[SnydenBitchy]

It’s interesting that you would hold up reddit as an example of the “positive sociological impact” of anonymity on the internet, when OP specifically describes her desire to avoid “sexist, racist, homophobic, sophomoric, monosyllabic jerks”—precisely the sort of creature that reddit breeds. Though to be fair, the anonymity may not be to blame for reddit’s culture, seeing as other internet forums with similar traditions of anonymity have managed to avoid attracting such unpleasant crowds.

[marvin]

You are vastly overgeneralizing. Have you ever digged into the heavily moderated subreddits? The front page is not particularly representative of the positive parts of anonymity that spenvo is talking about. I am a very active reddit user and respectfully, you have no clue what you are talking about.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that reddit as a whole is representative of the younger (<30) parts of American society, not just a particular demographic or political group. Reddit has > 50 million users and is a very heterogenuous community. It is not just some hangout exclusive to nerds any longer. So you will see every political opinion and every positive and negative personal characteristic. As usual, the front page will show the lowest common denominator. There is by definition no way this could be any different, which you can see even if you look at the comments under any national newspaper article.

[SnydenBitchy]

I don’t want to derail this topic any further, but I’m quite familiar with reddit, and I would disagree that “reddit as a whole” is very heterogeneous or representative of the vast diversity of younger Americans. At a minimum, reddit’s mainstream is dominated by people belonging to a certain archetype—under 30, perhaps, but certainly also white and male and textbook brogressive[0]—resulting in thoroughly predictable patterns of discussion and voting.

The problem with smaller subreddits is that even with heavy moderation, they tend to be dominated by the mainstream of the site. For example (at least as of a couple years ago, when I largely quit participating) every new feminist- or woman-friendly subreddit would immediately be invaded by “men’s rights” activists to the point of rendering it useless for discussion. The only subreddit I’m aware of today where this hasn’t happened is /r/shitredditsays, but I suspect you’d agree that SRS’s utility for meaningful discussion is… limited.

Apologies for going offtopic.

[0] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brogressive

[marvin]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm aware of the subreddit drama you are referencing, but it didn't make a big splash in the communities I frequent - apart from mentioned SRS derailing a couple of legitimate discussions that in no way deserved to be characterized as misognystic.

[tehwalrus]

But on reddit you can create an account called "fred_jones" or "slwkajbgj" instead of "Eleanora Rashid-Feldman" and avoid having that behaviour directed at you like a heat-seeking missile. GP is arguing that the douchebags only become a significant problem if your diversity[1] status is tagged to your profile.

[1] Women are the majority, so "minority status" => "diversity status"

[spenvo]

@SnydenBitchy - Given the context, Reddit seems off-putting as an example. The comment I reposted was not in direct response to the OP.

Tehwalrus makes an excellent observation. The role that anonymity played for OP on YT would serve her well on other communities like Reddit.

Specifically to your remark on the questionable 'positive impact' of Reddit: I would argue that it has done a great deal to heighten the visibility of the Free and Open Internet/NSA stories and cases of corruption or injustice. There's a lot of insensitive humor, but I'm not going to say my (or anyone's) opinion of that matters, as long as no one is hurt or put in an inescapable position.

The bigger point remains: Which web-communities depend on anonymity? As OP's story highlighted, clearly she (and presumably others), as a Youtube user - depend(ed) on anonymity.

[SnydenBitchy]

Well, this is a bit tangential, but I wonder if it’s true that reddit’s intolerant culture (extending far beyond “insensitive humor”) really doesn’t matter. A community like reddit, I think, would be so much more useful as a resource for activism and knowledge-sharing if only the culture of its mainstream were inclusive rather than hostile towards marginalized voices, including women and minorities.

For example, the issues you mention of open internet, NSA spying, etc. affect everyone, not just the redditor in-crowd, and presumably would be of interest to a wider audience. And there are plenty more cases of injustice that don’t stand a chance of exciting passion among the redditor demographic—I’m thinking feminism or issues of racial justice (to name another example from recent memory, the voting majority of redditors are convinced George Zimmerman is a hero).

I don’t know how different reddit’s culture would be without the anonymity, but I agree it’s an interesting question.

[thaumasiotes]

> Women are the majority, so "minority status" => "diversity status"

Surely, by that reasoning "diversity status" is just as inappropriate a term? If a group is over 50% female, adding one more female will make it less diverse.

[tehwalrus]

"diversity streams" is the term I prefer, since it's about under-representation in specific spheres of activity (which should be more diverse).

This context, internet anonymity, is rather an odd case - we're discussing the advantages of hiding in the crowd, by masking your identity as a member of a stream. I'm still using my preferred language for similar political problems involving the diversity streams, because I think it's the most appropriate nomenclature.

[thaumasiotes]

Well, I've never been sympathetic to the language and politics of "diversity", but I think it's especially, gratuitously inapt here. I suspect very strongly that women and men are present on youtube in comparable numbers. Youtube has mass awareness.

The problem discussed here has nothing to do with representation in specific spheres of activity; it's driven by specifically being female in the presence of men. Women walking by men on the street get catcalled, even though walking on the street is open to, and participated in by, all. The female commenters you mention are not trying to hide their "diversity" status, they're trying to hide their female status.

[rmc]

Women are the majority

This is why I use the term "marginalized groups" rather than "minority". Black people were a majority in apartheid South Africa. But they were marginalized.

[aestra]

The term minority has a specific meaning in sociology not the same that it means in statistics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_(sociology)

Rather than a relational "social group", as the term would indicate, the term refers to a category that is differentiated and defined by the social majority, that is, those who hold the majority of positions of social power in a society. The differentiation can be based on one or more observable human characteristics, including, for example, ethnicity, race, gender, wealth, health or sexual orientation. Usage of the term is applied to various situations and civilizations within history, despite its popular mis-association with a numerical, statistical minority.

Blacks were still the minority in apartheid South Africa, just not the statistical minority.

[rmc]

Yep.

But in spaces like there, where people are unlikely to know things like that, it can be helpful to use terms like "margalized group" or "oppressed group", in order to stop a pedantic geek ( :) ) getting into a dictionary definition argument.

[tehwalrus]

the context I'm most familiar with is representation (in a profession, in parliament, etc) so we talk positively about making those places more diverse, rather than pointing out the systemic marginalisation (which, for the case of sexism/etc in those contexts, is often subconscious - unlike apartheid.)

[sesqu]

The quality that breeds such jerks is simply comfort. When people are comfortable, they make bad jokes, express unpopular opinions, reference subcultures and so on. Whether comfort is a positive thing, sociologically, has occasionally been debated, but only in comfortable settings.

[dredmorbius]

It's interesting when you hold up the type of creature reddit breeds when OP was linking to a re-share of a post originally made by a pseudonymous Google+ user. Namely me.

At my request, I might add, due to some idiosyncrasies of G+: a re-share of a post preserves the content of a post even if the original is deleted. But a re-share and the comments on it is not itself re-sharable. A link to a G+ post, however, is.

So, should I delete or purge my G+ account (I haven't yet decided which, if either, I plan on doing), Andi's posts will continue to exist with the content on them visible.