video games. Or maybe they've just never told me. Many years ago I saw my fiercely competitive wife on Mario Kart, and it's probably just as well that she doesn't have much interest in turning on the PlayStation .

I think it's rather more common with younger generations, in all countries, though I do actually have a Japanese woman friend in her 40s who is a fairly dedicated competitive Splatoon player. I don't think I would have found out without several coincidences aligning, either, even though I had known her for a long time, given the Japanese thing where compartmentalising your life and following a default don't-ask-don't-tell policy about other compartments comes very easily.

(One of the coincidences resulted in meeting some of her Splatoon buddies in real life, and their commitment to not prying behind the online masks of their compartment was notable. I figure this might actually help with the gender ratio, considering the rude and awkward behaviour I've seen in Western online gaming communities towards even those merely suspected of being girls.)

the rude and awkward behaviour I've seen in Western online gaming communities towards even those merely suspected of being girls

Curiously I’ve observed enough of women I know playing games like LoL and Guild Wars (etc.) on international servers, and have had a ?feminine enough username in some games and been taken for a woman in games (???), to have had an experience of this around 2000s-2010s.

Most people were actually supportive, some to the point of white-knighting. I thought the proportion of men who were actually foul to women was probably well under 10%. But most of the games where communication are usually team games (and so you have (1-x)^9 chances of not rolling a shithead for a solo queue 5v5 game, which is going to be significantly higher than 1-x), and these people could be so foul (or wildly inappropriate, or just plain weird), that it does mar the experience a bit.

It's also my observation that women don’t get more abuse than anyone else when they play games. They don’t get more harassed than men on the internet in general either (if anything it is the opposite), and this finding has been replicated when looking across the board, even in samples which are most likely to attract online criticism like politicians and journalists too. And men don't just experience relatively harmless acts - serious online abuse is also more likely to be directed at men by the way. But people are much more sensitive to harsh comments and threats directed at women than they are when directed at men, who are generally expected to be able to take it and/or dish back; we have no such expectation that women do so.

"Online harassment" in general is one of these very many areas wherein women actually receive preferential treatment but the popular consensus somehow seems to believe it's the opposite based on what people find emotionally salient. Women really dislike being in male spaces wherein they will sometimes be treated like men (bullying and threats will be slightly adapted based on gender to optimise for mental damage regardless of who they are insulting, but the phenomenon isn't distinct), and many men take offence on behalf of female dignity when women are treated like men too. And as soon as any large number of women enter a space, the norms quickly adapt to cater to feminine sensibilities. I've seen these attempts at social enforcement in real-time, too - I was once in a close-knit private server populated almost entirely by men, and the only woman in there was a girlfriend of one of the men who would routinely storm out of calls in response to any off-colour joke (as an aside they later broke up and she started dating one of his friends in the server immediately after, which spelled the end of the whole thing).

EDIT: added an extra sentence. I will also leave this very angry, drunk-narrated two part video here. Part 1, and part 2. Bit vitriolic, but I agree with it.

I agree broadly. I do note that there was one incident where one of these weirdos was incredibly persistent with one of my friends — tried to find her on Skype and sext her, etc — which was genuinely extremely offputting. And I think the one case where women do get more unwanted attention than men is in this arena.

But also (women broadly) don’t want to be treated like the boys so what can you do

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats