Men Not Liking Men: The Shocking Truth about Male-Pattern Loneliness in SL!

[Selene Gregoire]

1 minute ago, Ivanova Shostakovich said:

   I'll just have to stalk search you in order to send messages.

Good thing you don't know who my alts are. I log in on them more than I do Selene. 

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

   My friend list women to men ratio is roughly 2. It includes persons whom have passed away but does not include my own alts. Nor does it include business associations unless a friendship there also exists. Some of the men I have as friends began as strong flirtations that never went far, for various reasons. Some of them I never hear from again, although they remain, in my list. As far as I'm aware, none of those men are friends with each other. 

   I honestly don't know what difference there might be between men in real space forming close friendships, and the same thing happening in SL. With a few exceptions due to proximity, I don't really pay close attention to how that happens. I tend to assume they happen the same way my own friendships with women have done, common interests, organized activities, important events etc... I could try to come up with a bunch of theories, but it might just be as simple as the difference being, what men come to SL for versus what they already have in real space. Their focus is going to determine the outcome. This is only a theory I just came up with. I have no idea of its veracity. If there is a wide spread belief among men in SL that making friends with other men, here, is difficult.. I think I'll approach those guys in my list and ask them. "Excuse me, I'm working on my dissertation. Would you mind if I ask you some questions about forming friendships with men in SL?" I expect full cooperation.

[Callum Meriman]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

And speaking of broad generalizations, can we address this unsupportable stereotype about all feminists being "men-haters," please?

Can you point to a place I have said all feminists are "men-haters" because that is not in my belief structure. I support feminism, I speak out against gendered violence, I protect people who are being abused, I support equality. This is all core value stuff to me.

Please show me where I say all feminists are men-haters so I can damned well correct it, or at least retract it properly.

 

Now - without generalisations, just on your words.

Let's start with your subject: Men Not Liking Men: The Shocking Truth about Male-Pattern Loneliness in SL!

"Male-Pattern Loneliness" eh? The link to alopecia is clear, physical shaming. What made you choose those exact words if not a bait? If a man made a similar bait to a woman, would you be offended? Yes! and rightly so.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Callum Meriman

[Love Zhaoying]

5 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I find Scylla to be knowledgable and compassionate, and to possess generally good judgement and intentions.

I also find her difficult to misguide, dammit.

I wasn’t judging Scylla, just the topic. “Boys are silly doody-heads, because they are lonely and bad at friending.”

[Love Zhaoying]

5 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Most discussions are guided by opinions, many of which are not necessarily reinforced by knowledge, often based totally on emotions -- and 'good judgement' or 'positive intention' are both totally subjective.  

Tis the nature of discussions and I would not want to shut them down just because some find things uncomfortable to discuss.  

They are only “shut down” if someone reports the thread. Yes, discussions are useful. Discussions about stereotypes in this forum seem to only divide, trigger sensitive individuals, and serve as an echo chamber for those with the loudest voices. 

Boys have feelings too.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

Now - without generalisations, just on your words.

Let's start with your subject: Men Not Liking Men: The Shocking Truth about Male-Pattern Loneliness in SL!

"Male-Pattern Loneliness" eh? The link to alopecia is clear, physical shaming. What made you choose those exact words if not a bait? If a man made a similar bait to a woman, would you be offended? Yes! and rightly so.

I pointed this out also. I’m not quite sure how this works, but apparently the title was “in jest” but the actual topic was “serious” and we’re supposed to not be offended because we’re men (we are socialized to not be emotional). Not sure how that works. If the text had matched the light-hearted click-bait title or vice-versa, would have been different..in good ways.

[Klytyna]

Todays edition of the "local newpaper" had an interesting "factoid of the week" page...

"Anti-Social Networks"

"People who use social media every day are more likely to feel lonely than those who don't"

Feel lonely...

Very Often SMU's : 10%  - Non SMU's :7%

Quite Often SMU's 26% - Non SMU's 19%

Not Very Often SMU's 46% - Non SMU's 42%

Never SMU's 15% - Non SMU's 28%

...

Breakdown of lonely social media users by media type...

Tumblr - 58%

Snapchat - 48%

Instagram - 45%

Google Plus - 42%

Pinterest - 41%

Twitter - 41%

Arsebook - 37%

Linkedin - 36%

...

This is apparently from a YouGov report.

 

[Skell Dagger]

On 11/29/2018 at 5:38 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

The Shocking Truth about Male-Pattern Loneliness in SL

I don't actually have access to the "truth" about why men are more "lonely" in SL

There is a vast difference between 'being alone' and 'being lonely'.

[Skell Dagger]

23 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

Breakdown of lonely social media users by media type...

Tumblr - 58%

Snapchat - 48%

Instagram - 45%

Google Plus - 42%

Pinterest - 41%

Twitter - 41%

Arsebook - 37%

Linkedin - 36%

All of those sites create connections at the expense of communication. The advent of the like/heart/reaction button absolved people from having to type comments in response to others' posts. (Yes, you can comment on most of them, but the majority of people don't bother.) I've been fairly active on social media in RL for many years, and the last time I felt a true connection to people who followed my account(s) - in the sense that we communicated back and forth with actual words, rather than clicking a heart or a thumbs-up or a sadface - was back in the early days of LiveJournal, until it was sold by its original creator. Before Facebook came along, LJ was a social network that felt like it had heart behind it, and I've not found its like since (although pillowfort.io is looking promising).

Even back then, there was a lot of debate about the LJ term 'friends list', with many preferring to use 'contacts' instead. I had around 275 people following me there on my main account, and I regarded maybe four or five of them as actual friends. The rest were people I commented back and forth with, but regarded as acquaintances, not friends.

These days, many people seem to determine their worth by the number of likes or followers they have. If they regularly get 100 likes on a post, but then they post something that only gets 70 they might worry that it's not a "good enough" post. The same goes for followers: some people collect followers (or 'friends'), and the more followers/'friends' they have the more validated and/or secure they feel.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I have regarded as friends in my 11.5 years in Second Life.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Skell Dagger

[ellestones]

22 minutes ago, Skell Dagger said:

There is a vast difference between 'being alone' and 'being lonely'.

agree

is pretty much where the OP got off to a not very good start. As Scylla says in the OP also, this is all clickbaity

had it been worded to say that Scylla's observations and conversations with some of her male friends indicate that hetero men when logged in to SL prefer the company of women then the conversation would have been all over on the first page. Bu it wasn't so

fwiw in SL I have 10 men and 8 women friends. When my men friends are not romancing their partners then they hang out together.  Talking about stuff, politics, women, the weather. Compare their planes, cars, sailboats, building stuff, etc etc.  All the same things men do in the real world when they get together

 

[Paul Hexem]

7 pages in and no one's said that men in SL are just plain boring? Nobody wants to spend time with us unless they're attracted to us.

Other games do everything except shopping better than SL, and since 95% of the shopping in SL is for women, all the stuff men enjoy doing requires logging out and firing up another game, where we actually do enjoy each other's company!

… On a more serious note, and others have touched on it in this thread, men typically have an easier time talking to women about many things, especially online. Men don't talk to men about a lot of topics.

[AyelaNewLife]

4 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

Now - without generalisations, just on your words.

Let's start with your subject: Men Not Liking Men: The Shocking Truth about Male-Pattern Loneliness in SL!

"Male-Pattern Loneliness" eh? The link to alopecia is clear, physical shaming. What made you choose those exact words if not a bait? If a man made a similar bait to a woman, would you be offended? Yes! and rightly so.

Cut it out.

Look, written text isn't always the best way to communicate. It's easy for words to be written with one intention, but received as with another. That's fine, these misunderstandings happen.

But Scylla has openly stated many times, including in the first post, that it was meant in jest. Stop harping on about it. We get it, you didn't think it was funny and you took it literally. It was still meant as a joke. 

[Callum Meriman]

3 minutes ago, AyelaNewLife said:

Cut it out.

Look, written text isn't always the best way to communicate. It's easy for words to be written with one intention, but received as with another. That's fine, these misunderstandings happen.

But Scylla has openly stated many times, including in the first post, that it was meant in jest. Stop harping on about it. We get it, you didn't think it was funny and you took it literally. It was still meant as a joke. 

Would the joke work if it were directed male to female? If a male had of written a click-bait headline that bordered on body shaming?

It went downhill from there.

[Cindy Evanier]

I wanted to lighten the mood and was looking for an I like men image.   That wasn't my best idea of the day. 

[AyelaNewLife]

1 minute ago, Callum Meriman said:

Would the joke work if it were directed male to female? If a male had of written a click-bait headline that bordered on body shaming?

It went downhill from there.

If the OP had written "Ok, so, yes. That was a bit click-baity." as the first line, and had said "apparently this is the case, is this true, and if so why?" to make it clear that a) the title was not to be taken seriously, and b) they weren't preaching the gospel of the vapid stereotypes they had written about but instead was just after a discussion, open to being corrected, then yeah I'd be fine with that. I'd have taken the post in the spirit it was intended.

And yes, some people would have been offended anyway. Probably more than were offended by this thread. I'd still be shouting at them

[Callum Meriman]

3 minutes ago, AyelaNewLife said:

If the OP had written "Ok, so, yes. That was a bit click-baity." as the first line...

Edited in later.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, AyelaNewLife said:

If the OP had written "Ok, so, yes. That was a bit click-baity." as the first line, and had said "apparently this is the case, is this true, and if so why?" to make it clear that a) the title was not to be taken seriously, and b) they weren't preaching the gospel of the vapid stereotypes they had written about but instead was just after a discussion, open to being corrected, then yeah I'd be fine with that. I'd have taken the post in the spirit it was intended.

And yes, some people would have been offended anyway. Probably more than were offended by this thread. I'd still be shouting at them

Any idea how we “validate the stereotype” for the OP?

[Love Zhaoying]

13 minutes ago, Cindy Evanier said:

I wanted to lighten the mood and was looking for an I like men image.   That wasn't my best idea of the day. 

Would have been a great way to derail!

[Uneven]

I was secretly hoping someone would just get inspired by this topic and start a bromance photo thread as their "I will show you how lonely we are!" Moment

But it's been seven pages so far and nothing 😅

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Uneven said:

I was secretly hoping someone would just get inspired by this topic and start a bromance photo thread as their "I will show you how lonely we are!" Moment

But it's been seven pages so far and nothing 😅

That is a thought, OP ignores the Bromance trend. Even if that’s another stereotype. Bromance is the exact opposite of the OP’s quest to validate a stereotype.

[Callum Meriman]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

That is a thought, OP ignores the Bromance trend. Even if that’s another stereotype. Bromance is the exact opposite of the OP’s quest to validate a stereotype.

Maybe the OP needs to attend a few yacht races and tours? People who sail together. race each other, or just travel in a yacht club group. Most of the yacht clubs are non-sexual, social events.

Maybe the OP needs to do some RP outside the regions she is normally in. Quite a few guys travel in RP cliques.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 out of my 5 SL family members were straight males. So I don’t have the experience supposed by the OP.

[AyelaNewLife]

10 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Any idea how we “validate the stereotype” for the OP?

The OP based this on her personal anecdotes:

"Anecdotally, this is something I've been told at one time or another by probably most of my male acquaintances in SL: their friends, they have told me, are nearly all women. (Two of my male friends have said this to me literally within the last three days.)"

So you'd either support or counter her theory with anecdotes of your own, depending on whether this stereotype matched your reality or not. If most of the replies match what she's already been told, then that stereotype probably has some truth to it. If most of the replies talk of different experiences, then the reverse is true. In either case, she's learned something new rather than just assuming that the stereotype is true.

I really do not think that Scylla is looking for validation alone, she's made it quite clear (in subsequent edits and posts) that correction would be equally great as validation. This thread can be boiled down to her saying "I've noticed this, has anyone else noticed this?", and to that question both no and yes are equally valid answers. "This offends me" is not an answer to that question.

[Callum Meriman]

If only she had of approached it with the clarity and grace you have shown there Ayela. Thank you for saying it in a non-confrontational and rational manner.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

57 minutes ago, Skell Dagger said:

There is a vast difference between 'being alone' and 'being lonely'.

IBTL, as they say.

Yes, there is, and it's an important distinction. I have seldom, if ever, been "lonely" in SL: I have always been fortunate to have been a member of active and very welcoming communities in SL. I was a bit surprised, coming back after a long absence, to discover that those networks, and friends, we're still in place, and still welcoming.

That said, however, I value my "alone" time in SL. Probably a quarter to a third of the time I'm in-world I am deliberately flying under the radar, "hidden" from friends, because I want my own quiet time: to explore, or build, or just sit in the grass field at The Faraway to write or contemplate life.

I have no problem at all believing that you, or anyone, regardless of gender, values that as well.

In fact, what has most surprised me about responses to this thread has been the implication that "accusing" men of  "loneliness" is somehow some kind of deadly insult. The stereotypes would have us believe that loneliness is deeply gendered: men are individualistic and self-sufficient, where women are sociable and emotionally dependent upon community. In that context, to "accuse" men of loneliness should be less an insult than an irrelevancy.

We occasionally see posts here -- a little sad and upsetting, sometimes -- from residents wondering where all the people are. They are poignant reminders that loneliness is an actual affliction for some. I should probably have been more cognizant of this as well.

So this has been a valuable education for me. The mere fact that men can feel insulted by the implication that they are lonely represents a sea change, or at the least a corrective to the stereotype.