The Female Gamer - Are you guys not over this yet?

Let me see if I understand you. For the most part, you've not had any problems. A new person is brought in tempoarily and they hit on you. Okay, I think this is just one guy hitting on a girl at a time/place that he really shouldn't have been. It doesn't seem like something super telling of the whole community.

So what we've all discovered and should have likely known was...

That person on the other end who likes to flirt with anyone they're interrested in can be male or female, gay or straight!

Fits my experiences anyways!

[QUOTE=ReordaN;5741045]only gingers have a soul.. or not? what souls?

or you mean soles?
I mean i like pretty soles but only íf the girl is also pretty XD

[QUOTE=Prysha;5741401]yeah, certainly gingers do have souls!... wait not sure if the Gingers has it though :/

Ok let's see. Soles. If we r talking about fish here, I mean, yeah she is pretty and has a fish which we can eat together and everything is din diddly duddly doo. But if we r speaking about shoes here... well it is quite complicated. You see, recently I've encountered a dillema which I couldn't solve: I like when girls wear sneakers because it's comfortable and somewhat "cool sports style'', BUT! Wearing heels makes her feel more like a "lady" so now I can't come up with a conclusion on this

People still make a big issue about girl gamers?

They're rather uncommon to meet in your everyday life (offline), or at least admit they're a non-casual gamer. But it's rather common in an online setting to see many females. I guess it's just childish ignorance.

There's desperate people everywhere, video games or not. Give them the ease of access to talk to people they're attracted to and you get 'girl gamer syndrome'.

Okay... A few background facts:

1. There are far more females playing video games than the majority of males believe.
2. Females tend to be much less vocal in multiplayer games than males (likely due to stereotypes and situation, and blah, blah blah). This ends up reinforcing Point 1.
3. On average, video game players (of all genders) tend to be less socially active and experienced. This holds even for players of MMOs. The incidence of noticeably socially awkward/unaware individuals is much higher than in the general public, and quite a bit higher than you'll find in a standard "gender-mixing environment" (bars, clubs, singles-hangouts, college parties, etc).

This creates a rather unfortunate atmosphere. As with everyday life, women receive attention from men. That's normal and by the age of 16 or so, most women have begun to find ways of dealing with it. The fact that they have to "deal with it" is unfortunate, but we're trying to be realistic here, right?

The problem is that in normal situations (the grocery store, before/after classes, walking around a mall) the social environment helps provide a buffer for interactions. Obnoxious behavior generates antagonism from other nearby people, and in general, people aren't willing to put up with much crap in their immediate area before they speak up.

In video games, its easier to avoid that buffer. No one else knows who is getting a /whisper. In most cases, you don't even know the virtual location of the person sending them. Even in cases where the communication is somewhat public (TS, general chat), the level social awkwardness of the rest of the population usually results in reactions ranging from apathy to giggling-frat-boy support.

Put more concretely: If a guy in a bar is being obnoxious and pestering a woman who is obviously uninterested, other people (men and women) will respond to let the jerk know his behavior is not acceptable. If the person were to do the same thing in an MMO, the general population would simply ignore it. This creates a passive encouragement for the minority of jerks who are either so socially unaware that they don't know they're jerks, or have just reached a high enough level of jerkitude that they think everyone likes it. The minority of people with enough social awareness and sympathy for other human beings will often jump in to perform the function that a healthy society should have, and will get labeled as White Knights.

While the jerks who obnoxiously hit on women are still responsible for their actions, I think the bigger problem is the people who see this happening and do nothing about it. The reasons women act less social in games (despite being more social, on average) is largely due to the attitudes of the silent majority that happily ignore the behavior of the minority of jerks.

If more of the people who silently accept this behavior simply spoke up and taught the jerks of the world that their behavior was obnoxious/stupid/inappropriate, then the society of an MMO wouldn't be so antagonistic to women.

Expecting online community to grow up - HAHAHA good one OP. Good one!

All joking aside: you need to give it much MORE time than 10+ years. I remember when I was the 'strange kid playing games' in girls eyes in primary school and many more males got same treatment through their school days. You and many more today females tend to forget that or choose not to remember.
Nowadays more girls are starting to take interest in this hobby so it's natural that some men are surprised by it and many feel threaten by it too(don't ask me why. I have no idea and quite frankly don't give a rat *** about other player gender) .

I'm shocked that you have so much gaming experience(or maybe you just lie about it? Why would people lie about it on internet hmm....) and still get shocked because people are surprised that they hear a girl. Men have much more courage when they are not face to face with a female so in many cases awkward boys irl turn into "womanizers" online.

That wikihow made me LOL. I know a guy who asked a stranger girl (stranger to him but I knew her) to go to webcam. She thought he was a stalker freak and never spoke to him again.

That wikihow can get you labeled a stalker freak. LOL

Certainly seems obsessed finding out who's a girl or not