technoculture314-09

Following this week’s lecture - Gender in the Digital Age, I have surveyed my Facebook friend’s profile photos and have come up with these statistics:

Females

26% Normal profile photo
22% Friends profile photo
14% Child profile photo
12% Posing profile photo
12% Artsy profile photo
10% Joke profile photo
4% Activity profile photo

Males

23% Joke profile photo
17% Activity profile photo
16% Normal profile photo
15% Posing profile photo
10% Friends profile photo
10% Child profile photo
9% Artsy profile photo

Activity profile photo: A photo taken while the subject is engaged in an activity.
Artsy profile photo: An abstract; a painting; an image intended as art.
Child profile photo: A photo taken with or of the subject’s child.
Friends profile photo: A photo taken of the subject with a friend or friends.
Joke profile photo: A photo or image intended as a joke.
Normal profile photo: An incidental photo; not stylised; often taken by someone else; often taken at parties etc.
Posing profile photo: A heavily stylised photo that represents the subject in a highly favourable light.

NOTE:
I am a male and have more male Facebook friends than female Facebook friends. At 32, I’m older than what I imagine the class’ average age to be and I presume the average age of my Facebook friends is similar to mine. My age could also account for the surprisingly high number of Child profile photos.

Although I tend to see the whole Male vs. Female FPS (first person shooter) argument as a little redundant (I think we're all aware that Men tend to ‘masculanise’ their hobbies, computer games being one of these). I am intrigued by the Female 'power user' tendencies to denounce other players online for lacking what the other might see as sufficient skill (noob), and as the research suggest, be less willing to help others to learn new skills within game-play. I reluctantly place myself in the 'power user' category, although just meeting the threshold of 'several' hours of gaming a week, and it is in my experience that men are far more competitive and less likely to help other players. I am speaking specifically about Counterstrike, where having played religiously as a teenager I found there to be little or no desire for teenage boys to dote on other players, secret tips or tactics. Perhaps it is my own stereotypes relating to gender but I see this research as being in direct contrast to my own personal experience. At the risk of sounding old fashioned or even chauvinistic, isn’t it Women whose instinct lends itself to caring and nurture? And if so, why once a new-media platform is introduced, do these presumed values go out with the bathwater? Perhaps there has been a shift since my days entrenched in the FPS online community (2001-2004), in male and female attitudes not towards games, but other gamers. Are there any Females out there who would agree/disagree and/or guys who have had a similar experience to me?

Tim W