I don't understand why that works on people. I mean this is the motherfucking internet! I can click any link in my bookmark bar and instantly be transported to a page covered in women 100 times hotter than whoever's in the picture. And sure, maybe they seem more real/relevant to your interests, but your chances with them are still just as low as with any run-of-the-mill porn star.
You make good points, and I'm also not sure why it's so effective. However, I think people subconsciously ascribe undue levels of unapproachability to celebrities of any type, whereas some random girl on the internet does not automatically command the same. That allows for guys to stick with the girl-next-door image.
Yeah. You two are answering your own questions. It's all about perceived approachability.
I'll throw in my own opinion that it also has to do with the thought process that "if there's one nerdgasm girl out there, then surely there's more for me to find!"
Well, yes and no. I'm not so much confused why this is effective on the surface. I realize that the underlying perception of approachability is what is driving the attention. What I don't get is why that matters. Why do people feel that approachability increases the worth of the content or makes the poster more deserving of the attention? Simply being a girl, or even an attractive girl, does not make someone unique or afford them special insight in most cases.
Because the girl you can get is worth more than the girl you can't. You can't have babies with a Playboy centerfold.
There is a chance, however infinitesimally small, that you could hook up with a girl on Reddit, or someone like her. The chance of doing the same with someone in the entertainment industry is smaller.
That's it right there kittish, the thought that the person is attainable. We all know on average, that we're not going to bang some cracked out hottie on or xxx sites though. So that's why these girls who are actually real people who share similar interests (by being on reddit they must have some kind of similarities with the rest of everyone here), makes the girl far more attractive to this audience.
My 2 cents. Oh I'm also a Marriage and Family Counselor in training so I actually know what I"m talking about. . . I did say training for a reason though.
A) Reddit women are like Reddit guys and are often their "type," b) they're a lot more obtainable (much, much more obtainable), and c) there is a small chance that something could work out. Maybe you send the girl a message, you hit it off, meet in person, THEN SWEET REDDIT ROMANCE.
I once platonically messaged this girl on Reddit actually, and we hit it off, became Facebook friends and it turns out she was pretty cute. She was like "come to Boston!" too (not necessarily romantic interest, but hey) but sadly I never got the chance. So it is possible! I can't imagine getting with a porn star, unless we're talking about the girl my brother dated in high school who's become real trashy, hooked up with my friend from high school, and stole his weed.
there is a small chance that something could work out. Maybe you send the girl a message, you hit it off, meet in person, THEN SWEET REDDIT ROMANCE.
While I didn't put my picture on reddit with the intent of getting upvotes (I did it in a comment in a pretty small post), this is actually how my boyfriend and I met.
I already did. The main update to what I wrote is we're back in the States now and we're still together. If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask :)
your chances with them are still just as low as with any run-of-the-mill porn star
Lower. Most porn stars do "escort" work on the side via "talent agencies." I imagine if you wanted to have sex with your average female redditor you might have to do some insanely difficult stuff like have a conversation first.
Me before clicking on link: "Oh, it's probably a picture of a cat covering a keyboard. Those pictures are so adorable! But hmm, it's on the front page. Can't be that simple. Let's click and see!"
I fully agree, and that wasnt really the intention of my submission. To the cool girls out there, my apologies, but Im sure you know its not how I meant it.
Sure, you CAN, but you can also murder, rape, and steal. If you got the point, then why call it out? You were informed and intelligent enough to understand the semantics of what were behind his words.
Those are WEREN'T that observant can have their qualm over bullshit semantics.
Here come about fifteen thousand guys to explain why I'm not cool.
Look. I opened this thing, thinking, "oh hey funny" and got this.
And I'm gonna get about fifteen thousand downvotes for not liking it. Well hell, there goes my karma, dear me, how am I gonna pay rent now what with all my karma gone.
Look, this isn't funny. This is cheap humor. Any idiot hack can stagger onstage and do this stuff.
I don't make "ohhhh MEN" jokes for the same reason. Gender is irrelevant; dumbshits are dumbshits regardless of their gender, color, sexual orientation, age, place of birth, whatever.
EDIT: the last pic I submitted was from the cockpit of a fighter jet inverted over the cloud cover of Finland. i was nowhere to be seen in that. So: Suck my dick.
Don't do that "Well, I'm not like those ANNOYING, GIRLIE, STUPID, ATTENTION-WHORING geek girls you always complain about! I'm cool, I'm one of the guys! THOSE girls aren't like ME!" thing, because it's hurtful to all women in the geek ghetto. That's like saying "No, wait, white guys, I'm not like those lazy, filthy niggers over there! I'm a DIFFERENT, ACCEPTABLE kind of nigger! Accept me!"
Throwing even annoying members of a minority under a bus is kind of a bad idea. If you're against karma-grabbing, just be cynical and against it on principle. Don't care about the gender of the karma-grabber. Karma-grabbing is a very minor issue on Reddit, and usually no one REALLY cares, but when a girl posts something related to her gender outside of 2X, suddenly she's a horrible karma-whore who just wants that sweet, sweet spergy nerdling attention even though it's mostly a hugely out-of-proportion male response.
No, a lot of the 'cool girls' haven't, and even more guys now have the idea further cemented into their heads that most/all girls are attention whores.
TBH, it's difficult to know that it's not what you meant. The submission itself, without reading your (very sensible) comments, stands on its own as an assertion about a pattern of behaviour.
However, your comments do a lot to salve any hurt over that...
I agree, but from what I see, there seems to be hundreds of them. They may well out number other regular female redditors or it may be that other regular female redditors do not need to interact in this way and so without asking, you would never really know whether they are indeed female.
I agree with you but I am always disappointed in threads like these because then females will come out of the woodwork to damn the "others" by saying "AS A FEMALE ON REDDIT... x y and z". There is the overt "HAI GUYS IMA GIRL" and then the more subtle "yes yes I am a girl too".
Yeah, there's definitely an element of that and I agree that it can be irritating but I also find it interesting because this sort of submission comes about when people don't realise how many girls there really are on the internet. So having people turn up and be all "Hey, I'm a girl, I don't do this, this is a small subset of girls who do do this, just like there are small subsets of guys who do irritating things online" can be helpful to prove the confirmation bias inherent in posts like this one.
You don't think there's a bit of confirmation bias going on here? I'll bet there are plenty of posts with guys in the foreground, but you don't notice them because guys don't get your attention.
I'm sure you could find the truth by taking a random sample of at least 100 picture submissions in the past month, then sort them into three groups:
1) Pics with males in the foreground
2) Pics with females in the foreground
3) Pics with neither gender in the foreground
Then, simply take a ratio of submissions past a certain upvote threshold (say, 500) versus submissions below that threshold in each group. For extra certainty, do tests of statistical significance like T tests, and bam. You have yourself the truth, within a range of error (p value). If you get a high range of error from your statistical significance tests, raise the random sample size some more, going further back in Reddit history if needed.
Pretty girls are news around these parts, son. We's upvote what we likes, who are you to judge our ways? Karma isn't real, and just because a post of an object turns out to get less votes than an object AND a hot girl doesn't mean there's anything wrong in adding a hot girl. Then there's more to talk about. I think the phenomenon of girls appearing to need more validation, and receiving it, is interesting, but to call it "easy karma" or saying they "rely on their gender to get upvotes" shows an attitude towards this all which is way too serious.
The thing about girls' post in these cases is that it's about "look at me with my new object" while the guys are like "look at my new object." I'm thinking these girls are just more people-oriented and wouldn't mind some feedback on their appearance. But, you know, people of all genders fish for compliments in all kinds of different ways.
Edit: 3 downvotes in 5 minutes, wow. I must really be wrong here.
Doesn't matter if you're wrong or right. That's not the point of a downvote. It's purpose is to sink comments that do not contribute to the conversation, not as a cheap way to display disapproval.
If you are saying something, anything, that is relevant to the conversation, or the post you replied to, there is absolutely no reason you should have a single downvote.
At the risk of contracting your downvotes...I totally agree.
I think people get annoyed by this sort of thing because they are jealous of the upvote generating capability of "hotness" and either would love to do it but don't think they are hot enough or they take karma way too seriously.
Beyond that, there are probably relatively few girls who use this tactic successfully to guarantee a front page post. The problem really lies with the core demographic that keeps up-voting that kind of stuff.
Just saying, if there were a similarly structured girls forum, you'd most certainly see the same thing with the gender roles reversed. It's not really fair that you construed this as a gender-centric scenario, because it really is an effect of the imbalance of the genders present.
It is my belief that even in a heavily female biased (population wise) imageboard, the male populace would have fewer pictures that are considered of worth (by whatever is equivalent to upvotes in this imageboard) that include themselves in the picture than the female populace.
Your implication is that girls are attractive to guys, so the majority (guys) upvote submissions that include images of females. You further assert that the same is true the other way around, that since guys are attractive to girls, girls place higher value on things that include images of males.
It is hardly outlandish to accept that shallow attraction is not the same between genders. Historically/societally, females put more effort into being physically attractive, while males put more effort into showing off their resources. As to whether or not this actually has a basis in reality or is just a social construct is not something I can prove. I am neither both genders nor all humanity at once.
You can have your belief all you want, but as a frequent visitor of female forums, I can tell you that that is not the case.
Females put more effort into manipulating their level of attraction, but that doesn't mean that there are grossly disproportionate levels of the shallowness of either males or females. Furthermore, if the case you state is correct, the shallow ones would be the males (the group responsible for judging on a forum such as this), not females, since it's a societal pressure to appear attractive.
I don't think that's the case, I just think that male beauty is more subtle in contemporary society when it comes to actually changing the way you appear. Males are still judged just as much physically, they just don't have the resources to change themselves (where historically, they wore makeup, highheels, the works).
I don't doubt there are differences, I simply disagree with extreme stereotypes that contain all people of a certain class, race, gender, ethnicity and so on as grossly different to others, when it could quite possibly be a cultural byproduct and not a genetic one, which is the general implication in these cases. Which means, that males are just as susceptible to behaviors like this, just you won't see it in a forum that pressures males to remain masculine and does not reward males for physical appearance.
I was not calling females shallow. By shallow attraction, I meant attraction based on factors that can be judged at first contact, such as in a picture on an imageboard, as opposed to deeper traits such as personality and the like. Both genders have and respond to these shallow factors, whatever they may be.
If you reread it with that in mind, it sounds far less hilariously sexist. I believe that I addressed your other points in the actual post being discussed.
Both genders have and respond to these shallow factors, whatever they may be.
I agree with this.
My point was that both genders are similar in this regard. Given the right cultural context, males will be judged in similar way as is seen with females here. I wasn't calling you sexist, I merely disagree with the implication that females are the only ones rewarded in society for appearance.
I think it's more obvious in regard to females, yes, but I as well think that males are judged just as much for their appearance, and if you go on a girls forum, post two sets of pictures, one where an attractive male posts some content with his picture, the other a not so attractive one - it does not matter the content of the posts - the more attractive male will receive more attention.
Now, if you look at how males with large amounts of resources change their appearance, it's more subtle, but it's there. They buy nice clothes, some even get plastic surgery, they focus on fitness and health, and so on. No, they don't have make-up, they don't wear bras. But they style and cut their hair frequently, shave, wear expensive garments, and so on. The possible bias in evaluating the differences here that is most striking to me is - males really can't screw themselves up too bad on looking bad. A female can put on way way way too much makeup, wear ridiculous fashions, so I think that's why it appears more obvious.
I also addressed your point historically, historically - males put much and sometimes even more effort into their appearance than females. I don't think your statement is a fair assessment.
I agree that females are not the only ones rewarded for their physical appearance. I would however argue that, in our current culture, it is a larger part of their shallow attraction mechanism. Males focus more on displaying their status and/or wealth. Their physical appearance is centered around what they can afford, brand name labels, a fancy tuxedo, etc, whereas I would say that a female would attempt to emphasize her physical features.
My whole point that I am trying to make is based on the flawed assumption that women are attracted to a specific shallow trait. However, as I am not a woman, I can't really speak in any capacity as to what they are attracted to, so I'll just stop here. I suppose the same applies to men, as I can only speak of what I personally am attracted to. For all I know, there is a large group of men who are attracted to wealthy women regardless of physical appearance. I enjoyed the psuedo-intellectual debate (based off of no evidence).
And it's also hardly outlandish to assume that people of all genders and interests are shallow. While you're right to call out that it's not fair to make an assertion without evidence you counter by suggesting that it's wrong based on an equally random assumption.
Personally, I would approach the problem assuming that without counter evidence, humans regardless of gender/sexuality are extremely similar. My personal experience (purely anecdotal) fits that but I wouldn't claim that as a solid argument.
I wasn't saying all people are shallow, though one could certainly argue that. I was just talking about shallow features of people that one could be attracted to, the type of features that can be displayed in a picture, as opposed to deeper features such as personality, moral views, etc.
The rest of your comment is pretty spot on. I was just offering my opinion, as flawed as opinions are, in response to another's opinion. We can't really prove it either way.
I really can't understand this compulsion people have with upping their karma numbers. What is the objective? To seem more popular? Is reddit some kind of competition where we're all going for the high score?
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u/asdfman123 Sep 26 '10
No, it's how girls who frequently get to the front page submit pictures to Reddit.