Lordfly's Life

Hamlet has done a survey of his readers, and while not really supplying much analysis to go with, it's a good an explanation as any of why the forums are filled with snarky, arrogant, experience-ignorant, over-educated (hi, Forseti!), under-employed, gamer-geek FIC 20-something IT inworld architects.

Male: 75.1%
26-35: 35.1%
Under $20,000:    27.3%
United States, East Coast........ 23.8%
IT/Computers......... 36.1%
Over 10 hours a week......... 58.4%
Under $1000....  26.7%
About cool content (games/machinima/builds, etc.)....... 19.7%
Architecture.................. ....................................... 41.9%

The only thing un-Lordfly about all this is that as a midwestern college kid, he's not East Coast and probably no more than 22. Ah, mere details. Since a quarter of readers were in that age range, Hamlet's figures are still on target for explaining why not only the forums -- but the world -- can become really unbearable places at times.

What I have to roll-on-the-floor-laugh about especially is that when I did a straw poll a while back on the forums, with my premise that the forums were filled with, oh, 20-something male geeks with IT training, under-employed with time on their hands, inworld a lot, etc. etc. everybody screeched at me that there were all these, oh, 40-something women who were artists and made $75,000 a year at their fabulous RL jobs. *Cough*

Comments

[FriendsterForum.com]

Nice Blog :)

www.FriendsterForum.com

[Lordfly]

Everyone's me? Amazing, I had no idea.

So that makes you a 20-something loser architect male too, eh? Part of the FIC SLerati, and all?

[Prokofy Neva]

No, I'm not a 20-something loser architect, although male : )

Statistics can be misleading obviously : )

But "everyone" means the five person who influence the forums, etc.

Obviously there's the 70-odd percent who aren't 20-something, who didn't put down architecture as their interested topic etc etc.

I realize we're just a server load test and customers for you-all, but thanks for sharing : )

[Prokofy Neva]

Oh, actually, you have a good point. Hamlet's survey had you answer with your RL facts and not your avatar facts. Well, still, the moral of the story: this is why the world's visible part and the forums are the way they are : )

[Prokofy Neva]

Hi, there, Cristiano! What a liar! Yeesh. I never said you were a Central American peasant. I said that *your notions about land barons and land* are emotinally and culturally tied up in some fashion with some idea of exploited peasants. That's why you can envision a fully mature, um, mainly 75 percent North American mail IT guy with a snarky attitude, a DSL line, a PSP, a $2000 computer, and disposable income as "poor" and "exploitable" because he is a "newb". Baloney.

Hey forum FIC, what you're also missing here is that I didn't come up with this stuff, Hamlet did. Go talk to him about what this means LOL.

[Cat Cotton]

Ha! He forgot about all us over 39 ;) We are a great deal of the population. That and he forgot to mention that we don't put up with much bullshit. Unfortunatly that type of demographic doesn't sell papers :D

CatMar

[Prokofy Neva]

Yeah, when I wrote a simple comment, "Could these demographics explain why the forums are so nasty and there is so much griefing in the world?" on Hamlet's blog, he erased it. Odd. He left up another cryptic comment of mine, but removed the thing about the demographics, which is why I put it here. Unless there was a blogging glitch. Anyway, that's the question you gotta ask. And yes, there are all kinds of other non-20-something tekkie males in this game, thank the lord.

[Earnest Candour]

Guilty as charged. Though you can't really vilify people for factors which they can't change, like age and sex, can you?

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, why would this constitute "vilification"? It's just a report, and I didn't even get these numbers.

Hamlet did a survey of his readers. While skewed for all kinds of reasons (only some people self-selected to answer, etc.) the numbers are a rough idea of what the demographics are -- not for SL as a whole (I believe when Robin reported on these figures there were a lot more females and the ages were higher on the mean) but the part of SL that wants to be heard -- or at least is aggressive about being heard.

I hardly think it's brain science to point out that when you have a herd of 20-something male Americans with IT backgrounds whose main interest is architecture, you have an automatic formula for arrogance and snark on the forums and in public forums in the world.

It's especially relevant that these people have time, some disposable income (but not a high income signifying that they are not employed in RL full-time supporting families, etc.), and not much income in the game (meaning they aren't really occupied in business, waiting on customers, heavily engrossed in creating, etc.) so that they have the time and lack of responsibility to be particularly nasty on the forums.

I just think it explains a lot. An awful lot lol!