Want Attention In Chat Rooms? Change Your Name To Jennychick1997

from the asl? dept

Here’s a great example of why more research needs to be made public. A study out of the University of Maryland suggests that female screen names in chat rooms receive 25 times as many private threatening or sexually-explicit messages as men. This really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who has spent time in a chat room. Even in a room dedicated to a benign subject such as chess, the conversation can turn sexual when a female enters the room, or when female GM Alexandra Kosteniuk is mentioned. The scene inside chat rooms is like a bar, though anonymity helps lower inhibitions in ways that alcohol can only dream of. Still, just as you can hide your identity when privately addressing someone else, so too can they. The next person you hit on may be a professor from the University of Maryland Engineering Department.


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Comments on “Want Attention In Chat Rooms? Change Your Name To Jennychick1997”

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47 Comments
Posterlogo says:

So how'd you hear about it?

I like how you start off by referencing your own organization on a totally unrelated story about making research articles public (which they are…or maybe you expect all publications of anything to be free). Curious how you heard about this research into chatroom names if the research is so hidden. Curious indeed.

Intergalactic Hussy says:

Crazy People

People are crazy. I spoke to a chick a few times on IM. I thought she was cool… turns out way too materialistic (ugh label whore) and extremely psycho! I was like five years (I’m 25 now) younger and thought it would be a good idea to just stop talking to her. It’s not like I really knew her anyway.

Bad move. Crazy bitch set-up several emails just to screw with me years later… And even a year or so after I thought that was over, she finds me on myspace (I knew it!) and is trying to spread awful rumors that don’t even make sense. I’m mainly bothered by the fact that she’s bothering my friends with fake profiles. And I thought myspace annoyed me a year ago…

(All I wanted was to just meet up with old friends. F@#!ing crazy people, they’re all over. Always be careful. Because at the least, its annoying as hell.)

computer geek says:

careful what you ask for...

Hey, guys, this can backfire, too! One of my friends (a guy) thought that he was slick by posing as a 19 yr old lesbian on Microsoft Chat (several years ago) thinking he would get to talk to other hot lesbians… He got a lot of PMs, all sexual in nature. At first, he thought he found a gold mine. The joke was on him, though, as EVERY OTHER PERSON claiming to be a lesbian was actually another guy! 8 Years later and he is STILL trying to live that down!

Someone already mentioned about undercover cops posing as teenage girls online. I, for one, am really happy that police are putting in such a great effort to stop online predators. Thanks to shows, such as Dateline, I think many other would-be predators are realizing that online stalking is not a good idea. With today’s technology, it is very easy to track online users, even if the so-called anonymous person is using some sort of ip-blocking software.

captain obvious says:

Stupid researchers

yet another example of “researchers” wasting their time… putting into paper diagrmas what is plain to see with the butt-naked eye…

more obvious than masticating food is the fact that men are a bundle of built up horniness and nerves… what will researchers discover next?

TOP STORY: Researchers discover that chewing food makes it easier to swallow

noseeme says:

Re: Stupid researchers

Hey! Reseachers have to sit through years of boring classes until they grow up to be researchers. The dumbies are the ijits who give them the money to do the stupid research. You can’t get a grant to study chronic rapists but there’s a ton of money to study the mating rituals of the three toed bullfrog.

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