Greedy Goblin

Monday, August 25, 2014

How does a basement dweller sound like?

Some people just can't live without emoticons, abbreviations, cursewords and intentional misspells. "wysosrs bitches? im here 4 gudfites n fun lol". If you read my blog back in the WoW years, you know that I literally banned such speak in my guild. I found them sign of being morons and slackers.

Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania studied millions of Facebook posts of volunteers who also filled out personality tests. They've found that language usage strongly correlates with personality traits. They used the "big five" personality model.

Openness to experience involves six dimensions, including active imagination (fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety, and intellectual curiosity. These facets are significantly correlated, so openness can be viewed as a global personality trait consisting of a set of specific traits, habits, and tendencies that cluster together.
The people with with high openness used these phrases a lot:
While people who reject new say:


Conscientiousness is the personality trait that is defined as being thorough, careful, or vigilant; it implies a desire to do a task well. Conscientious people are efficient and organized as opposed to easy-going and disorderly. They exhibit a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; they display planned rather than spontaneous behavior; and they are generally organized and dependable. The people with with high conscientiousness used these phrases a lot:
Easy-going and disorderly people say:


Extroversion is "the act, state, or habit of being predominantly concerned with obtaining gratification from what is outside the self". Extroverts tend to enjoy human interactions and to be enthusiastic, talkative, assertive, and gregarious. Extroverts are energized and thrive off of being around other people. Introversion is "the state of or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life". They often take pleasure in solitary activities such as reading, writing, using computers, hiking and fishing. The archetypal artist, writer, sculptor, engineer, composer and inventor are all highly introverted. An introvert is likely to enjoy time spent alone and find less reward in time spent with large groups of people, though he or she may enjoy interactions with close friends. Trust is usually an issue of significance: a virtue of utmost importance to introverts is choosing a worthy companion. They prefer to concentrate on a single activity at a time and like to observe situations before they participate.
Extroverts used these phrases a lot:
Introverts used these phrases a lot:


Agreeableness is a personality trait manifesting itself in individual behavioral characteristics that are perceived as kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm and considerate. People who score high on this dimension tend to believe that most people are honest, decent, and trustworthy. People scoring low on agreeableness are generally less concerned with others' well-being and report having less empathy. Therefore, these individuals are less likely to go out of their way to help others. People very low on agreeableness have a tendency to be manipulative in their social relationships. They are also more likely to compete than to cooperate. Agreeableness is considered to be a cluster of: trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness.
The people with with high agreeableness used these phrases a lot:
Not so likable people say:


Neuroticism is characterized by anxiety, moodiness, worry, envy, and jealousy. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, envy, guilt, and depressed mood. They respond more poorly to stressors, are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification. Neuroticism is a risk factor for phobia, depression, panic disorder, and other anxiety disorders, all of which are traditionally called neuroses.
Stable people used these phrases a lot:
And the neurotics said:


My cup runneth over. The people I classified as morons and slackers for their lolspeak, emoticons, curses, stupid abbreviations, intentional misspells are found by scientists to be closed, lazy, neurotic assholes. And what probably hurts them most: introverts. They are introverts like us, but because we have goals, play to win and talk like human beings, they call us "basement dwellers" and in reality it's them. Science says so!

The researchers didn't tell us why do introverted, closed, disorderly, unlikable neurotics talk this way on Facebook and in our games. I believe the solution is that the researchers only see a subset of introverts: those who do the extrovert-only activity of posting on Facebook. Remember, introverts like solitary activities and choose to not participate in social situations. Beside happy extroverts, they see are "basement dwellers", people who want to engage in social activities, but fail to.

"4 fun ppl :d" is a bizarre image in the head of the basement dwellers. It's what they believe how a successful extrovert looks like and they try to emulate it:
  • They know that successful extroverts express lot of emotions. So they spam emoticons. Here is a perfect example: ":D" is a picture of a laughing face that any extrovert would naturally recognize. The dots are the eyes, the D is the open, laughing mouth. Basement dwellers can't decode it, they believe it's a text and being lazy, they don't press shift or misspell it, creating ":d", "xd", "d:" and so on, despite these aren't pictures and mean nothing.
  • They know that successful extroverts value romantic love. So they spam "fucking", "bitches", "boobs" and porn links. After all these are the signs of romance and intimacy, right?
  • They know that successful extroverts have friends and value friendship. So they call every Tom, Dick and Harriett they meet on the internet "friend" or even "bro". They yell loudly every possible occasion that they play a game only because their friends are there, which is stupid: real extroverts would just close the game and meet their friends.
  • They know that successful extroverts do lot of fun activities. So their favorite word is "fun". They don't recognize that extroverts don't use the generic word "fun" (check the word cloud!), but specific words to describe how they want to have fun. When the basement dweller wears the "4 fun peep :d" hat, he is like the redneck in a suit who goes into a fancy restaurant and orders "fancy food" since he can't specify.
  • They see that groups of successful extroverts use terms that only group members understand. For example "quarterback" has meaning only to those who follow American Football. These words describe events or objects that appear in the context of the activity. You learn them as you learn the concept they mean (football fans know how quarterbacks play). Since basement dwellers don't want to engage in activities but want to engage with the people, they don't understand the merit of these words and believe that they are "secret codewords that only the cool kids know". So they create their own "secret codewords" by butchering ordinary words, creating "spai", "wut", "gudfite" and the rest of the abominations, without any special meaning ("spai" just means "spy").
The tragedy of the basement dwellers is that real extroverts don't really play video games, as sitting in your home alone, front of the computer is as introverted as it gets. The rest of the gamers are happy introverts who enjoy performing in a raid or build a pixel spaceship empire. We engage in conversations only in a game-technical manner ("jump!", "gate is red", "sheep that add!"). So their target audience isn't even here! Not like it would help them if the extroverts would be here, since successful extroverts are very different from the "4 fun ppl :d" image in their head. So they keep sitting in their basement alone, while calling us basement dwellers for not being inclusive and friendly with them when they obstruct our gameplay with their incompetence and bizarre attempts to socialize.

Hint: have the link of this research ready and link it whenever someone fills the chat with emoticons, cursewords, l33tspeak and such. Let them know what this tells about them. But don't expect miracles! Their response will likely be "lol i said it 4 fun m8 xd". They are, what they are.

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am thinking there is a missing element. The foreigness of eve. Some of the "code words" are simple ways to exchanging information. I do not think "wut" was created to replace "What" rather is was created to mean "What" when the person was having difficulty with english (perhaps under stress, perhaps in a flowing conversation they they were trying to keep up with).

Example "Awox" to an eve player it is bad (took me months to translate it without thought. To me it was to close to AWAC's an an American/ Western military term.

I won't even begin to talk about hearing "tech" over coms.

Remember there is essentially a majority of non primary english speakers. Gud is close to good and gut and so forth. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and there is no real meaning behind it other than what it appears to be. "Simplicity"

LOL, iirc, and tons of others took me a while to decipher either because I didn't care enough or it was not important.

Anonymous said...

I think a lot of people would do well to read the research. A little bit of inward thinking about yourself can go a long way. But as you stated, these overarching personality traits can be very hard to change. For example, I live with my impulsiveness because I'm just lucky that I'm a hard worker and can make the best out of a bad situation. If someone is both impulse and lazy, they going to find themselves making mistakes and not being able to fix them over and over again.

nightgerbil said...

@ anon 25 August, 2014 03:33 "wut" is like several other terms ("innit?" springs to mind) adopted in internet speak, actually from northern english dialects that got got heard by americans for the first time EVER when they talked to us over coms. They them type how we pronouce "what" and get "wut".

I also think Gevlon forgets why "lol" first came about, it was preinternets and came from when we could only put a limited amount of characters in a text message and were charged 10p/text. It was important then to be able to abbreviate in a comprehensible fashion and thats where "lol" and ":)" came into first useage as they are a means of demonstrating body language.

example: "yr late where r u?" compared to "yr late where the fk are u?!" or "yr late again where r u? :)" 3 similar text messages all saying same thing with 3 diff meanings.

thats the origin of lol, not lazy people.

Gevlon said...

@Nightgerbil: these limitations affected everyone. Still, the research found that only some types of people are affected, others are not.

Also, "spai" is longer than "spy".

Megarom said...

Nighgerbil is probably describing personal experience correctly when saying that text messages predate internet, but in various subcultures that is simply not true. I'm pretty sure that most of the classic LOLs and OMGs where used in IRC and possibly in usenet groups depending on the internal culture of the specific group. Both of these methods of communicate predate text messages in my personal history timeline.

Esteban said...

I've never met anyone who used 'spai', 'gudfite' and the like unironically. Yes, there is an element of the shibboleth and in-jargon involved, but I think the basic driving force behind those words is self-consciousness.

To say 'we're worried about spais, lol' or 'I'm just looking for gudfites' is to half-mock oneself for doing these things.

Anyway, thanks for these word-clouds, Gevlon. I'm suspicious of the research because it all fits together too damned well, but it is definitely compelling stuff.

Anonymous said...

they limited everyone but only a subset still uses it now that the limits are removed.

my problem with your conclusion, gevlon, is that you put the traits into a relationship with each other. you can have 2^5 (32) combinations of these traits but you are only looking at 2 of them.

let's say someone is open, conscientious, introvert with low neuroticism but only has a low agreeableness. he might add curse words and the like but only in a limited amount, situation or crowd.

Anonymous said...

This research seems to be really interesting, although on a first glimpse, I should say that persons with the trait AGREEABLENESS seem to use a lot of religious terms...

Mabey Agreeableness is defined differently in the U.S. as being a religious zealot certainly won't be perceived as agreeable in "old" europe...

furthermore as some other commenters stated before, the eloquence of non-native english speakers strongly depends an their knowledge of english and their educational background. So most of these "basic" acronyms are common knowledge and therefore will be used more often.

Of course I agree that most of the people who only use acronyms of the most basic meaning will certainly be slackers&morons, but hey, Pareto tells us that 20% of a croud "own" 80% of the intelligence, so the last 20% of intelligence have to be distributed over the rest of the 80% of people...
And Terry Pratchett goes even further as he defines the IQ of a human croud as the lowest IQ of a croud member divided by the number of members, so, the bigger a croud, the dumber it gets.
Sometimes I think that Pratchett's equation gives us understandable results in no time ^^

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: Usually researchers look at what the subject says instead of how. With random Facebook posts analyzed, the "what" got lost. One person posted about getting divorce, the other about getting a kid, the third about getting high. The only thing common in these people were that they wrote in English.

while there are 2^5 personality combinations, there are only two ways of speaking English:
* Shakespeare's way
* The wrong way

What the researchers found is:
* the two options aren't randomly selected
* the people with the unfavorable trait picked the "wrong way" option.

So taking like a lolkid doesn't mean that he is neurotic and not agreeable and closed ... but that he has some of these traits and these traits dominate his language usage.

Provi Miner said...

ha I agree with the self inflicted irony comment. I do not use wut or spai out side of corp/alliance chat. I use them there to make it clear that this "post" was intended to be precieved as funny or less then semi-serious.

Some one types something dumb the reply wut wut.

Obviously I am not says "what what"? in a serious manner. If I were being serious I would correct the mistake post and types: As far as I know (blank insert post) is incorrect and here is why (insert correct answer). I think I can kinda agree with the facebook aspect however I do not think that it translates clearly across all. Might be a huge reason why I don't post on facebook anymore. Meh I guess I will head to X(tech)ZQ and spai on some space bros and see if they let me in so I can Awox them.

Anonymous said...

read up on BBS flamewars and usenet pre 1990 ... years and gigabytes of flamewar. started with early computer connectivity end '70s. you know BAUD modems and acusticcouplers. lasted till till faster modems like 56k where common and the arpa TCP/IP internet was shat onto the corporate world ... today known as the ".com bubble".

I can asure you "LOL" does not have anything to do with message limitations! they didn't even used "LOL" on transatlantic morse line. so. NO!

Anonymous said...

how do you define one of them as 'unfavorable traits'?
by similarity to and agreeability with you?

for example you don't strike me as someone with a high agreeableness-factor though it does not determine your vocabulary most of the time.

Lucas Kell said...

Very nice copy-paste of statistics gathered from a very narrow group of people - people who go on facebook enough to post a wide variety of data and are willing to participate in an in-depth survey. The number of teenage girls that make up this data will be staggering. Research like this is always good to take with a pinch of salt, since it's usually designed to appeal to idiots to make headline statements rather than being well researched.

And why do you go so out of your way to try to stir up hate against people? Why is it you don't feel that other people can just live and play the way they want to? People are morons and slackers to you because they what? Because they don't sit there posting market orders, grinding mining missions and writing daily blogs about how people that play games for entertainment are evil? The world would be a lot better off without people like you, you realise that right? You feel that the way you do things is "right" and any other way to live is "wrong".

" Basement dwellers can't decode it, they believe it's a text and being lazy, they don't press shift or misspell it, creating ":d", "xd", "d:" and so on, despite these aren't pictures and mean nothing."
Erm... no. I don't think there's anyone that uses emoticons that simply don't know what they represent. Often when they've been mistyped, it's happened once and become a thing, much like teh, kik or maed.

"while there are 2^5 personality combinations, there are only two ways of speaking English:
* Shakespeare's way
* The wrong way"
Funnily enough, Shakespeare's way was also wrong. He created a lot of words, including slang, much like you are complaining about here. Not to mention that he was already using an evolved form of English compared to prior to his life. And English has further evolved now, if you spoke as Shakespeare would have done, you'd be speaking in a dialect nobody uses any more.

I think you have a long way to go before you can even begin to understand people, but it would be a good idea to start off by not having preconceived discriminatory impressions of them.

Off to the bin with this post undoubtedly.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: the scope of the data is indeed narrow, but fit our purpose perfectly: "the internet people"

Why do I stir hate upon the morons and slackers? Because they invade the online spaces like games with their bizarre attempts to socialize. They are playing games without caring about them, they just want to get friends and they get mad when we reject their obnoxious attempts.

They should get a psychologists instead of ruining games with their "i play 4 fun" attitude.

Anonymous said...

So "The shakespeare way" is the "right way"?

You have clearly never read shakespeare....the famous line from Hamlet regarding "Shall we speak of country matters", and Romeo and Juliet being full of dick jokes, unless you really think they were talking about swords, and the nurse was being polite?

And, yes, whilst some people think spies is spelled spais, most would more likely use it in the "Oh noes...not spais!" manner.

It is of course, possible that people only have one speech pattern, but, most people I know, online or not, slip between several speech patterns depending on the setting. For example, whilst there are contractions and abbreviations I would never use, I will use "lol" when someone has done something stupid, or "yeah, you did gud" when they have managed to not crash while undocking.

The clouds contain some non-english words,so to say someone is not open because they use malay words is...strange.

Which group do you fall in? As I imagine you see yourself as conscientious, but I doubt you use "Blessed", "Wonderful", "Prayers" "Thankful"

Context is also everything...to say disorderly people use "Youtube", "Pokemon", "Internet", "Anime" "Computer", along with introverts, whilst extroverts appear to not be on the internet at all, or discussing it

The key phrases used by stable people appear to be:
"Success", "Basketball", "Blessings", "Lakers" "soccer", "The lord".....this indicates their interest ranges surely?

And does it take into consideration the topics being posted about?

Do "stable" lakers fans who go to church and watch soccer on Wednesday nights talk in threads about depression, and if that classifies one as stable, do I want to be there?

TLDR: Context is everything.

Irava said...

"@Lucas: the scope of the data is indeed narrow, but fit our purpose perfectly: "the internet people""

Which, to me, just says, "This research seems to support my thoughts if I order it this way." If it is a narrow scope, then it is only showing something that might be the case, with no sound evidence that it is correct. This is important to point out, otherwise your just using a brick wall to echo your own thoughts off of and calling it "proof".

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: yes, intelligent people can (and sadly, do) adapt to the language use of primitives. No news here. The news is that the source of this kind of language use is morons and slackers, which you seem to agree with when using "gud" to congratulate someone for doing something trivial.

@Irava: The research support my thoughts the same way as 1+1 = 2 does. It never was a question that "4 fun ppl xd" were idiots. It's just different to see it in a peer reviewed science article written by university professors.

Anonymous said...

"Awox" has nothing to do with the term "AWAC". The term came from back when Goonswarm, and PL were +10 some dude named Awox went around tackling blues(Goons) for a group of nuets/reds. It happened a few times before the character was kicked, and joke that large group(Goons) used that term as a joke to refer to blues killing eachother from that point forward, and it stuck, and the community took it on.

maxim said...

Dunno, to me this all feels like confirmation bias.

That is, we first define people who would use these kinds of words as these kinds of people and then we act very surprised to find that yeah, these kinds of people do indeed use these kinds of words.

And i certainly heavily oppose any extrapolations of this study to fuel the notion that humanity is somehow separated into "intelligent" and "primitives". Mostly because i all too often see both supposedly "intelligent" people do the stupidest self-destructive things, as well as supposed "primitives" calmly and purposefully picking the most correct solutions in a problematic situation.

Gevlon said...

@Maxim: I had the preconception that lolspeak = idiot. The researchers didn't know that and they couldn't have any preconception anyway as they used automated software to create the cloud and didn't know what will be in it.

Anonymous said...

they didn't know about you. it's not them having a confirmation bias but you.
you chose to interpret the research to fit your narrative.

also you completely disregard what anon 18:57 already hinted at:
people have different personas, regarding to their role and circumstance.

for example: a mother at work will behave differently than with their children. how you behave and communicate with people is always dependent on the (assumed) relationship and surroundings.

someone writing a research paper will write differently and about other things than while updating their facebook.

Anonymous said...

Indeed Shakespeare was a very creative author in the way he invented new english terms and promoted "the" english language. Actually there is an excellent book about the development of the english language "The Story of English" And, while we are at it, Ben Goldacre writes an interesting blog about "bad sience", the problems resulting in poor set-ups of experiments and coming to faulty conclusions...
Anyway I think Gevlon meant "Oxford English" as being "right" english.
Trouble is, the "right" english does not exist as British english differs greatly from American english...

The survey only included people using FB and willing to fill out a questionaire.
While english might look like a simple language, mastery of it is quite difficult. German is a much more precise language, but I couldn't stand it, were I to read more faulty german...

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"the scope of the data is indeed narrow, but fit our purpose perfectly: "the internet people""
I'm not sure "the internet people" and "MMO players" are the same group. I've met many people who sit on facebook all day and wouldn't even know what an MMO is.

"Why do I stir hate upon the morons and slackers? Because they invade the online spaces like games with their bizarre attempts to socialize. They are playing games without caring about them, they just want to get friends and they get mad when we reject their obnoxious attempts"
But do they? Really?
Most of the people you call morons and slackers are just the everyday gamers. They just play the game, that is all. I don't think there's many people I've seen and said "wow, they are invading me with all of their socialising!". They just want what games are designed for - entertainment. Funnily enough, I find that people like you "invade" more than any other gamer. You're not "elite" so to speak, by which I mean that you don't excel at the games, you just put a lot more time into grinding than most people would, and for that end up with more gold/isk/items than the average player, and yet you seem to be of the opinion that anyone not playing your way is wrong, and have no problem repeatedly telling people that.

Why can't you just let everyone play their own way, just like you can play yours? Why does everyone need to conform to what you want to do? If you ask me, you want to fit in, but don't want to change to do so.

"The research support my thoughts the same way as 1+1 = 2 does. It never was a question that "4 fun ppl xd" were idiots. It's just different to see it in a peer reviewed science article written by university professors."
Uh, not quite. 1+1=2 is an absolute, there's no margin for error, there's no interpretation, it's just fact. The research you are reading is a small subset of a certain type of person, which you are then reading and applying to a different subset of people. There's margin for error throughout all the way from data collection (people lie), through the interpretation of the data all the way to the conclusion, then further when you apply it to gamers.

The thing is, language used doesn't really mean anything, since we all adapt to the language being spoken in game. You use the term "awox" for example, which is a made up eve word (one of many slang terms we use in eve) and even the developers use acronyms like "htfu". Most people say "lol" and use smileys, and there's even a forum post toolbar to drop them into posts quicker. On a side note, I'm pretty sure I've seen you say "my GF" in your actual posts. You realise that's text talk, yeah?

bob said...

One word: overgeneralization. This study said something and you're using it completely out of contest to serve your own purpose.

Educated people won't use "xd"s and lol's but may be subject to express anger or depression in a more subtle manner.

Also even if the big five tends to be a joke don't use it to condemn people who aren't like you. It was meant to be a tool to help people to understand how others work. I tend to prefer the MBTI but that's just me. Anyway there are no "superior" or "inferior" types of personalities, just people you will get along with and people you don't like. And if you really insist on having a hierarchy the supreme state of the rational guy is accepting people who are primarily focused on emotions for what they are and don't complain anymore about difference. Hate is quite a strong feeling and it doesn't make you look as rationale as you'd like to appear. Live and let live is more the kind of motto logical and calm people tend to praise.

Gevlon said...

There is difference between not speaking English properly and spamming obvious crap.

@Lucas: everyday gamers have a clue about a game. Morons and slackers earned their name for being completely oblivious about the game they play. See also: mixed small guns on a battleship.

I would let everyone play on his own, I can't care less how some random idiot roams around in his hull tanked laser Rifter. It's them who insist on playing together, socializing.

@Bob: how differently can this research be interpreted than "saying xd is a sign of being a neurotic, unlikable, lazy, closed introvert"

Druur Monakh said...

@Gevlon "I would let everyone play on his own, I can't care less how some random idiot roams around in his hull tanked laser Rifter. It's them who insist on playing together, socializing. "

Again, how do they then affect /you/? How exactly do they ruin /your game/? Apart from existing, that is. Because I can't see you getting inundiated with unwanted chat requests, asking you to hang out with other chillbros. So why do you care if some random idiots socialize with each other? You are contradicting yourself here.

Btw, a side note to consider: One major selling feature in the development of networked/online games was the ability to socialize with people outside of your physical locality.

Gevlon said...

@Druur: every time I was in a fleet with TEST, the first 5-10 mins were spent banning idiots spamming memes and porn links. They were a minority. Most players wanted to participate in the op. But this minority turned fleet chat unbearable.

They are everywhere, you can't use a single open channel or forum (which is needed to cooperate with people outside of your circles) without having it spammed by morons and slackers with their totally offtopic and irrelevant "fun".

maxim said...

@Gevlon
Did the automated software also name the specific groups of people and deduce their individual traits?

There is no such thing as observation without underlying theory. You need preexisting conceptions to make sense of the data. This is not just my opinion, either. I am merely rephrasing Karl Popper and others.

maxim said...

Actually, the problem i have with this post is not even in research. I am sure the scientists found a way to classify the people who wrote a words to some psychological personality types. There is still room for confirmation bias there, because the personality types are determined based on observed behaviour to begin with. But that's not the real issue here when all is said and done.

The real issue is that you seem to be inferring from this research, that some personality types are innately worse than others and behave in a certain way just to make themselves look like other personality types. I can't behind that and i also feel this is too much of a stretch to be considered any form of logical inference.

Gevlon said...

@Maxim: they determined personality types with pre-existing psychological questionaire, and then automated software found their often used words. So the question wasn't "who types xd", but "what does close-minded people type".

While there are officially no "better and worse", (except for neuroticism, that's officially bad) there is clearly more fitting for certain situations. For example if you look job applicants, you look for ones with high consciousness. If you look for a girl to spend one night, you definitely look for ones with low consciousness.

The problem is that
- they play competitive games despite having low consciousness.
- they want to find friends despite having low agreeableness and introvertness.
- they want to participate in fantasy games with low openness.

They would be perfect fit for throwing darts in a bar without keeping scores and drinking. But they are nothing but nuisance in an MMO.

Anonymous said...

I can totally understand the statement Gevlon tries to make.

There are always people who have sociopath traits that try to get into "closed circles" in MMO's because the anonymity of an online game makes them more bold than in RL.

Although they lack the skills to interact on a decent level of social conventions, they come into a chat blundering like a norseman in a monastery.
While they know that their means are inadequate they tell their audience that they did not mean it in an insulting or rude way, that this was just a joke gone wrong.
While some people might excuse such behaviour (maybe lack of language skills, maybe a bad hair day, maybe just a sick sense of humour...) there are people like Gevlon who do care about wiht whom and how/on which level they spend their time with.
I have met a couple of women in EVE, most were mute on TS and some were just offended by pics or comments posted on fleet chat.
I personally would have difficulty letting my son (10yrs) or my GF on comms during a lowsec pvp roam.
While most of the time I can have interesting and entertaining conversations with my corpmates (a deacon, a swimming teacher, some plumbers, electricians, lwyers and coaches) when roaming with "eewil piwates", automatically some elite pvp moron posts a dildo or bouncing breast pic or worse in fleet chat. One reason I cannot take "eewil piwates" serious anymore.

Te point that Gevlin tires to make/show us is that poeple with certain traits (being probalby M&S) tend to use certain expressions that we all have seen posted in our comms...

So, no bias on Gevlin's side, but just traing to underline his attitude with "scientific proof"...

Druur Monakh said...

@Gevlon "every time I was in a fleet with TEST, the first 5-10 mins were spent banning idiots spamming memes and porn links."

Ah, /those/ people. I don't like them either. But as you say yourself, they are the minority. They can be ignored, but more importantly they do not represent the socials nor the "play for fun" group. Socials and play-for-funners can very much care for the game, and play-to-win when they want to - just maybe not to the extreme you'd prefer.

So, if you want to have an easy label for your posts for such annoying people, call them 'trash talkers' or similar, but don't conflate them with the very groups you claim to have nothing against.

Oh, and they are not everywhere - it's been weeks that I've seen a porn link in a chat.

"they want to find friends despite having low agreeableness and introvertness."

Some may want to find friends /because/ of having low self-esteem and introversion; in order to overcome the hindrances of such character traits. Who are you to deny them this avenue if it works for them?

maxim said...

@Gevlon

There is room for confirmation bias because a person was - to begin with - determined to be, say close-minded, based on the kind of input they produced previously in a previous program.

So finding that close-minded people actually produce that kind of input is nothing new and is, in fact, a direct logical conclusion from how you determined a person to be close-minded to begin with.

In other words, the experiment is flawed because its outcomes are built into its assumptions.

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If they were better off "throwing darts in a bar", they would be doing it.

I would agree with the opinion that different kinds of games are more enjoyable for both the person in question and everyone else, if he behaves one way or another. Being open to new things is important for fantasy games. Being "conscious" is important for competitive games. Being agreeable and outgoing is important for social-based games.

However, you seem to be crossing over into the notion that people who don't have the requisite traits or have trouble with requisite behaviour should be somehow prevented from playing the game of their choice.
That's my interpretation of your text, so please correct me if i'm wrong. But if that is indeed your meaning, then i disagree.

One of many jobs of game designer is to design a game in such a way that people who have trouble with required behaviour are pushed towards learning the required behaviour. We are not very good at this particular job yet, but that doesn't mean that it is okay to tell players that "you can't play this game unless you are this kind of person".

Essentially, any game designer saying that is saying: "i can't do my job properly, so i can only serve people who can play along with my shortcomings". The only circumstance in which this is acceptable is if we are talking about some niche game for a very specific target audience, - where creating an isolated echo chamber for that particular audience to enjoy itself in without interruptions is the actual job description.