OMG Girlz Don't Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1

[SmartIdiot]

I thought we were past all this?

I find it hard to believe there are still dipshits who think gaming is only a guy thing and that girls don't know how to use a computer. I know several girls who play games and yes I will admit to having my ass kicked a couple of times by said girls online. It's pretty pathetic some losers can't get past the fact that the internet and games are for everyone, then again they are probably the same people who have appalling social skills, always get beat up in school and would say "Uh..I... uh.. gotta go" if they actually met a girl.

 

[Boxpopper]

I played with a girl on Halo before.

There was a Rocket man coming for me, I said "H56, help."

She said, "Alright I'm on my way."

I said, "Thanks, almost lost my frenzy"

But everyone else kind of stopped playing. Soon after;

"Who was that?"

"Was that H56?"

"Why is he letting his girlfriend on the mic?"

"Radio, you don't actually believe that's a girl do you?"

I respond with, "Why not?"

The players then preceded to kill her and only her, even our own team.
Then t-bag her for an upwards of 5 minutes.

*shakes head*

What in the... dear god.

 

[Verbera]

Huh, old article, but still true. I second a lot of the stuff that people have been noticing when it comes to WoW. Most of my guild were absolutely dumbfounded when they found out that the MT in our rather middle-aged guild was -gasp- a fifteen-years-old girl. And proceeded in harassing her out of the guild. Yeah. So, I think I get this sentiment.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

Hey guys, I just noticed a 3 year difference between article and first comment.
Firstly: Holy Necrothread, batman!

Secondly:Whitney must've felt pretty bad that no one seemed to notice for three years. We're sorry!

 

[Virgil]

Sorry guys, this article had two comment threads because it was featured in a really old Best Of issue. Instead of having the same conversation in two places, we merged the threads so we can all talk about the same things over and over again in one place.

Thread unlocked, enjoy!

That aside, I would like to obtain some sort of photo/video-identification of said gender of the OP. Without such, we cannot believe what we are reading.

Whitney, the author, is also the person in the background art of the article. And until recently one of our site programmers - she's off getting a masters in cryptography or something now

 

[Graustein]

I've never really encountered this behaviour, for some reason. This whole "gurls don exits on teh intarwebz" phenomenon has an almost mythical status to me. It's an urban legend. I've never seen it, only heard of it. In fact the reverse once happened to me, somebody I knew on another forum years ago once admitted that she thought I was a girl, based on the tone and content of my posts. Never mind that this forum listed your gender (as well as age, location, join date, post count and days active) under every post you made.

Perhaps it's because the majority of my friends are female, and a sizable portion of those play games. Hence, it never really occured to me that girls don't play games or exist on the internet.

 

[Firia]

I remember reading that article when it first came out. I too am a girl on the internet. I used to play Counter Strike Source with a group of friends. Oh but if I ever decided to jump onto a different server from ours, punks would assume I was some 10 year old pokémon fan when I'd hit the voice chat.

Some people were mature, and accepted my gender status. Others fought it, like it could be disbelieved into unexistence. Demands of pictures, "proof," and disbelief have haunted my internet gaming. I usually would just send them to my Deviant Art page. There is a photo of me there, but they'd have to dig through my art to find it. XD Work for your treat!!

Women; the internet has them.

 

[Maur DL]

There is a photo of me there, but they'd have to dig through my art to find it. XD Work for your treat!!

Women; the internet has them.

Nice trick, I'll have to remember that if I'm ever reincarnated as a woman (crosses fingers?)

Whitney Butts? Is that REALLY her name? Because if so she has to be the most beautiful tragically/comically named woman ever.

But seriously, everyone knows women on the internet are just figments of the over-active male imagination. *nods sagaciously and puffs pipe*

 

[mini-moose]

That was fast, glad to know humour and satire is lost on this community but hey as long as we're all happy clappy chappies who suck up to everyone everything will be fine. Oh I actually read the PM I got, apparently the gods of humour at The Escapist know what's funny and what's not. Wait I can rebuke right? Or is that "Not funny."

 

[Cheesus333]

Through no fault of my own (i.e. no girls I know have Xboxes, or at least not Live) I have, what - one girl on my friends list, out of say 50. I'm not shocked, per se when I see someone who is clearly a girl on Matchmaking, but I can appreciate they are vastly outnumbered. It makes me sad that misogyny like this is present online, but I never seem to hear it in my own games. Mostly cause I'm not thick enough to brave Teamspeak on Live - I unplug the headset or I start a party.

 

[Anarien]

Through no fault of my own (i.e. no girls I know have Xboxes, or at least not Live) I have, what - one girl on my friends list, out of say 50. I'm not shocked, per se when I see someone who is clearly a girl on Matchmaking, but I can appreciate they are vastly outnumbered. It makes me sad that misogyny like this is present online, but I never seem to hear it in my own games. Mostly cause I'm not thick enough to brave Teamspeak on Live - I unplug the headset or I start a party.

For reasons that are easy to understand, a lot of females don't pick gamertags that scream "I have boobs"; myself included.

 

[stonethered]

more people should read that article, someone link it to the WoW forums. they really need it over there.

 

[Trivun]

Is it just me or did anyone else think this was a troll thread until they clicked on it and realised it was actually Featured Content? Bearing in mind I clicked through the front page...

Anyway, I've played against gamers online who've apparently been girls before (I say apparently because obviously you can't prove gender through an online game...). Girl gamers tended to, and still do tend to, be at least as good, if not better than, guys. I don't see gender as being important in any way whatsoever when it comes to gaming, unless you're a really butch guy and you regularly play Barbie: Pony Adventures (though that's mainly because of Barbie, not so much ponies. Ponies are awesomesauce incarnate).

 

[Megacherv]

That was fast, glad to know humour and satire is lost on this community but hey as long as we're all happy clappy chappies who suck up to everyone everything will be fine. Oh I actually read the PM I got, apparently the gods of humour at The Escapist know what's funny and what's not. Wait I can rebuke right? Or is that "Not funny."

No...that's because you just seem like a bit of an idiot to me.

Is it just me or did anyone else think this was a troll thread until they clicked on it and realised it was actually Featured Content? Bearing in mind I clicked through the front page...

I thought it was gonna be a serious topic, but not featured content.

I had a friend on PSN who I met on GRAW, she was cool. Another friend plays on quite a few games thatI do aswell (Prince of Persia, Flower, WipeoutHD), just not FPSs because she finds them difficult to aim, but that's not because she's a girl. This girl is quite small and cute.

Another girl I know is a huge Halo fan. That's all that needs to be said, isn't it? This girl is quite attractive aswell, if not very.

So, in conclusion, the retards on the internet (most of them probably /b/tards, or have come from /b/tard descent) should leave the internet.

EDIT: In fact, whenever I go on Omegle an I meet a woman, I point out that I WON'T ask for naked pics...not unless she offers of course...

 

[Lord George]

Why won't this thread die? What does it have so much appeal.

 

[Notebooked]

I believe there are girls on the internet (because, you know, I'm a girl, on the internet, so that's one, at least), they simply mostly aren't very open about it; mostly because of the fact that people, while these are often easy to ignore (at least for some), can be douchebags about it. And while I sincerely hope that we live in a society where such things won't happen, it's always a possible risk. So girls on the internet aren't usually very open about the fact that they are girls on the internet, for the sake of being safe and not discriminated, thus leading to the impression that there are no girls on the internet.

At least, that's what I think. Of course, I could be wrong.

(Also, for some reason, I remember one time when I was playing my precious TF2, voicechatting to some immature jackass, trying to pose a good argument instead of just going 'wtf noob'. Mid-argument, he cut me off, saying 'You talk like a girl'. I stared at my monitor, was amused, and replied with the truth. 'I am a girl.' His response was 'Oh. .... ... ... ... ...Okay.'

He didn't respond to me anything more, and I immediately felt the 'awkward'-level rise by about ninety-five percent. The combined emotion of 'Girls? In MAH TF2?!' had gathered to some gigantic force of social tension, some mutated beast that could not be stopped.

I didn't mind this much, since, while it was caused by me, it didn't necessarily have to apply to me unless I let it. So I kept playing, undaunted.)

 

[Glitterngld]

I don't even bother playing online anymore because, honestly, I ran out of patience with the attitudes of the people I was playing with/ against. If a guy loses a game, he's just had a bad round. If a girl loses a game, it's because her tiny cake-baking hands and shoe shopping brain can't handle such complex operations. It's hard to be bothered going through a games' learning curve when every single loss lets your whole gender down, and every win is assumed to have been the product of your opponent's incompetence rather than your own ability.

That said, I think people would really be surprised at how many girls they've actually encountered on the internet. There are plenty of girls with far more patience and determination than me. They just don't identify themselves, for all the reasons stated in the piece.

There's an assumption that female gamers, in so far as they exist, are only interested in the two S's, Sims and Singstar.

Then there's the larger issue, that FPS's and many multiplayers just aren't designed with girls in mind.

I'm a manager in a games shop, and I'm so sick of having customers ask me to ask one of the guys a question - on the assumption that I myself couldn't - that I'm starting to get kinda resigned to it.

I too have had to deal with that same gender bias when I first started playing RS back in 2000 I was in an area in the game with 2 other females killing mobs a guy walked into the area where we were and acted surprised that we were actual rl females and ask us why were we playing that we should be doing our hair and make-up like girls playing video games was unheard of.

 

[lolregister]

Heh- I also play wow and my first main was a female character (I'm a guy). Anyways i start hanging out with another dude who also has a female toon. A few months go by and i finally hit the level cap, join some raids and start talking in vent and he's shocked to discover i was a guy... Kinda a strange experience on the internet

 

[Pumpyumpkin]

Very good article, I have similar experiences in-game with guys not believing i'm a girl. for the most part I don't tell any random people who I am in RL and let them think what ever they want to think about me. and my guild which I joined at the start of WoTLK is really great, we have about 5 girls in the guild so everyone is used to it by now which is good.