I just saw a tiktok about a man talking about this article called "Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour" basically proving that the most agressive players towards women are the bad players. Just thought it was funny, here's the link of the article if anyone is interested about the methods and results š
Hey! I’m a researcher and love talking about research in this sub. The paper is available to read for free and isn’t paywalled so I recommend people to take a look for themselves, but if anyone has trouble following academic writing (understandable) then here’s a summary I’ve written that I’ve shared here before:
The data are based on 163 games of Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 from 2013. There are two things at play here really:
1. Players in the lobby were given a skill ranking by the researchers between 1-50. This is described as being based on:
>…an objective indicator (determined by an undisclosed algorithm by the developer) of how good or bad that particular player is in the specific playlist selected. This skill level ranges from 1ā50, with a higher score indicating a greater skill level.
So I suspect that the research team worked with Microsoft/Bungie to obtain skill-based matchmaking data. But since I can’t be certain of this, there’s other factors here:
2. The kill-death ratio of matches that were being recorded during the experiment.
Based on these two things, the researchers found that:
1. Players who had a lower skill ranking from 1-50 were significantly more likely to harass women, while players of higher skill level were less likely to harass women.
2. Players who died more and got fewer kills were more likely to harass in general, but were significantly more likely to take it out on the women in the lobby up to 15 deaths. 15 deaths in one match, ouch…
3. High skill players were significantly more likely to be welcoming to women in the lobby.
If anyone wants to know anything else about it or has any questions then I’d be delighted to answer them, I love sharing research.
I learned this first hand years and years ago playing Halo with my guy friends. I was the only girl. This was back in the day that when you wanted big match ups with multiple people, you had to physically bring other consoles and people into a room and hook them all together. Me and my, like, 5 or 6 friends had invited some acquaintances from school or work or whatever over, and of course they were all guys, too.
So there I was, mercilessly sniping one dude who kinda just kept … being very snipeable. I mean I wasn’t overly trying to, but he just kept trying to kill me so naturally I was, you know, killing him back. After this happened a few more times he started being a real asshole to me, but that totally didn’t change the fact that he kept dying because he just wasn’t as good as me, or really anyone.
So at one point he had enough and *bolted to his feet, whipped the controller at the wall,* and started screaming sexist obscenities at me, to all of our stunned surprise. Like, he went **OFF.** Naturally my friends immediately escorted him out and we never played with him again…
… but it was, to this day, one of the best gaming experiences of my life. I tilted that guy so hard he was out of the friend circle.
That experience made me **never be offended by asshole gamer men again.** Because I knew why it was happening.
So misogyny is a skill issue? /s
This needs posting in r/feminism too please.
I noticed this too, not just in-game but IRL. People who chronically underachieve often avoid personal accountability/critical thinking and blame a marginalized community (e.g. person who canāt find a job blames illegal immigrants, person who canāt find a girlfriend blames women)
This attitude then feeds into a negative feedback loop where women donāt want to date a sexist asshole or POC donāt want to work with or hire a racist.
i feel like there’s potential here for some fun counter-trolling for the sort of women who’d be into that
“[sexist comment here]”
“post k/d scrub”
When I was healing in WoW, the best parties were always the friendliest. If I got abuse, I could assume I was in for a hard time healing too. But the friendly parties, I barely had to cast a spell.
misogyny is a skill issue š
Sexism and racism and such have direct links to insecurity. Just more tasty data for that.
Iāve been playing cod since 2009 on 360. Also played halo since lam party daysā¦ I have a big enough sample size to say yeah boys be pissy when doing bad
I always found studies like this to spark my curiosity. Seems to align with my experiences in PVP games most of the time.
Though in non pvp games, I have had my share of experiences with “Elite Players” or top players that will resort to sexism, racism, misogyny, and general toxicity to attack people that don’t do things “their” way or “meta” way.
Iāve always loved this study.
Itās my go to thing to share with toxic male gamers I come across and it sends them into the largest tantrums imaginable.
Ah, thanks science. āŗļø
I wonder if it comes from insecurity. Good performance brings confidence, bad performance makes people look for things to blame.
A confident person doesnāt need to search for scapegoats or excuses when he fails, he just gets back up and tries again with the previous experience in mind.
Now, iād be curious to see a study like this done in a game like League of Legends or CSGOā¦
I mean it’s not surprising: the more skilled you are and the more successful you are(measured in kills), the less frustrated with your own performance you’ll be.Ā
You don’t need to be blame your teammates or blame it on cheap tricks/cheating if you dont die as much. But once you get frustrated, you’ll just say whatever vile that comes to your mind.
Itās ALWAYS THE ONES BAD AT THE GAME
>I can’t stop eating. I eat because I’m unhappy, and I’m unhappy because I eat. It’s a vicious cycle. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s someone I’d like to get in touch with and forgive. Myself.
– Fat Bastard; Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
makes sense XD
I don’t think that’s directly to women, generally the mediocre players are more toxic than the good players. Just my experience in games anyway.
Interesting how that is
Isn’t only applicable to sexism or to gaming. Bigotry often comes from those who underachieve. There are highly achieving people who discriminate, but mostly those are an exception. People who tend to treat others poorly, badly or aggressive usually have some issues. This can lead to poor performance, both in life and in gaming. Add to that that whenever someone underachieves, they can get frustrated. I’m pretty sure this also applies to racism, homophobia and people who are mean to ducks.
So basically a scientific exploration of “the loudest and most aggressive dog is often the smallest one”
TLDR : insecure misogynists’ are bad at video games!
love it
While this interesting, you canāt āproveā anything with a single experiment, especially when it is purely observational. In a controlled experiment, you can account for other factors and try to reduce variables as much as possible, but looking at a random sample of pre-existing data is really just compiling information and noting trends. If a majority of people who attend an event have brown hair, does it mean having brown hair makes you more likely to attend, or do more people just have brown hair? In a controlled experiment you can ensure you have enough variety to see if thatās the case, and have a control group where you donāt manipulate the population at all. Whatās the difference between the two groups?
For this study- how did they perform with no women in the lobby? Were there any external factors? How were the women behaving? Were these mostly people queueing solo or with friends? Were they able to follow the same people both alone and with friends, in male only lobbies vs co-ed? Is there a difference? What role does rank play in these games? In the games they performed poorly; was it just them, or was everyone on the team doing badly thus making the overall KDA low for everyone? Etc etc.
I absolutely love research but man research papers are a nightmare to write and generally pretty boring to read lmao. Iām a fan of meta analyses and looking at a bunch of data over multiple studies or observations and seeing how it all correlates. In every case, more data is better. So while one study is certainly interesting, Iād be curious to see more.