Assignment 3 - In which I have way too much fun with homework

The default assumption is basically this: if you're on the Internet, you are male until otherwise noted.

There are specific psychological spaces where this simply doesn't apply (e.g. Livejournal; the overwhelming majority of users are female), but I've noticed over the years that I can enter virtually any space and as long as my username can be construed as "gender-neutral," I will invariably be referred to as 'he' within a short span of time.

I've found it easier to allow people this assumption, especially considering the subject matter of the online communities I participate in. Video game forums are typically and perhaps unsurprisingly sexist; you may form your own hypotheses/jokes as to why. I avoid a lot of negative stereotypes associated with women in general or 'girl gamers, as well as the hormone-and anonymity-driven battle-cry of "NUDE PIX PLZ" (in more extreme cases) in this manner.

In turn, this makes it easier for me to manage others' impressions of whatever online persona I'm using at the time, but it also means I have to work that much harder to elicit any sort of response at all from the other users. A guy can fade into the crowd, so to speak, whereas this is near-impossible in a lot of instances once one has identified as female. In the latter case, I can work within a framework (however unfavorable that may be). In the former: I have to create it.

For the purposes of this assignment I registered two accounts - 'Confederate' (male) and 'coNfIdAnt' (female) - on a gaming forum I had neither heard of nor participated in previously. I set my goal as to get one-hundred posts within a week on both accounts, or however close I could manage before I was warned for posting excessively.

I didn't bother to set up proxies or take any other measures to avoid detection, because I didn't think this audience had any hope of catching on. I immediately noticed that coNfIdAnt got more views and replies to her introductory post that was originally placed in the wrong section, (a moderator moved it) and said very little of note except "hi im a gurl and i like games." Confederate was more detailed, but his welcome was not as genial by comparison.

coNfIdAnt chose to share in a general "Who are you" type thread that she was 17-years-old, loved anime and 'games like Final Fantasy,' and cosplayed regularly. Confederate was 20 years old, greatly preferred RTSs (Real-Time Strategy) to RPGs (Role-Playing Games), and had very "mainstream" musical tastes. I purposely played into a lot of stereotypes for the female account (complete with random and nonsensical capitalization), but left a very vague and general picture for the male persona.

Naturally, I mainly engaged them in discussions that conformed to what I specified as "defining" aspects of their personality, but for the sake of experimentation I made two notable deviations. coNfIdAnt posted in an ongoing discussion about a specific RTS that she had no idea what that kind of game was but thought it was kind of stupid to "jus shoot stuff" and hoped someone could explain. Rather than berate her for derailing the thread and expressing a completely uninformed opinion, the active participants calmly answered her questions, recommended titles, and ended with the standard courtesy note of "come to me if you need any more help."

Confederate wasn't so fortunate. He entered a thread concerning what the users thought was the best RPG of all time, and expressed the same opinion though in an intentionally less-confrontational way. "What do you guys even get from these?" The posters were immediately defensive; one launched into a diatribe on how people don't consider RPGs "real games" and how this is partially the fault of the Xbox console. It wasn't pertinent to the assignment so I stopped reading after the 10th line. Confederate actually apologized for being offensive, and asked if the other members could recommend any decent titles. The responses ranged from dismissive, "That's really something you have to figure out for yourself," to 'casually inconsiderate':

" 1. Go to store.

2. Buy game.

3. Play.

4. ????

5. PROFIT!!!!"

I then began to post solely to drive up my post count; most of the posts were one-liners that contributed little or nothing to the subject at hand that hadn't already been expressed. coNfIdAnt often got responses to her one-liners, which were frequently non-sequiturs, whereas Confederate remained on topic but received occasional offhanded reprimands from the older members for "spamming." Eventually, the target number grew near, and I decided that it was time for coNfIdAnt to reply to her slew of private messages. I singled out one poster that seemed particularly interested and traded PMs for two days, during which she received all manner of e-hugs and a "candid" picture of the guy holding his dog. I suppose he wished her to perceive him as “sensitive,” which is a trait magazines like to say women look for in a potential partner.

I figured my point was proven in her case, and continued to strive towards the goal with Confederate. The only private message he received was somewhere around the 85 post mark, and it was a vaguely intimidating message from the administrator that "people are complaining about you" and to "stop spamming or you're out of here." I inquired as to what exactly I'd done wrong besides being overly talkative, and he (gender was indicated in the "who are you" thread mentioned previously) became very authoritarian and pulled the "don't contradict the forum gods" card on me. It was just as well, because I had all the data I needed.

I deliberately chose this forum after browsing for about an hour because I noticed it seemed a bit hostile towards new members. This observation proved consistent in the case of Confederate and failed for coNfIdAnt because of what I chose to convey about the latter, and perhaps what I didn't regarding the former. I find it interesting that I never required the use of props, though I would have incorporated pictures and fleshed out complete and believable identities for the two of them if I'd had more time to work with. I would also like to note that I didn't consider the impression of Confederate's name; the term has a definite connotative meaning pertaining the Civil War, but I was thinking of the "individual who assists in a plan/plot" definition, which makes "confidant" a logical choice for the other persona. There is a chance that a certain percentage of members believed him to be a sympathizer of the failed confederacy and at least subconsciously assumed a tacit approval of slavery on his part.

Either way, this experiment clearly demonstrates the significance of what you choose to present vs. what you don't in an online psychological space if you wish other users to perceive you in a certain way. To re-state my earlier point; a lot of this is indeed dependent on gender. I never gave coNfIdAnt any semblance of a personality beyond a vague stereotype, whereas Confederate was a lot more "solid," so to speak, and the member-base reacted more strongly and positively to her average-ness than his, even though there was far less information to work with.