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in and let's be Sociology gets together. Ah, Hello and welcome to the
Sociology Show podcast. This is a student takeover episode, and the takeover is
actually from my own students from Basfic College in Brighton Hove down on the south
coast of England. And three of my students were very interested in sexism in
video games and misogyny in video games. They're inspired by some research by Anita
Sarkeesian and they wanted to carry out their own research to see if they found
similar findings in terms of how much misogyny is out there. How sexist the
video games are and the types of language and interactions people use when they're playing
online video games in particular. So the three students conducted this research are Harper
Winsleor, Jessica Thornton, and Layla Miller Jones. I asked them to put
together a podcast. I was really impressed with the depth and knowledge here,
and also they had a little bit of humor in there as well, and
it's a really fantastic piece of research. So without further ado, let's go
over to listen to sexum in Video Games with Harper, Jessica and Layla Enjoy
Hello, Oh my god, Hey Hi. So I'm Halper, I'm Jeff
I am Layla, and our sociology presentation in the form of the podcast.
Yeah, we contemplated in a video, but I came freshman. You won't
find yourself. Don't mind yourself, Harper looking gorgeous, gorgeous. Stop.
Yeah. So basically we are doing so using the secondary data from Sarkeesia.
Oh my god, I'm so sorry. We are doing we are looking at
the culture of online gaming and the portrayal of femininity and masculinity in the video
game world. And I basically use this to form our research question, which
is how our regressive misogynistic values presented in the gaming world. Yeah, yeah,
I guess the hypothesis were kind of the mesogynistic attitudes were still very present
in the gaming world as they have always been, and we're kind of I
guess not yeah, not even trying to prove it, but just exactly what
that is. Look at you go, halfer um. So me and Jess
both looks at some articles and like videos that Sarcasian did and mine was about
tropes versus women in video games, and she pointed out which I thought was
actually like it sort of shows like it traces back to where the first like
signs of objectification of women. What was when the first video game appeared in
a pinball arcade and it's called computer Space was released in nineteen seventy one.
I believe I think that's what you said last. Yeah, the objective of
the game was very simple. It was a rocket that was shooting down pixelated
sources. We obviously nothing to do with women at this stage of video games.
However, they the company advertised their game with women stood next to like
the arcade machines wearing revealing clothes which obviously is it seems to be the first
way that women were especially things. It was the first online game, it
was already using women's sexually like being women being sexualized to advertise it, and
it was sort of unnecessary because it's got enough game. It just seemed to
obviously the aim was to capture the male gaze, particularly probably young teenage boys.
So I wonder if that kind of maybe influenced the idea that like online
gaming is more of a male space, and yeah, idea maybe, Yeah,
yeah, definitely that's and obviously this game being released what like over fifty
years going now, it's from right the scarbas the traditional values have just been
kept and carried through to Ja. Yeah, no exactly, So I guess
that's what like why we became interested was because you can obviously clearly tell that
this hasn't although it might have changed based on video games evolving, the like
principles are still the same that behind it. So yeah, and as well,
because this topic was influenced by our topic three of globalization of globalization,
Yeah, it's interesting to see what other aspects of globalization can also be seen,
like the misogynistic attitudes kind of in the dial Yeah, definitely, it's
quite like I mean, I wouldn't say it's subtle, but like until you
like sort of scrape underneath the stuff, you don't really notice how by its
I feel like it's quite overlooked sometimes. Yeah, um, soul get onto
what we did for you guys. Overviewed the research by Sarkeesian. Yeah,
okay, so I looked at basically more recent examples. Sarkeesian basically found that
the damsel in distress trope has sort of seen a resurgence in recent years.
So the tribe basically provides like an easy default motivation for male heroes, um
because it allows them to prove their masculinity, um and like. As a
result, the game developers have like exploited images of victimized women and use their
trauma sort of as like a catalyst for the game's plotline, with even like
domestic violence sometimes being presented as like an altruistic app and it can be seen
in like modern games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. Oh yeah,
that was one of the ones that we did, so I think that
was I think it was even released in twenty thirteen or Maine in twenty thirteen,
but Basically, Sarkitian said that the objective of this game was to buy
a prostitute, use it, and then kill them to claim your money,
which I think is obviously highly Yeah, I mean I don't I don't particularly
understand it, but I mean whatever, that's like, that's what I do
on my Friday evening is half oh my bad, sorry on my lifestyle.
Yeah, sorry, it's yeah, it's the lifestyle. Definitely, so my
I didn't because the two girls half just obviously did their initial research on Sarkatian,
it was a secondary data. I did the unstructured interview, which was
primary, our main primary. Yeah, definitely research that we did semi structured.
We had like questions, yeah, semist action, which we enjoyed because
I barking, I mean, yeah, undecided, but it kind of it
allowed us to elaborate with the participants and get them to explain what we asked.
And also because a lot not a lot of us, I didn't have
the biggest understanding that, so it kind of left me went in. Yeah,
we went. I think the bit we were interested in was the gender
identity and that kind of misogynistic attitude. Yeah, the idea of the whole
gaming world. Really, I let the gamers and the people that we interviewed
dictate or like open my eyes to that. I guess. So our sample
was ten people. They were a volunteer sample because we needed people who were
actually interested in online gaming who could give us useful information. I guess that
makes it quite high. And they wanted to exactly, and it meant that
what they were saying was pretty truthful and it wasn't just like a bunch of
people who didn't know what they were talking about, but also ethical as well.
Yeah, yeah, yes, a ten questions, ten people and even
numbers. Yeah, exactly, I'll summarize a couple of points. Yes,
I guess I've put together or I've basically just kind of selected the two most
different interviews or the two most interesting interviews. So the first person we asked
the question, do you think that animality makes people feel more comfortable? And
to say team defensive? We can't say it was so ethical. Can we
say if it's a girl or a boy? Or yeah, I think yeah
it was a guy, Okay, And he said that playing on FIFA specifically,
there was a lot of toxic masculinity within the community, which you could
argue would scare away women. Although there has been like a new adaptation in
the FIFA world which is very nice where women and now added and you can
create a team of both women and men. I've actually got something. Oh
my god, do you remember me telling you I do remember this way I
finish this? Ye? I mean just this point. Yeah. Yeah.
So he said there was lots of masculinity expressed within FIFA, partly because of
how competitive it was, partly because it had like a nature of toxic masculinity.
But I feel like, if that's such a good example of there are
games which literally have toxic masculinity embedded into the culture. But I've I've never
met a girl who's like, oh yeah, I've an avid FIFA player.
Ye met guys, because it doesn't seem very like you know. So I
thought that was quite eye opening. But oh my god, just died.
Oh. What I was going to say was, so I was talking to
I'm quite a shamed to say that he's my friend down, but I was
talking to my good friend like good friends as well, I know, And
I was like, I'm doing I'm conducted. Well, I'm not really conducting,
but I was just wondering if I could ask some questions to do with
gaming, because he games a lot, like and he said that the presence
of like women in FIFA is pointless, and he said some other stuff as
well. I wish it was on Snapchat, so I should have saved the
messages. Actually that would have been by the smart money lies. But I'd
like to summarize what he said. And I'm not obviously quoting him, but
he said along the lines of, like, there's no print in having women
in video games because they're doing it on purpose to seem more inclusive, whereas
in actual fact they don't actually care. Sort of thing that directly links onto
what I was about to say. Well, perfect, Oh my god.
Yeah. So the fifth question I asked in this interview was why didn't there's
an absence of female players in the gaming world. And this guy, the
first, like the first of the two people that I selected out of the
ten, basically said the big gaming companies don't mark it towards female players because
there's already like a market in an audience within young male players. There's no
reason they would need to, and because like so much of advertising is kind
of towards the male games. Anyways, you think they feel under pressure to
I just I feel I don't feel any pressure to know that I feel.
He just basically saying they don't mark it towards too the players, because they've
got a large amount they don't need to pretty much. He also said that
along the lines of I asked a question which was do you think the video
against influenced perceptions of women in real life? And he basically said his friend
didn't really seem to have a separation of online online and in real life,
and so he would set leg women a lot because on so many of the
games there are hyper sexual as women avatars. So do you think that makes
to like the idea of anorminities? That thought? So, I guess because
some people will say stuff online and not saying person. Clearly, this person,
his friend can tell the difference. You know. It's like that exactly,
And it's kind of yet all linking back to like the sexual avatars and
everything like from the first Yeah, so Sarkisian, sorry because somebody died.
I just had it my head. There was that and now I can't break
out. But you're gonna have to the other like what was the other stuff?
So the second guy who I selected I always like stuff Stock. I
love him. I don't know actually quite who he is, but I just
think he's awesome. He has part of an online group who go to like
gaming tournaments and play amongst each other like a following, like formal sort of
thing. I think, so that's a professional like win money and stuff.
Can't you. I think you win something or maybe you just win and that
boosts your popularity. Don't quite know, but it's fine. But basically,
he was really interesting to talk to you because his perspective was from his small
community, so it kind of showed that they were like zones within the gaming
world. So he basically said that on his team it was just people who
he played against who were just decent at the game. And regarding animnity,
he said, you can say whatever you want in theory. Yeah, being
a white, straight dude, it's not the biggest deal to me personally.
It's like what they're going to threaten me with quoting him directly here. But
you know, with other demographics I've seen it, it could be tough.
People would just relentlessly gang up on people for the smallest things because then anything
they can get away with it. And I think that links onto for my
research exactly. It's the real risk of animality is that you don't really get
many consequences for what you say, unless it's quite bad that you can't like
sort of well, I mean you could track it down, but if you
were tracking every sort I mean cyber bully or nine, that there would be
no one left. Also with that quite true with the anonymous space, it
makes people then more comfortable to say things in real life as well because they've
had that experience I've already like saying and starting to move into that territory or
it's kind of like, what's it like an echo chamber where if you find
like minded people you think, oh, that might be trying. Like that
can translate to real life and narrows that well, not exactly, that's very
true because yeah, it's not good. That's the best time I could come
up say like monotonal as well, when I saw it's not good. It's
just not good. But yeah, what did the other personally expected? It?
Was it a girl that was Yeah, so I've selected three. Yeah,
there was a first guy who had the toxic masculinity friend. Second guy
was part of a team. Yeah, he also for my seventh question,
which was do you see positive aspects of gender identity? He said that the
fact that people weren't focalizing on gender was the positive aspect of gender identity.
There was a lot, like in his world, there was. It was
a lot of it was guild based, so it kind of took the whole
emphasis of gender off of it, which he thought was a really positive and
progressive thing, wasn't it. It was even Haaraway or Robertson that did that
in the in the globalization unit, they talked about Harraway, which I guess
is a positive you could take away. But then it's not like that a
load is going to you know, it doesn't change the fact that people are
still going to be like a sorry, a pip just came out of my
mouth. Sorry, later, what were you saying? It's like, oh,
you know what, I'm not for My trainer thought, like, you
know what, So let me just go right back to the beginning. Let's
cut to the chase head. So what I am trying to conclude is that
although a woman can hide behind or was he the screen and have like a
gender neutral name or like a name that doesn't suggest anything about her gender,
she still she might still hear stuff, so it shows that you know,
you could not partake in it and like not have to show that you're a
woman. But if if there's men on like playing and they're being you know,
misogynistic, then it's still happening. Basically the fact that they have to
hide it as well, it just goes exactly so that someone who have not
included their interview in My three Chosen one. She spoke about the fact that
on the online gaming world, if you do show agenda as a girl,
you're either like a tomboy girl doesn't really associate herself with femininity or an e
girl who's hyper feminine, and there's not really much in between going on.
You're one of the guys or you're a plane female gays Like how you benefit
men versus how it's like benefits. Yeah, okay, so like you know,
you've now got these two categories that you know you can't like transcend.
You're either one or the other. Yea, you can game, but if
you're a tomboy and one of the guys or a egirls, and either way
you're still going to face abuse for both of them exactly. Anyway, Yeah,
for my third for my third participant or I guess interviewee. They said
that, So I asked the question, do you think there's an answerence to
female players in the gaming world, And their answer to this was, I
think some games are more predominantly female, but for predominantly male games, they
don't want female players in them, so they try to rate them so the
plays so that they therefore create female zones and males. Was a really interesting
way of putting it, like people in each zone are not going to recognize
the opposite side, or maybe in the male zone, you're just going to
think, oh, no female plays this game because they are actively avoiding or
the really basic hosogronistic games. Also, they're in like a tights or circle
if if you're thinking about like regressive values and going back to traditional ways,
sort of the separate spheres for men and women. It's kind of like reminis
sint of like nineteen fifties, like oh my god, domestic sperience kind of
desire. Ye, look at you guys, Oh my gosh, right,
do you have what else? Like? Yeah? Point for the eighth question,
I asked, I think gee, I asked us to everyone and most
people said, So I said, what do you think the roles of men
and women are or should be in the online gaming world. Most people just
said equity. Everyone should just be equal. There shouldn't be a kind of
dislike there shouldn't just be this disportion exactly. That's what I'm looking for.
But my interview said everyone should get a chance play the game they want,
and the female players should get to enjoy a male space, whereas right now
she does not feel there was that kind of equality, which I thought was
really interesting, especially from a female's perspective, because the other people were kind
of like, yeah, equity and didn't really see like they didn't point out
as much misogynistic attitudes although they were occupying male spaces, whereas I feel if
you're not, it's more visible yea. And relating to the what was it
recessive or aggressive? So for my last question that I asked everyone, I
was how do you I asked, how do you think that the rise of
Andrew Tato has influenced attitudes? This is in the game, and so the
first person I asked said, because Tate is influencing younger people, and younger
people still play video games, it therefore makes the online world even more toxic
and could discourage women. The second person I asked actually said, Andrew Tat
is just ananimate, is just an anomaly, and he has an impact,
but any younger people who he didn't play with. So my second person he
was part of the online gaming team, Oh yeah, so he I don't
think UM spoke to or kind of came to contact with a lot of younger
players. So it proves that what side the online gaming world occupy us.
And my asked participant who was a girl I thought I put out? She
said that she felt that Tate had had had a big impact in real life
than the gaming world, and said, yeah, there have always been sogynistic
attitude, but she argued that like Tate's kind of being on the side of
social media of pointing out like that his actions were wrong. She basically said
that, ever, since because he's so extreme, people began calling out my
sogynist behavior, which she said, like, that's a real big positives.
You said, shall I go through my m what's called grovern? Now?
Yeah? I said that my generalizability was lower because we only interviewed a small
age range. However, the people that we interviewed had kind of played amongst
people of many different age ranges. So although we only had access to people
within the sixteen to eighteen age range, because they'd interacted with people from all
ages, you can kind of argue that their answers could be higher. In
generalizability, I'd argue our representativeness was low because our sample was volunteer. Yeah,
a volunteer sample. We wanted that they wanted to do it there before
we're going to be enthusiastic. Yes, exactly. We had a range of
gender identities, which I think, Yeah, it was higher. Reliability was
higher because we recorded that. I recorded all of the interviews so he could
replicate it, and I wrote down all of my questions. Objectivity I was
reflected throughout and transferred directly from the audio document onto my piece of paper.
I guess I'm referring back exactly what they said and didn't cherry pick. Validity
was high Bill Report, and I feel that what they told us was truthful.
Yeah, I think it was very insightful, especially since we didn't going
into this week. I think that also makes it quite high a objectivity because
we didn't know, like what what was actually going on, what was actually
happening, like our values couldn't really we didn't have like second exactly, yeah,
because we didn't have any we liked at during which I think, which
was so good. Yeah, I loved it. And our ethics were high.
No deception because I advertised who would like to be Interviet sociologies. Yeah,
we didn't. We didn't cause it a harm far as I'm aware.
No one has emailed me like saying that I'm suing you. So that's great,
and they we didn't. It wasn't an invasion of privacy because they signed
up for it. Yeah, so I reckon. I think that in terms
of ethics was probably what was very high. I think, so it was
validited. What would you which one would you want to improve after go over
terms? Do you know? I think if we would do it again,
the generalized ability and representativeness, it would be so interesting to interview a wider
range of people. Yeah, I think even for us our study in the
future, but also just for us, just for us, just for us
again for us. Okay, So after Lena did her like main primary research,
which is sort of like the body of our works, like what we
wanted to find out, and like I guess I did, like really go
in depth about the progressive misogynistic values. I decided to do some content analysis
on TikTok and jess, what did you do well, I sort of did.
I was originally going to do participant observation, but that plan kind of
fell through, so I did sort of an unstructured interview conversation conversational type thing.
Yeah, with my step brother, he's like very into the gaming world,
and he's twelve, and he's very like immersing the world when my gaming,
and he's experienced a lot of the like misogyny that we've been talking about.
And yeah, I think it's a really imprabling angle to take it from
because obviously he's twelve years old. He's twelve. A lot of like even
if you go on to like the interweb and the social media of like clips
of people gaming, even a lot of them like older people. So I
think from like a younger person's perspective, who's kind of views being shaped shaped
not to talk about like that, but do you think that like perhaps online
gaming will sort of shape perspectives that he has a woman? I think it's
really dangerous and really scary actually that we decided I decided to do content analysis
on TikTok because TikTok was the platform that amplified Andrew Tat's sort of presence in
society, which obviously for a couple of was it moms maybe a couple of
weeks months, gained a lot of attention, like of media attention. Obviously
he's you know, and then that means that his arrest and staff was very
you know, publified. Yeah. But what I decided to do was look
in to female gamers on TikTok by literally just typing that into the such box
to see what came up. And the first three relevant videos were the ones
where it was like female gamers were sat with their like head sets one and
whatever, and they were all like, I think two of the videos were
the women started talking obviously for the first time in this game, and there
had been a group of men, and it was both and then both videos
it showed the responses of the men, which were obviously not very nice.
And then the other one was just a girl sat down gaming like just like
just talking behind like what she was doing. And I decided to use for
each of the videos. I scrolled through the first twenty comments and from there
I picked out which ones were seemed like negative, misogynistically like driven effectively,
and then I put it into the statistic that one out of six of the
comments that I read were misogynistically motivated, which obviously is you know, even
in the majority seemed not. And it's out of the top twenty as well,
So those are the most liked and the most were definitely. So I
think even though you know, a majority at one six is not obviously a
big sort of I don't know if it he detect scrolling and then more would
come up. I said, it's like, who has interacted with that?
Yeah, up to the top, Yeah, people that have liked it,
like replied to those comments. I didn't go through all the replies and stuff
because that would take a whole lot longer, but you would not be here.
I would not be here to tell the tale. But yeah, so
even though it's like, even though most of the comments were supportive, it's
almost like, you know, the fact that there were comments carrying these attitudes
quite a lot once it feels a lot to be fair, but obviously it's
way under half. But I think that the fact that there were sexist statues
just present anyway should not be like deemed like sort of an anomaly. I
think it should be. You know, these this minority group of people who
were being misogynistic, they need to be addressed and obviously educated about it.
But I'm going to quickly read out a few of the stuff that a couple
of the comments that I noted down, which was for context. Obviously,
this was on the video of a female gamer who posted the video of the
boys behaving sexistly towards her. So first comment that I saw was quite proud
of that community, even though I'm not part of it, which I thought
was a bit of a mixed message. But it just seems a bit partoynists,
but very yeah, you know, good for them, like yeah,
yeah, exactly, the boys trying to make it out that he's I don't
know, not a misogynist, but I think that's you know. Then the
next one said just said, my boys, we've got w homie, which
just means like they're supporting what this quote unquote home you said. Then we've
got W players, Then we've got classic, we've got real stigma. That's
why we love CS which I think was the name of the game or like
the platform whatever than they were on w community. And this one I thought
was particularly interesting because it was quite invalidating, but it said it's like,
it's like this for everybody, not just for you. So I thought that
was, you know, either that's from like a female player, which is
which also shows that misogynistic attitudes are still very right within the gaming community,
or it's from someone who also has experience abuse, which would be there's other
demographics you are also experiencing abuse. Either way, it's got different connotations,
both of which, but either way it's not good. And then the last
one was pick me, so effectively that's feeding back into what you said about
a girl being like one of the girls boys sort of thing. So yeah,
you can't play without being deemed you know, not a girl basically or
hypersexualist exactly. And I just thought, you know, it's very apparently it's
happening. And I think also the fact that people are, you know,
commenting the stuff, that means that they're like happy to publicly share their opinions,
so even like and then also I'd say that it's like it means that
for the people that choose not to comment, how many of these people are
carrying the same views and just don't comment. So for the small group of
people that do comment it and do share opinions, you know, there's like
a whole majority of other people who have the same opinions, but haven't you
know, kind of shows how the lines between like the online world and reality
start to become blurred because they're now saying that publicly and it's no longer anonymous.
Yeah. Yeah, because also the user names were like people's full names
as well. I mean I didn't find it doubt on the names, but
because I would not share it, I got to stick to the ethics exactly.
But I mean, but you can find out about people just why they're
using names. And also I think as well, like although to remain ethical
we didn't name names, I think that um it technically shouldn't. Like it's
not really in uninformed consent or whatever, like, yeah, it's not necessary
because then they're happy for people to see it and share it anyway. Surely,
Yeah, Like clearly they like I mean, maybe they only have sub
colleciously thought about it. But like you know, when you go to comment
something, you read out there for everybody to see, and there's like digital
footprint all of that stuff, which you know, so I'd argue we didn't
cross in the ethical bound I don't think we crossed everyical boundaries. I mean,
it wasn't an invasion of privacy whatsoever, informed consent. I mean,
we're sharing their comments that they've shared to a whole platform of like people are
potentially millions of people. Yeah. Yeah, And then wasn't deceptive and no
harm to the participants because we haven't named them. And then about the other
graver terms, I said that it was it was low in reliability. Don't
worry, I've got here, don't you worry, because the nature of TikTok
is that there's constant updates and like changes in the algorithm system, which means
that if another sociologist was to carry out on their own device and search the
exact same vid eye search into the search, but they probably wouldn't be able
to find the exact same videos with the exact same comments at the top exactly.
I also said that in terms of objectivity, my opinions didn't influence,
like, you know, the results, because I qualied I literally copied and
paste of what was said. You know, there was no I mean,
obviously I just picked out the comments that seemed to show it was all was
from the top twenty from the top, tive, and then validity. I
said that it's not exactly high and validity because if everyone commented their opinions,
then it would be truthful. But because this is only you know, a
small group of people that are commenting their opinions, it's quite difficult to understand
everybody's like reflective of that and stuff. And in terms of like generalizedability and
representativeness, wasn't overly but I think in comparison to using qualitative data, obviously
I did get like a bigger Yeah, I got you know, sixty people,
predumably sixty different people as well. I'm pretty sure i'd like to see
any repeated names. So sixty different people's opinions seems you know, it shows
patterns, patterns and trans patterns, and we love patterns and trail. It's
kind of like you can do all your research and to these are the statistics
for this, this and that, but you've got people in real life actively
being misogynistic and going out of their way to do so, and then have
pulled up like an average of that. Yeah, which is so I think,
Yeah, it's yeah, the statistics, I guess show statistics don't lie,
they do not lie. But what linking back to the whole thing about
how this could be influenced by Andrew Tables these videos were. When I looked
at the dates, they were all within the last I want to say,
six months, it was like five or six months. It was since the
beginning of the shiar definitely. Yeah, So I mean, I don't know
if that's reflective of Andrew Tates being in the picture, having his values like
posted online or whatever, but I mean it could be. It's so hard
to like tell if it wasn't wasn't like it's like because it was all on
social media. All of social media is intertwined anyways. Yeah, Like,
I guess you can think of different communities kind of accessing the same kind of
information not infiltrating it. It's nice to think that something on social media would
not infiltrate the online world, But you just don't know exactly, So that's
it's hard to tell. But I mean, we could potentially put it out
there that Andrew Tate had influence maybe one of these comments at least exactly.
But yeah, and then you spoke quite a lot about Andrew Table. Okay,
yeah, so that kind of links to the sort of like unstructured interview
slash conversation I had with my brother. So he's only twelve of us mentioned
before, and he was like very involved in the online gaming world, specifically
when Andrew Tape was popular, and he noticed like a significant like almost like
a direct correlation between Andrew Tait's popularity and how much misogyny was present sort of
online I mean on chats kind of with strangers, but also perhaps amongst his
friends group as well. It was very comical and obviously particularly in the online
gaming world. So basically what he was saying was that there was some like
quite a lot of casual like traditional mistogeny present, so just comments like you
know, make me a satmwage or like go back to the kitchen, like
not even casual, actually blatantly sexist comments. I guess I'm non original used
in a casual setting, but not yet casual. But then it also got
more extreme. U not amongst his friends, but amongst strangers. He even
heard some like threats of sexual harassment, which obviously for a twelve year old
boy, that is very influential. I mean, it's quite interesting. If
you think about it links back to the first guy that I interviewed. He
was talking about he got into gaming when he was like seven or eight.
Yeah, and so it's so interesting, like like it was I think brought
up a lot on social media when at like the downside of Andrew Tape was
that a lot of his following was young men. Yeah, and they're so
influential that it's kind of it's so interesting that your brother. Yeah, it's
good that he was able to recognize that's that's wrong. At first they didn't,
so it's very It did definitely have an impression on him. He essentially
on his algorithm on his TikTok few page was obviously very different to what people
like us would have been. And the clips he was seeing of Andrew Tape
were more kind of like started off as like motivational content, trying to like
inspire young boys. Obviously that was masked to be like masking something very bad.
Yeah, but he saw it as kind of motivational, and he saw
stuff about Andrew Tape donating to charities. Yeah, it's so easy to like
manipulate certain facts because you could say that anyone has done any like bad person
has done a good thing, and they can just like over amplify this good
deed and completely like block out all the bad stuff. Because you were saying
about how like, you know, obviously the motivational stuff is like he's telling
them not to smoke, not to yeah, stuff like this, which seems
on surface from a good perspective, it seems quite innocent as well. That's
the kind of stuff that you would get taught in schools. Yeah, exactly,
so it seems quite authentic as well. Yeah, kind of almost a
bit of tenalistic. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, that's like almost like a
father figure for a lot of young boys, which kind of Yeah. And
then as the misogyny starts to slip in, he might get like the occasional
video with a casual fro away comment, but he wasn't getting the serious,
like harmful misogynistic videos that I would have been seeing half for a Laila,
So it kind of, yeah, began to influence his mindset. Um,
I mean probably to the point where he was saying misogynistic things. I mean,
obviously it's hard for me to know, and it doesn't make him necessarily
the bad person because this is what he's you know, been and that's that
kind of shows how much of an impression the media can have, and like
obviously with the globalization topic, like how much media is having an impact on
identity and relationships now, Yeah, especially when they're growing up on this generation
in this space. And it kind of goes back to what I was saying
that you can create your own echo chamber. You are inherently on your four
you pages and your algorithm. Yeah, curating an echo chamber for yourself,
Andrew Hay is essentially like gaining the trust of young boys. And then I
mean my brother said that ultimately he had to like part of the reason he
started gaming less and moving to other games, not Fortnite, because this was
mostly prevalent on games such as Fortnite, which obviously a much younger audience that
which is probably why you were saying from a lot of your interviewees that they
weren't really experiencing it as much because that was on a different platform. So
there was like FIFA and called duty and stuff one that a lot of people
are reference and they're obviously a lot less impressionable than like a group of twelve
year olds. Yeah, so yeah, he kind of like distanced himself from
that, but it really shows how I think it can have a massive impact
definitely, And like also like the whole thing about him, like creating I
don't really know the ins and outs, but like that Hustlers University thing that
he like made. Have you heard about that? I remember hearing. I
mean I know someone who I mean, I don't know them well enough,
but I know someone who dropped out of the college they went to and joined
the Hustlers University. I don't know where they are now, had contact with
them, joined Andrew Takes University, And it just shows how like impression of
all this passion is because he's gained their trust, basically got them under his
wing and sort of can manipulate his ideologies into their everyday valleys. I mean,
it's not you know, some people can distinguish the difference between you know
well, like like you were saying, it just depends what your algorithms feeding
you. Yeah, definitely, And in relating it to like also video games
as well, Like it just shows how kind of blood the online world is.
And like I don't really know, it's quite getting out of it going
on the right lines because it's so easy to slip in, like casual sexism.
If you see someone getting getting this massive like following from it and like
people not even well people obviously definitely batting an eye, but like they're following,
they're following still ridiculously like or I think it's like the idea of even
online you can penetrate like stereotypes and stuff. I remember one of the interviewees
was talking about. She was talking about and if you're revealed to be a
girl on like a male only or like a predominantly male game, you're presumes
to be bad at the game, or like they just don't want you cominent
stuff. It's like, oh, you're playing a woman. Yeah. It's
kind of like those ideals stem either from people's real life onto the online world,
or those views on the online world penetrate to your life. I feel
like that quote about like playing like a woman, it's like goes way way
back, like decades ago from where you know. It can be like if
a woman's playing the sport, you're playing like a girl, throwing like a
girl, stuff like that. So it just shows how like interconnected past the
way women were treated in the past in like other activities and then into this
like globalized like modernized present world of where video games are heavily used. So
it just shows that it is regressive and it also maybe provides like for young
boys, obviously the online gaming community can provide a sense of safety and security,
and maybe those regressive and traditional values provide that security in a sense.
Yeah, like that's true. They feel connected to like it's just something.
I mean, I am like, it's like that's I don't remember what so
I just said it, but it's I'm going off on a tangent. But
about religion, people connect to traditional values because it makes them Bruce thinking,
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to Yeah, that's a really good point.
Actually, I think that's Yeah. I feel like we need to wrap this
up. So I think we're going to be listening to fair. I could
talk about us for ages, but I don't know, I go through like
the Grover terms. Yeah, yeah, obviously I was very unstructured. So
but I'd say that the main term that this focused on is raising validity because
obviously built a close rapport, like yeah, he seemed to trust it as
well. He was very trusting and he was very open, open and honest,
and it was kind of like self reflection. Yeah, that probably was
quite like not just for like you, but probably quite insightful for him to
hear him. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Obviously generalizability is probably quite low.
I guess you could say it's generalizable in the sense that it focuses on
a younger audience, whereas a lot of yours older audience. You can kind
of expand it to different age groups. Um, but yeah, I guess
it wasn't particularly objective. It was kind of just more of an open discussion.
Yeah, so not particually reliable, but definitely like valid insight. I
think the validity line is really important, I guess because I guess, like
I mean with mit and I've just got a statistic, But because I don't
know the people in the context thing, I can't question them about it.
Further, I can't ask what made them say that, what led them to
this, like all of that, Whereas I feel like you've got a very
insightful like piece of information from him. Yeah, I think I think it's
very interesting to me. I think it's a really nice comparison to what all
of my interview he said. It's kind of the behavior that Harper witnessed online.
I think it really nicely rounds it up to kind of got different age
ranges, and it seems to be the same kind of values carrying through the
values for behavior being carried through no matter what age you are. Yeah,
it's interesting to see how like in the future this will like progress or like
what will or reagress it even like you mean hopefully regression, like want The
last interview I interviewed in them, including in this study, said that she
felt that takes Rise meant that people calling out misogyny. Yeah, because it's
kind of like all I mean with his new conviction, you can see how
how it turns out for people out how deep rooted misogyny can be. Yeah,
so it kind of influences people to call out sexcessitudes and sexist behavior,
which is really good. It's definitely good. But you can't agree, you
just haven't. It could also encourage it, yeah, exactly, And like
if you want to be able to change, like to be able to change
so many people's opinions, and everyone has to voice their opinion because if if
you get one comment, like on TikTok saying one like the first comments say
on a video being sexist, you didn't get a stream of comments after that,
and that just like fuels that people's believes and stuff. But yeah,
I'd say I've said all I me to say, yeah, so should we?
So what was our inial question? Our initial question was how aggressive misogynistic
values presented in the gaming world. And I think that they are presented like
I would say that over time, although the way that people may have come
about saying these things has changed. Obviously in the nineteen fifties or seventeen,
commenting on you weren't commenting on TikTok's but maybe you were, like when you
found out that this space game that was released in ninety seventy one was released,
you might I don't know, from in the casual she's got nice boobs
or something. I don't know, the locker room trap exactly exactly. I
like you gave us like an example. Yeah, I don't know if,
I don't know if I'm allowed to, I don't know. Well, I'm
proud, I'm a swarm for forty minutes. I'm so proud of you.
Thank you. Sorry, that makes me sound like I've got like a terrible
like I've got a bad range of like vocabuy, I just like I don't
know. I just okay, No I even know myself much anyway. No,
I feel like the way that I turn around the way that aggressive misogynistic
values are presented, I feel like it really from what I found out,
it depends of what speed you're in world, which has got some hope that
you may just not encounter it at all. But that could mean you just
get really lucky and get into a really nice world or that you've chosen.
I'm not going to go there because that's really misogionistic. I'm going to limit
myself to this space. Yeah, so I do not have to endure sexism
on the daily or everything in time of play. So I feel like you
can actively remove yourself from the situations. But I would also argue that it's
still very prominent, easier to become involved and easy to gradually kind of slip
into that world. Exactly. I've seen with many young gamers. I think
the perception that you know, there's a misogyny or it's not really that,
but an online gaming is it's incorrect, it's incorrect, it's a flawed point
of view. Yeah, definitely, I think it's it's differ a limited perception
exactly, and I guess you could literal like, there's a part it's fine,
it's okay, it's giving us a little morale boots, it's like last
leg the podcast. But yeah, I mean, I guess you could say
that we're being like we could be seen as objective because we're all woman teenage
girls. But I mean, from our point of view, if we're seeing
sexism in society, then it's obviously an issue. Even if it's like a
minority of people showing sex statues, it's still very much presents. It's still
an issue, no matter it's more Jessica, what do you think? I
mean, Yeah, I agree with everything that's been said. I think the
idea of kind of maybe some of your interviewees maybe avoiding the misogyny, but
then also by just saying that, oh, I think these values should be
equal, it's kind of taking an attitude of avoidance to the issue of feminism
and not really actually taking a reflective view of what's actually going on exactly.
They're playing riddle kicks. I have no idea. Oh, okay to pause
this, Okay, I know what I think we could say we should leave
at that. I remember when I like when me and just walking out for
I was like, yeah, we like ten minutes when we're into it,
like roughly ten minutes for fifty minutes later. I mean, because we also
like took a break and also ye didn't He's going to be like listening to
this sort of like the sped up version, two times version. We're very
interesting people. I hope, yeah, hopefully listens. Hopefully you enjoyed.
Yeah, if you, if you've got this bar, then thank you so
much. And I hope you enjoyed our research and found it interesting and sightful.
Oh great minds think alike. Anyway, see you later. Thank you
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