SmokeAndMirrors
DP Veteran
- Joined
- May 20, 2011
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Seems like the whole young-men culture has been getting progressively more immature, sexist, homophobic, male-centric and egotistical for the past few years.
I actually don't see that on the whole. To be honest, from everything I have been able to see, men under 35 or so think of women more equally and are more GBLT-friendly by a huge margin. As a straight woman, I can't honestly think of any other time I'd rather be in. The older folks will say, "but chivalry's dead." And yes, that's true. But you know what? Good riddance. I'll take shared common decency over weird gender-typed social mores any day.
I think this phenomena is actually fairly simple to explain.
What percentage of people on the internet do you think are trolls? Double digits, right? How many of them do you think act like douchebags in real life? The internet creates anonymity and with the wrong influences at the helm of the social ladder, it's easy for unhealthy trends to develop because there's no meaningful impact.
Also, some games have a younger player base. And when I say "younger," I mean teens, a population who is still very susceptible to peer pressure.
Finally, for every couple of hobby gamers out there, there's also a socially dysfunctional one. I am certainly not casting stones at gamers as a whole, and there's unhealthily obsessed people in most things. But for those who are socially dysfunctional, some have a lot of resentment towards the opposite sex, and childish notions of their gender identity, which could also be the genesis for some of this stuff. It's certainly possible there are more of them than their used to be, as technology becomes so ubiquitous.
But get out into the wider population of guys, and really, it's a pretty decent lot on the whole. Some of the ones closer to my age are having problems due to the timing of the recession, but this is just as true for women my age as well.
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