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Journal Fiver-rah's Journal: Girly journal ring 15

Journal by Fiver-rah
Approximately 5% of slashdot readers are girls. On the other hand, exactly 50% of my friends are (assuming that people are being up front about their gender, which seems like a reasonable assumption). Now, this doesn't particularly surprise me (after all, I know all my friends are weird). daoine mentioned that she started to get caught up in this gateway thing because of my "girly rant".

So my question is for both girls and guys. How much of a difference does gender make when you befriend somebody? Are you more likely to respond to a post posted by someone you know is a girl? And are us girls "better connected" than the average /. reader.

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Girly journal ring

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  • But I am slightly more likely to mark somebody as my friend if they are female. I know that there are people who have marked me as their friend solely because I am female (there are a couple of female users that I have never heard of that showed up on my fans list. I suspect that they were just marking females). This is understandable with the 5% ratio, though, because it's nice to not feel alone. Hell, if you want to know who's female on slashdot, just go to the engagement ring story- I think they all came out. :)

    I admit that when somebody shows up on my fans list, I don't automatically befriend them. I wait until they either post a meaningful comment in my journal, or a google search on the user name gives me a clue as to what they are like. If I find out a users is female, I am more likely to just automatically befriend her.

    20% of my friends are women (10 out of 48), which is still much higher than the general slashdot ratio.
  • Unless their name makes it quite obvious, I could not tell gender for the life of me. Quite frankly having grown up in a liberal city, when I see somebody mention "Their BF said such and such" or that "their husband said such and such" I immediately think "well they are either gay or female" and give it about a 50/50 split as far as the chance of either.

    Not that I care, this is the Internet, Age doesn't matter (hell I started reading /. when I was 13), gender doesn't matter, religion doesn't matter, race doesn't matter, nothing matters but who you are, and none of that above stuff is who you are, but rather just who society thinks you are, and part of the Internet even in this over commercialized day in age, is still all about getting away from what society believes you are and getting down to who you really are.

    Hell, look at my journal entries. I haven't had a single person post that:

    It is wrong for a "white boy" to like an "Asian Girl"

    That is is wrong for an "Asian Girl" to like a "White Boy"

    Or for those who pay more attention

    That is is wrong for an "Asian Girl" to like a "Multi-racial piece of trash". (Her mother would sooooo freak out if the mother found out about my racial background. She on the other hand thinks it is nifty because it means I am not pure white, which /would/ suck, hehe. Life is weird some days. :-D )

    I haven't had any HC X-stians bitch about me seeing somebody who isn't an X-Stian, I haven't had any HC feminists come at me for being "such a royal prick" with the entire poems + flowers thing (obviously only male chauvinistic pigs do that!!!), and I have yet to get a comment on how "any guy who writes poetry is sooooo gay" (well besides klerk but I have seemed to driven him off with my almost tri-daily journal entries).

    So do I care who people on my friends list are? Nah. I just try my best to add any poster who is smarter then I am. :-D

    I would guess that many of the Females stay away from /. because they do not want to deal with all the, err, trolls posting HC porn links and such. I mean while the guys may just close the window and not give a care that some dudes sphincter just appeared on their screens, and not think the less of /. as a whole for it, I do realize that others might see that as a, err, heh, "bad thing". :-D Hehe The Females that do remain are likely those who don't care all that much about there being a random chance of any link clicked opening up a few dozen/thousand popup windows with an annoying voice playing in the background. :-D

    *Notes he is going to get flamed for stereotyping Females in that last paragraph*

    Bleeck then!!! Sue me, it has been shown that a goodly majority of females are not likely to propagate sites that have hard core porn on them. :-P (not that I blame them, LOL! The porno crud on /. does get irritating from time to time, though for me it is the sheer lack of creativity of the trolls that is annoying!)
  • less likely to mark a female as friend because I'm afraid she'll take it the wrong way. Not that I think she's going to write me love letters or anything just that she might think (fear) that I would. I wouldn't just to let everyone know.

    As for Girls on /. perhaps 5% is true of the front page. Though I think the percentage is a little higher in the journals.
    • Not that I think she's going to write me love letters or anything just that she might think (fear) that I would.

      Uh oh. If both genders are held to this expectation, I have a lot of love letter writing to catch up on. They'll have to be form letters. I hope that's okay with everybody?
      • If both genders are held to this expectation, I have a lot of love letter writing to catch up on. They'll have to be form letters. I hope that's okay with everybody?

        Why stop at cross-gender love lettering? Can I have one too? Please? Please? I'll write you one first.

        A Love Letter (of sorts)
        To Some Woman
        from her admirer, Fiver-Rah

        L ove is what I feel. For
        O pen-source software.
        V alenti must die, as he is the
        E pitomy of evil. Not like Some Woman.

        And although red5 is *not* listed as my friend, he has posted in my journal, and therefore I assume that love letters are just a hop, skip, and a jump away. I'll start:

        Another Love Letter (of a different sort)
        To red5
        From his devoted admirer, Fiver-Rah

        Red, you are so perspicacious
        Brilliant, thoughtful, and tenacious.
        Your brain must be truly spacious
        For you have found what women need

        I'm amazed that you detected
        What makes us girls so dejected:
        By our slashdot friends neglected
        Who fail to write us words of love.

        We expect your admiration:
        Friendship implies adulation
        So don't foster our frustration
        And write a paean to us girls.

        Whew, I'm all love-lettered out for now. All the rest of my friends are going to have to wait for their Letter O' Love. Maybe later.

        • Well I must say that "love letter" was very thoughtful and I'm ever so flattered by it. I think it also further accentuates my point of women having a tendency to take things the wrong way. :)

          What I meant was that by adding a woman to my friends list she might think I'm some dorky guy who goes on /. looking for women. I'm not that sort of guy; I prefer to meet them in "real life" where I can find the one with the largest pupils*.

          *That last bit was an ecstasy reference. For all those who didn't get it. :)
          • I knew exactly what you meant, which is why I was mocking you so mercilessly. I am not so conceited that I imagine that someone who adds me as a friend is trying to hook up (especially not over slashdot--is that even possible?!). I am also conceited enough that I will imagine that someone who adds me as a friend will do so because I'm funny, wacky, eloquent, and intelligent. Not because I've got matching sets of chromosomes.

            Now, correct me if I have misinterpreted you, but it seems that you are saying that you don't want to add a girl as a friend because you're afraid she'll misinterpret the gesture and think badly of you for it. Trust me, though; if you did it, we wouldn't wander around plucking petals from daisies singing "He loves me, he loves me not!" in response. It's my guess that most girls on slashdot are quite used to having male friends who are nothing more than friends.

            • Now, correct me if I have misinterpreted you, but it seems that you are saying that you don't want to add a girl as a friend because you're afraid she'll misinterpret the gesture and think badly of you for it. Trust me, though; if you did it, we wouldn't wander around plucking petals from daisies singing "He loves me, he loves me not!" in response. It's my guess that most girls on slashdot are quite used to having male friends who are nothing more than friends.

              Okay let me "splain" it for you. A little background is required.

              I have an older sister. Way back in the day she used to go on chat rooms on AOL. She would then get all manner of guys emailing her pictures of them self trying to hookup. She and her friends would then read the emails and make fun of said losers.

              I take it this sort of thing happens to a lot of girls. That's why I tend to not add a girl to my friends list until she adds me first. I don't want her to think I'm on of those losers.
              • I would agree with Fiver-rah here. The women on slashdot are probably used to socializing with men on a purely platonic level. When I get a new fan, I don't think "great. Another loser trying to date me." I think "cool. another person who thinks I sometimes have worthwhile things to say." The friend thing here on slashdot is also very different from e-mailing people pictures of yourself. Now, if you start sending desperate e-mails with pictures, I will be concerned, but I have never had anybody do that. I have actually only had one e-mail from a person on slashdot, and that was in response to an emotional journal entry I had written. He had a very painful relevant experience that he didn't want to write about on slashdot, which is a valid reason to e-mail somebody.

                That's why I tend to not add a girl to my friends list until she adds me first. I don't want her to think I'm on of those losers.

                Don't you worry about people latching on to you in this manner? I'm sure plenty of women do this too (though I'm not exactly on slashdot to meet men, and I expect nobody else is either.)
                • Don't you worry about people latching on to you in this manner? I'm sure plenty of women do this too (though I'm not exactly on slashdot to meet men, and I expect nobody else is either.)

                  Well it's never happened to me and the only guy I know who had anything like this happen to him had it happen as a response to a yahoo personals advert. So he was quite literally asking for it.
            • I am not so conceited that I imagine that someone who adds me as a friend is trying to hook up

              Oh, but I am! And I certainly expect the same from all of my fans.
              • Oh yeah? Where's my love letter, then?
                • Well, I poured all of my efforts into this little token for you:

                  Dear Fiver-rah,

                  Orchids are lavendar
                  Ramonas are sage
                  You are so cool
                  That I clicked on your homepage

                  Love,
                  SW

                  Note, to all of my friends: you too can have your very own personalized love letter from me. Simply type your name in place of Fiver-rah's to received your very own love letter that I wrote especially for you!
            • I am not so conceited that I imagine that someone who adds me as a friend is trying to hook up (especially not over slashdot--is that even possible?!)
              I feel the need to devote my research career to constructing bandwidth sufficient to make this possible. And there will be 2 daisies in every garage.

              Back to your dissertation, citizen.

              • Back to your dissertation, citizen.

                Bah. I'm in one of those "why am I in graduate school again?" phases which leads to low productivity on my part. And, um, high slashdot posting rates. And poems and plays; I also wrote a friend who's starting as an assistant professor an amusing play for his first day.

                Unfortunately, I seem to have discovered an alternative to graduate school which I might actually enjoy. There goes my last good reason to be here, except for the fact that it would be way cool to be "Dr. Bond".

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