This is shitty journalism at its worst. The study presented a very conservative finding, which is that men who lose in online games are more likely to be hostile, particularly towards those they don't think are in the in-group. That is understandable.<p>The journalist in question extrapolated it to Reddit, Twitter, 4chan, and god knows what else. All the while making huge conjectures about how this means all harassers are low-status losers (a word used pejoratively, not descriptively).<p>Pathetic.
Seems totally plausible to me. And it goes well with this paragraph from a recent Jon Ronson interview[1]:<p>"I once interviewed a prison psychiatrist, James Gilligan, who told me that every murderer he treated was harbouring a central secret – which was that they felt humiliated. 'I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed,' he said. His conclusion: 'All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.'"<p>It's things like this that make it really obvious that we're primates, hardwired for status. Not that we can't overcome it, of course. But it takes work.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/18/katie-hopkins-jon-ronson-interview" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/18/katie-hopkins-j...</a>
This is an interesting study, but would likely benefit from some additional research[0][1].<p>From a journalistic perspective, though, the article on the study is terrible.
Not merely because of the way it jumps to conclusions from a single study (the discourse on Reddit/Twitter is likely to be somewhat different than in Halo 3), but because the article itself was about <i>online harassment</i>, and yet the only figure they deigned to include was about the number of <i>positive</i> comments.<p>If you look at the graphs for <i>negative</i> statements[2], you find that although female voices provoke slightly more negative comments for low amounts of deaths, male voices get significantly more negative comments when the death count is higher.
This is not as easily to interpret.<p>0. The actual study: <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131613" rel="nofollow">http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....</a><p>1. For example, does this trend persist in games that are not "boys games"? We assume that the majority of Halo 3 players are men, but is there any difference between how men and women comment to perceived men and women? Why did they not include the control (playing without voice chat) as a baseline?<p>2. <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=large&id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0131613.g003" rel="nofollow">http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=l...</a>
> “As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status,” Kasumovic writes, “the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female’s performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank.”<p>I would agree with that opinion — I think we've all experienced men behaving stupidly when they overly value and then perceive a threat to their masculinity. Gaming is certainly an activity where we see that to more of an extreme.<p>I wonder though the breadth of the data though. Other metrics like age, or even play time, and the like may equally as telling.
Of course they are. My own findings corroborate this.<p>My personal theory is that the reason the tech industry is so hostile towards women is that it is mostly comprised of "nerds" and "geeks" who, being lower-status in society while usually being part of the dominant group (white men), are much more likely to be aggressive towards people not part of that group, women and people of color.
People who harass people online are losers, sure, but doing your study on XBox Live is a bit like going to the Dead Sea to test oceanic salinity levels.
I did not read the study, but the one chart in the article (which, I assume is supposed to reinforce the message) is over - interpreted. What I see is that mm relationship status the same and mf gets better with skill. I interpret it as better men looking for women to mate with. The not so good ones do not even try.
Now, if the chart was about negative behaviour then it would make sense for the article.
<i>“As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status,”</i><p>Stand out line. Men who deny this are mostly guilty of being unaware of their own bias, ie: guilty of being human. This can be corrected.