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comment by theadvancedapes
theadvancedapes  ·  3888 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Girls and Boys Together: Gender on Hubski

Great and thoughtful response. Thanks.

    I will say that I have always had more guy friends than girl friends. I usually have one or two close girlfriends but my best friends and people who I know will always be there for me are guys. I also tend to hang out, have late nights, etc with guys. I've noticed from /r/twoxchromosomes that this is a fairly common thing for the girls on reddit.

This is interesting, and kind of deepens the mystery for me. So it seems like a lot of social media websites are built around "guy culture" and the girls that gravitate towards it feel more comfortable interacting with males than females. That makes sense.

I have an idea as to the cause of this that comes from evolutionary studies. Chimpanzee communities are female philopatric, meaning that the male-male bonds are stronger than the female-female bonds. This is caused by females being the "dispersing sex" (i.e., upon reaching sexual maturity they must leave their natal group and find a new group to spend their adult lives - whereas the males can stay in their natal groups for their entire lives). All primates have some form of philopatric system and whichever sex stays in the natal group, usually have stronger social bonds. (side note: the reason for philopatry is a mechanism to decrease inbreeding).

Anyway, in humans I feel as though we are the opposite of chimpanzees (i.e., male philopatric). It may be controversial and not at all proven, but I think over evolutionary times men were the dispersing sex. It seems to me that female-female bonds are a lot stronger naturally than male-male bonds. In fact, a big problem in the modern world (to me anyway) is how impoverished male social life can be (without the aid of females). Could it be that because of this that males use websites like Hubski and Reddit to enhance a social life that they are fundamentally dissatisfied with? Whereas females do not need to do this because they have a strong social and discussion network (thus favouring sites like Pinterest and Facebook which are not discussion based)? This would also explain why mostly only females with a lot of male friends gravitate to sites like this as well because you are immersed in the male culture that has produced this proclivity.

What say you insomniasexx?

Side note to mk and thenewgreen: if my hypothesis is correct, could this mean that we could attract more females by making a image and video exclusive section?





insomniasexx  ·  3888 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Whereas females do not need to do this because they have a strong social and discussion network (thus favouring sites like Pinterest and Facebook which are not discussion based)?

This isn't a bad hypothesis at all. I feel very different at times because of my lack of a strong female group of friends. My mom and girls at my high school all have very strong lifelong bonds. My mom just went to a weekend getaway with girls from her sorority - 30 years later! I suppose if you get all the desired interaction from people in real life, you don't have as much need for an online, discussion based community.

Thinking about it, I see and experience a lot more female interaction based around things that are very specific to their situation. Things like boyfriends, marriage, inside jokes, family, etc. My best friend and I in high school never discussed much besides boys and sex and personal identity and self esteem and the rich town we grew up and resented. If we did talk deeper it was mostly about our opinions (ie: abortion) that weren't really backed up by current events or articles. Perhaps because female's conversations stay more focused on things close to them, an online forum doesn't attract them as much.

When I hang out with guys the conversation can float from politics to video games to articles or television shows we heard/read/saw. Personal opinions on said things are there but are much less prevalent. Guys also don't tend to discuss their emotions or issues regarding self-esteem or desire to have babies or get married or sexual encounters in the same way girls do. Conversations with guys about sex go like this: "I went out with Mary last night." "Oh yeah, how was that?" "Yeah, we had drunk sex, it was alright" "Do you like her?" "Meh." Conversations with girls about sex can go on forever. Seriously. We can talk for hours about a 10 minute hook up.

theadvancedapes  ·  3888 days ago  ·  link  ·  

This response.

    Thinking about it, I see and experience a lot more female interaction based around things that are very specific to their situation. Things like boyfriends, marriage, inside jokes, family, etc. My best friend and I in high school never discussed much besides boys and sex and personal identity and self esteem and the rich town we grew up and resented. If we did talk deeper it was mostly about our opinions (ie: abortion) that weren't really backed up by current events or articles. Perhaps because female's conversations stay more focused on things close to them, an online forum doesn't attract them as much.

This perfectly encapsulates how I feel most girls interact; and seems quite ubiquitous. From an evolutionary perspective it makes sense.

    When I hang out with guys the conversation can float from politics to video games to articles or television shows we heard/read/saw. Personal opinions on said things are there but are much less prevalent. Guys also don't tend to discuss their emotions or issues regarding self-esteem or desire to have babies or get married or sexual encounters in the same way girls do. Conversations with guys about sex go like this: "I went out with Mary last night." "Oh yeah, how was that?" "Yeah, we had drunk sex, it was alright" "Do you like her?" "Meh." Conversations with girls about sex can go on forever. Seriously. We can talk for hours about a 10 minute hook up.

Again, this rings true to me as well. For me, the fact that men have such a hard time discussing personal issues and events has led me to develop female friendships more often in young adulthood. As a result, a lot of my male friends from high school don't really know me well... they just know what movies and music I like. In order to discuss issues about my relationships or sex, etc. I need to rely on my female friendships.

This broadly speaking encapsulates why females (generally) do not find Hubski as an attractive medium for social interaction. Now I am interested in why male-male and female-female interactions are generally so different. Is it evolutionary based? The ultimate cause must be (I should suspect). But how flexible is culture in forming this general discussion pattern? I know of guys who would really like to speak more openly about their personal lives (like me for instance). And I do have some guy friends where we have openly discussed these issues. Maybe it can be consciously changed?

What maybe perplexes me more is why females don't (generally) tend to talk about the things you described above with your typical conversations with males. Is that a culturally flexible thing as well?

insomniasexx  ·  3888 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    What maybe perplexes me more is why females don't (generally) tend to talk about the things you described above with your typical conversations with males. Is that a culturally flexible thing as well?

I'm not sure. It might be just my experiences with girls and my age. I'm only almost 23, so my close friendships with girls are from high school. In college I had 3 super best friends that were guys and never developed that same close relationship with any girls there. My close friends from high school are off living lives in their college towns, so I haven't really had a chance to really get close with them again. I wonder if our conversations would be different now that we're both older and have grown a lot since high school.

I might ask my mom what kinds of things she typically talks about with her close friends. It would be interesting to see if as you get older and the friendship lasts longer, the conversations shift. Based on overheard phone conversations over the years, I assume she mostly talks about their kids, how difficult teenagers are, and drama surrounding who is getting remarried and what their ex-wife thinks about that.

    I know of guys who would really like to speak more openly about their personal lives (like me for instance)

I know for a fact you aren't alone there. A lot of guys have those same desires, but rarely admit to it or do anything to talk about it. If I'm hanging out with one of my guy friends, they do open up more emotionally, but there is still a large gap between what they actually are feeling, etc and what they chose to share and how they chose to share that information. A lot of time they downplay it a lot, even though I know they are hurting or really bothered by something. It's just different.

That has everything to do with evolution & society & cultural expectations. The male is supposed to fill the role as strong protector, and revealing anything that might detract from that is hard for them to do. I'm not sure how possible it is to change that. It is very engrained in our society and I suspect it will continue to be a trait passed down from generation to generation. Even as women become stronger and more independent and won't rely on men as much, I still think that gender role will be a prevalent part of society. Even now, it doesn't seem to be something to impress the ladies as much as it is something to impress or compete with other men.

onehunna  ·  3886 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm a bit late on the gun on this one, but I just read through what you and insomniasexx were discussing and I think what you said about the dispersing sex is really interesting.

My experience actually contradicts this--I've personally seen that male-male bonds have been stronger than female-female bonds. For example, my group of male friends and I fight all the time and give each other shit constantly, but in the end it's all good, no matter how heated it gets. We get over it in a matter of hours. However I've seen my sisters and my mother lose female friends over the most trivial of matters, petty arguments. This is a generalization of course and what seems trivial to me (a male) may be a much bigger deal to a woman. I don't know.

Re-reading what I just wrote I'm now realizing that it makes me either sound like I think women are petty creatures or that my sisters and mom are bitches. Neither is the case, but this is just my personal experience. I think part of it is that I was an athlete and grew up in the 'locker room' culture and the idea of 'team brotherhood' surrounded me. So it's possible that my view of male-male bonds being stronger has been influenced by that, whereas (and again, another generalization) most of the males on discussion-based sites like reddit may not have had that and thus feel as if forums are the best avenue to have those discussions.

I come from a house that was practically damp in estrogen and my little sisters are big into Instagram and Pintrest and Facebook, basically all of the social network sites you would normally consider to be targeted towards females. They're your proto-typical girly girls. As you mentioned Pintrest and Facebook aren't really discussion-based sites but then insomniasexx brought up how girls can talk for hours about something like a 10 minute hookup whereas for guys the conversation lasts 10 seconds. But then online, guys are riffing for pages on a myriad of subjects where the majority of girls are content on sites that don't really feature any heavy discussion. I find that strange.

lil  ·  3885 days ago  ·  link  ·  

hey onehunna - it was your story "blink" that inspired my post above. I thought the character sitting in the guidance office was a female.

thenewgreen  ·  3883 days ago  ·  link  ·  

All

Image submissions: http://hubski.com/imagesubs

and

Video submissions: http://hubski.com/vidsubs

are just a click away :)