“#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures”’s exploration of Reddit culture analyzed how misogyny, racism, and homophobia can thrive unchecked online. Even when getting into illegal territory, Reddit hesitated to moderate their communities any stricter because they were making money. Reddit would prefer to make profit off the marginalization of some of their users, proving once again that it is not “sex sells” but “sexism sells”. The people who once idolized Jennifer Lawrence, immediately objectified her and invaded her privacy as soon as naked pictures found their way onto the site. While Reddit pretends to be a “neutral” space, the misogynistic and virulent subreddits are the ones the company profits most from, so they have no incentive to shut those down. The website’s lack of intervention in these cases of bigotry and belief that “non-human technological agents” are free from human bias go hand in hand, and remind us that such technology is implicitly created to be used by white, cis-gendered, heterosexual men. The algorithm comes from a culture of featuring men in technology, something Reddit tries to ignore. I think even more could be said about the inherently partisan nature of technology, and how that has added to the toxic environment on the site. Even a misguided attempt to bring more attention to the feminist corners of Reddit (featuring TwoX on /r/all) showed how the site created a thriving culture for sexist trolls that simple visibility would not fix. In addition, the two groups discussed in the article were proud of their actions and consider themselves the victims. As “geeks” who see themselves as oppressed by society, they cannot imagine that they could oppress anyone else. And yet, any person who tries to make a space for “geeks” who aren’t white, straight, cis, or male is immediately a SJW who is taking away the Redditors’ free speech. Reddit, by allowing offensive and regressive comments to go unchecked, has created a toxic space that reinforces the idea that women are not welcome in any aspect of the technological community.
“Introduction: Feminist Game Studies” introduced some studies on the role of women in the gaming community, with an emphasis on the case of Anita Sarkeesian. The interesting part of this article was the response to the backlash against her Kickstarter campaign. While Sarkeesian was sent death threats and the like, feminists and female gamers were spending money to make sure she could create the content that would remind the world that women play games too, influencing how gamer culture is viewed. The article also mentioned female coded games, referred to as “time management games” and how these fit into the structure of gaming culture and what constitutes a gamer. This got me thinking, since I would never call myself a gamer, but I do enjoy casual games on my iPhone or computer, but these are always considered less serious than “video games” and seem to be played predominantly by women.
