Friday 25 April 2008

You don't say

Trying to finish up my computer-mediated communication coursework at the moment. In going back through my notes on further reading, I have just been amused to find that I wrote this without any irony at all:

Morahan-Martin (1998) Putting CMC research into context – suggests that women find online flaming, sexual harassment, and porn alienating, while men tolerate or encourage all of them. Women are thus discouraged from joining in online and men (according to demographics) dominate.

You mean that women don't like stumbling upon dodgy porn pics when they forgot to put Google SafeSearch on? And they dislike being sexually harassed in online gaming environments just because their profile says that they're female? Shocking, that.

And yes, I learnt the SafeSearch thing the hard way recently. In a moment of bored procrastination, I did an image search for Michaela Strachan and didn't realise that SafeSearch was off until I reached the somewhat graphic naked image purporting to be of her. Well, thanks for that, anonymous person with too much time and photoshop expertise on their hands, I do enjoy being reminded that dodgy porn is alive and well on the internet and appearing on a computer near you. Pffft.

n.b. I should probably note the reason why I happened to be doing the aforementioned image search: I recently discovered that the 30 something male crowd was very much in love with her when they were young (see the Scouting For Girls song Michaela Strachan broke my heart when I was 12). Given that she presented a wildlife programme for kids, I was a bit curious about why she was so sexy to them all! I don't see it, personally.

But then, I'm not an impressionable 12 year old boy. Thankfully.

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