Hey, y'all. I received a PM not too long ago asking an interesting question about a common concern. For whatever reason, I ended up putting way too much thought into my reply, and delivered an amateur sociology essay. Figured it was the kind of thing a lot of people would like to have an open discussion about, so I will post it below for your consideration and feedback. NOTICE: I did make some minor adds and changes to the transcript below. The authentic version is in the screenshot.

SCREENSHOT

TRANSCRIPT:

SENDER

can you explain why the females on reddit4reddit receive a larger number of replies in Pm's?

I never understood why females online are held to some gold standard "trophy" or some shit. girls/boys are both humans so what just intrinsically makes women some special unicorn that deserves praise simply for being alive or being on the netty...

Makes no sense to me maybe you can offer some insight.

ME

Good question. Unfortunately the answer is obnoxiously complex. If only it were one simple reason, but it's actually a bunch of small reasons that mash together. But first, some numbers. Look HERE. This comment has some solid info, so take a peek. You'll notice that the main post has been deleted, which is unfortunate because the OP not only had a solid message but also included a simple gender demographic survey. As it turns out, about 30% of the r4r population is female. Of course, when you actually look at the number of posts, only about 10~20% are F4, and you may also notice that there are lesser proportions of F4M and F4R compared to M4F and M4R. I have some more rough data HERE.

The reasons:

Culture

Seemingly, more often than the reverse or otherwise, society encourages men to be the initiators and aggressors in all forms of socialization from friendship to dating. This may be despite the actual sociability of the individual men, so even if a man isn't mature, conversational, confident, etc enough to effectively engage women, they have a greater likelihood of attempting to do so anyway. Combine that with the skewed numbers and some interesting things happen.

Numbers Game and Waterfall Effect

1 - There are more men than women, so there are going to be more M4 posts than F4 posts.

2 - Because there are less F4 posts and more total men looking for women, there will be a greater concentration of PMs to the less common F4 posts.

3 - Women will be overwhelmed with PMs. They will react in a number of ways:

• They will attempt to divide their time and effort across as many respondents as possible, often resulting in lowered quality for each conversation.

• They will ignore all PMs beyond the first small number that originally caught their attention.

• They will opt to wait for quality PMs to come in and only reply to those to the exclusion of all others.

• They will delete their post in hopes of stopping the deluge of PMs.

• They will delete their account in a panic to relieve themselves of the burden entirely.

4 - Most men will receive little to no response. What little response men do receive will usually be of low-quality and/or short-lived. They will react in a number of ways:

• They will conclude that in order to be noticed, they will need to be among the first respondents, so they will make it a point to refresh the page repeatedly until an appropriate post pops up AND/OR they will put less time and effort into their PM.

• They will lower their standards and attempt to reach a wider variety of OPs in hopes that they will get any response, even if it's not quite what either of them are looking for.

• They will lower their quality of communication under the false idea that quality really doesn't matter anyway because it hasn't translated, in the past, into the success they've desired.

• They will become unreasonably agitated and begin acting with lethargy, bitterness, or even open hostility, either in a general sense or toward women, in particular.

5 - This will have a profound negative effect in a number of ways:

• Overall quality of correspondence will decrease across the community.

• Vocal complaining will make the community appear toxic, inhospital, desperate, entitled, and ineffective.

• Those that feel wronged may lash out toward the community or toward those they feel have wronged them.

• An irrational blaming of all women will arise.

6 - Women, in turn, will withdraw or disengage from the community. They will take measures to lower their presence and exposure in a number of ways:

• They will delete their account outright.

• They will delete their posts and/or comments.

• They will unsubscribe and not return to the community.

• They will post substantially less/not at all.

• They will post and PM from throwaways rather than use their main accounts or alternative accounts. This will make it impossible to learn about them from their history. Also, this will make it more difficult to distinguish between sincere posts/PMs and scammers, spammers, catfish, etc.

• They will apply greater scrutiny to OPs whom they may PM in hopes of avoiding a negative encounter.

• They will apply greater scrutiny to PMs in hopes of avoiding a negative encounter.

• They may be standoffish and difficult to reach, especially at first, regardless of who initiated.

7 - Start over. Repeat process. Create downward spiral.

OBVIOUSLY, this is a gross simplification and extreme presentation of the issue and there's a lot here unaccounted for. Also, there are plenty of exceptions. This isn't giving credit to the large number of people that are actually effective communicators that DO succeed with whatever it is they're doing here.

Harrassment

Going back to the culture thing and touching upon the "there's a lot here unaccounted for" bit, harassment is a thing that exists and sucks, and it's a thing that some men do to some women here. No, that's not to say that some women don't harass some men, or that women don't harass women, or men don't harass men. Anybody is capable of harassing anybody. It's just that the stigma happens to be placed on M>F harassment because it appears to happen a LOT more than any other kind of harassment orientation. Nothing else seems to even come close to this level of infamy. But who knows - maybe everything else is just extremely underreported.

Anyway, dick pics. That seems to be the prominent idea of harassment when people think about men harassing women. There are also men that call out women in the comments of their posts over some perceived personal slight or nuanced misunderstanding in word choice. This can cause a snowball effect of back-and-forth garbage, potentially ruining an OP's chances of finding what they're looking for. Women that don't respond or have to call off the conversation early for one reason or another may be name-called or accused of misrepresenting themselves or their intentions. Some men will send multiple PMs or follow up their PMs with a reminder in the comments in order to get more attention (META). They may ask, beg, or demand to be told why they haven't gotten a reply yet or why the quality of conversation isn't up to their standards. In conversations that start in comments, men may begin complaining about how seemingly all women just ignore them or can't hold a conversation, furthering this man-vs-women mentality and the general sense of negativity and pessimism. Some men may take it upon themselves to dox/stalk a woman that they feel has wronged them or that they feel entitled to the attention/affection of. And on and on and on.

Again, it's really not as bad as all this. These are all just examples put so close together that it makes it seem like /r/r4r is just this frothing, sweltering, cesspool of misogynistic baboons. It's not. Most people here, although many being a little awkward, have the best of intentions and want nothing but positive experiences and success for everybody. It's just that, due to the numbers and the culture, some weird shit is bound to manifest from time to time. If I could magically make the ratio of men and women 1:1 and the ratio of M4 and F4 posts 1:1, I would. Wouldn't clear up all the personally flaws, of course, but it'd be some great progress.

As for this:

I never understood why females online are held to some gold standard "trophy" or some shit.

I believe everybody's been calling that "thirsty" lately. But yeah, goes back to discussions on "betas," putting women on "pedestals," having "one-itis," etc. It's all just language to describe unconfident, awkward men that are desperate for ANY kind of attention or affection from women. r4r is an easily accessible, as-anonymous-as-you-want-to-be place, so it's going to draw in a larger number of these men and they're going to feel more comfortable putting themselves out there compared to bars and clubs.

I hope all of this was insightful in some way :)

SENDER

Wow lot of good info here. I actually read it all and from all those things you described I would say that I'm just tired of the B/S on that subreddit. Too many thirsty guys who flood the OP as you mentioned and then the real people wanting a convo or more don't actually get to pursue it due to OP deleting account or whatever else happens there.

You also forgot to mention that some % of the "females" on R4R are actually catfish / scammers or something worse just trying to get reactions out of people or some information for a project they're doing.

I think with all this new info I'm gonna peace out of here lol. As some other people have said in the past "On second thought, lets not go to Reddit, tis a silly place"

ME

from all those things you described I would say that I'm just tired of the B/S on that subreddit. Too many thirsty guys who flood the OP as you mentioned and then the real people wanting a convo or more don't actually get to pursue it due to OP deleting account or whatever else happens there.

I understand. Men and women can face a lot of bullshit here. It's just that it tends to be different kinds of bullshit for each.

You also forgot to mention that some % of the "females" on R4R are actually catfish / scammers or something worse just trying to get reactions out of people or some information for a project they're doing.

Truth. There are some F4 posts that are scams, catfish, or experiments. Maybe there are some M4, as well, but I imagine there are many fewer.

I think with all this new info I'm gonna peace out of here lol. As some other people have said in the past "On second thought, lets not go to Reddit, tis a silly place"

I recommend remaining subscribed, even if you don't plan on perusing the sub regularly. You might happen to spot something worthwhile. Keep in mind, in the event that something perfect comes around, whether its somebody with a highly compatible personality or somebody right up the street from you, you're going to receive preferential treatment from them so long as you're willing to put some quality into your message and they are reasonable enough to read it and respond. It's not going to happen every day, but if you unsubscribe, you will miss all opportunities.

You may want to try out some other subs, as well. /r/MakeNewFriendsHere, /r/Troll4Troll, /r/StayAWhile, and /r/ForeverAloneDating are all smaller so they have much less of the problems described above. They also tend to be more sincere and have more posts from women. Obviously, /r/MakeNewFriendsHere is just for friends, but if that's what you're looking for, then it may be helpful. If you're looking locally, you'll have to find a relevant sub in the sidebar of /r/r4r. OF COURSE, you want to read the sidebars, stickie posts, top META-posts, and a number of personals posts before launching into these communities. Gotta know what you're doing.

Hope it helps :)