Thursday, December 17, 2009

Politically Incorrect? A Study of One Blog

My good friend Ari over at Common Sensible takes his politically incorrectness as a point of pride. Questions arose, however. Was this monster as terrible as advertised? Would, Could he be worse?

In order to answer these unsettling questions, I ventured into the archives of what is, possibly, the den of an unimaginable evil.

First, we needed to establish some guidelines.

We decided that we would only count those posts which egregiously offended and insulted women, children, minority groups, animals, vegetables, France and M Linden. We didn't include outright cursing, after all, I'm not stranger to letting my lips sully themselves. No, we focused on comments such as "He cried and whined like an estrogen soaked woman" (implying that women are an undesirable state of mind and they always whine nag cry, as a state of being below a manly man who never cries and kills bears with his bear hands) where one all or "You're a spineless sack of rotten blight infected potatoes, M." (implying that all potatoes are as dumb as M Linden and will never succeed in bettering themselves through education).

Also, excepting one rare post case, only whole posts were examined. Thus if a post contained two rather dubious references in it, it was only counted once rather than twice. This was done primarily as information was collected on a post-by-post basis. It would only take one to 'sully' a post, however, a particularly snarky post would not bring down the entire perspective of that month's posts.

The data was collected from the dawn of time up until November 2009, when the challenge was made:

"Trust me, [he] was much more offensive and politically incorrect in past posts"
-informant who wished to remain anonymous

Thus I read two years worth of archives. Two years of raging, ranting, cheering. The highs, the lows, the first kiss, the junior prom, that regrettable incident with noodles. I spent a very tense Monday night in Finals week (sacrificing time allotted for studying "The Biology and Engineering Perspectives of Cells and Tissues in Mass and Energy Transport Phenomenon and Derivations") carefully trotting through the mine field. I gathered all the information I possibly could.

I found that the first offense was coining the term 'mesbians', a slur towards those men who choose to play women in SL, accusing them of choosing a female avatar solely for the sake of lesbian love making. A recent study published in January 2010 from the Transgender Institute of Technology and Sciences in Second Life found that only 29.23% of men-female avatars engage in facetious lesbian relationships1. Clearly, someone has been painting with too broad a brush.

In the case of July 2008, one particular post (I've lost the link) was so bad, that it was called for each incident to be counted. We're talking bad. The kind of stuff that makes the Baby Jesus die a little inside. Also of note was the infamous 'pet peeve' series. Nunchuck help the person who decides to piss off this vile creature.

The picture gathered was thus:

Wherein the number of politically incorrect posts was determined against the time frame with December 2007 denoting month 1 and progressing month-wise from there. It can be seen from the data that at least every two months he decides to lash out against someone, and that July/August 2008 and December 2008 were particularly nasty. However, the trend does uphold the case that as compared to the past, Ari is much more sensible.

However, there grew a suspicion that the information was deceiving. Perhaps a few months held more posts, which may dilute the overall quantity for that month, or held less posts which may hide a higher incidence.

In short, I decided to take the percentage of politically incorrect posts per month. First, I had to quantify the total number of posts each month:

Then, the percentage was taken by diving the data from the first graph by the totals from the second. The following chart was created:

The data trend does not appear significantly altered. Aside from showing a current trend of at least 10% of average posts within the last six months having offensive content, higher rates are seen much earlier than at least November 2009.

In conclusion, we can uphold the anonymous informant's assertion that Ari was indeed much less 'sensitive' in the past and that he has become downright civil from July 2009 on. However, further studies may wish to examine data post-Nov '09 or the average quantity of political incorrectness in each post to provide a further look into this monster.

References:
[1]Galipi J, Giller J, Venkatarman J J and Bleubaugh J. (2010) Survey of Men Lesbians and Their Impact Upon the Second Life Grid. Jour. Trans. Instit. Tech. Sci. 1(2): 10-13.

6 comments:

Ari Blackthorne™ said...

Wow.

LOL.

Of course when I use a term like "mesbian" it was to refer specifically to those men who specifically wear a female avatar to specifically target "lesbians" and likely were with other mesbians so really just a big gayboy-get-together amongst heterosexuals: all guys together thinking they are all with girls.

Wrap your head around that one.

As for the "'He cried and whined like an estrogen soaked woman'" comment, you should have seen what I wrote the first few times and toned-it-down to that.

But as is often the case, most written words are rarely taken as intended (usually because not written properly to be sure), so I'll try to add context (after all (1+2)x2 gives a different result than 1+(2x2)) - so consider this, as this is more what I was hoping to convey:

"He cried and whined. [as though he were] estrogen soaked [which would make him as a] woman"

I know, I didn't write it that way, but that's what was in my head when I wrote it. Do I apologize for it? No. I am sorry it was taken the way you inferred though. But that's my fault, not yours.

As for women: most know their place: to be sexy and loved. You should cry a lot, makes the men feel strong and important. But don;t whine, that turns into nagging and makes us just want to break-out a set of cuffs and a ball gag.

The problem is I am a terrible writer (at least I know and admit it). The words and ideas flow too fast through my head and my typing can't keep-up. Worse is that I am often verbose.

But yeah, I hate political correctness. However, there's a difference between "political incorrectness" and just being an ass. There were (and are) many times I am just an ass (okay, as in the rude, stubborn "donkey" for all those who don't catch-on.)

I guess I really shouldn't be so much of an ass and just stick with political incorrectness. I've been trying.

I figure it's just less painful and easier in the long run to tell things like they are, rather than spin soft-balls at people.

:)

Anna J Tsiolkovsky said...

You wanna know what 'politically incorrect' is?

I just realized that Transgender Institute of Technology and Science can be contracted to T.I.T.S.

Surely, my mind is nasty. Especially at 2 am in the morning. I think Torvald is rubbing off on me.

Ari Blackthorne™ said...

Rawrrrr.

Hahah!

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