I'm an avid redditor, and while there certainly are douchebags on reddit, I would surmise that the ratio is roughly similar to the number douchebags on the Internet as a whole, or in the real world.
I'm going to use a term here that I rarely use, but I think fits this sort of conversation: butthurt. You all probably know what I'm talking about when I say that, and if you don't you can probably figure it out.
Anyway, it seems like there's a certain population of reddit[1] that very easily gets butthurt about a great many things. There are entire reddits devoted to butthurt, and the reality is that the subreddit system doesn't really cater to contrary opinions - if you disagree, you get downvoted. If you disagree often enough and get downvoted often enough, you just unsubscribe from the subreddit because there is literally 0% chance that your argument will be recognized as anything but trolling.
This creates an incentive for communities to be relatively one dimensional, which leads to groupthink.
In this particular instance, we have biased parties on both sides of the equation saying that there is/isn't a problem, but the entirety of the evidence is anecdotal, and one side is being exceeding inflammatory (even for the Internet).
Are there misogynists on reddit? I'm certain of it. Are there feminazis on reddit? Certainly. Do either of these populations make up even nearly an appreciable percentage of the site's population? Almost definitely not.
[1] I don't want to be one of those 'I have a four digit UID' guys, but it seems as though, as time goes on, the general maturity, intelligence, and acceptiveness of reddit goes down. I believe this is simply a testament to its popularity, but certainly not a positive one.
"Are there misogynists on reddit? I'm certain of it. Are there feminazis on reddit? Certainly. Do either of these populations make up even nearly an appreciable percentage of the site's population? Almost definitely not."
It's not the percentage that counts - after all, what is an acceptable percentage of commenters who will tell you you should be raped?
I don't know if there is a solution to this issue. Increasing verification and moderation leads to stilted, boring, stagnated communities (Facebook). Anonymous conversation with a large enough population will unavoidably attract anti-social individuals (4chan, Reddit, YouTube, Fox News, er, well, basically everywhere else that's popular).
Are online communities just doomed to a short cycle and inevitable decline as they get more popular? (see: Eternal September). This is certainly the case with every community I've been a part of since I first got online about 20 years ago.
The experiment seems flawed. Based on her description, it seems she knew whether she was going to be posting from her female-sounding account or her male-sounding account when she would write a comment.
She should have written the comment first, then used a random number generator to decide which account to post from. In fact, that step should have been automated so that she would not know, even after it was posted, which account it was posted from.
To check the responses, another script should have been used that would pull up her comments and the responses, but filter out her account name, so that when she judged how the comment had been received, she would not know if she was judging a comment from the male account or the female account.
I'm going to use a term here that I rarely use, but I think fits this sort of conversation: butthurt. You all probably know what I'm talking about when I say that, and if you don't you can probably figure it out.
Anyway, it seems like there's a certain population of reddit[1] that very easily gets butthurt about a great many things. There are entire reddits devoted to butthurt, and the reality is that the subreddit system doesn't really cater to contrary opinions - if you disagree, you get downvoted. If you disagree often enough and get downvoted often enough, you just unsubscribe from the subreddit because there is literally 0% chance that your argument will be recognized as anything but trolling.
This creates an incentive for communities to be relatively one dimensional, which leads to groupthink.
In this particular instance, we have biased parties on both sides of the equation saying that there is/isn't a problem, but the entirety of the evidence is anecdotal, and one side is being exceeding inflammatory (even for the Internet).
Are there misogynists on reddit? I'm certain of it. Are there feminazis on reddit? Certainly. Do either of these populations make up even nearly an appreciable percentage of the site's population? Almost definitely not.
[1] I don't want to be one of those 'I have a four digit UID' guys, but it seems as though, as time goes on, the general maturity, intelligence, and acceptiveness of reddit goes down. I believe this is simply a testament to its popularity, but certainly not a positive one.