The University of Maryland has released a new study finding that chat room users with female names receive twenty five times more malicious comments than users registered with typically male or gender ambiguous names. Female usernames, on average, received 163 malicious private messages a day in the study! It appears that the definition of malicious was relatively straight forward, too. Further proof that technology doesn't solve all our social problems (did we need further proof?) even if no one on the internet does know you're a dog.
Found via Nancy White, author of the Full Circle Online Interaction Blog and an expert in IM/chat. Several months ago I interviewed Nancy about international chat strategies and related topics.
1. That is because men that actually know how to talk to women are too busy talking with them.
The rest fan out their frustration safely behind
their browsers
Posted at 11:26PM on May 19th 2006 by lex_jonson