The new data also reveals that 45% of Xbox owners and 41% of PS5 owners are female, too
This really shouldn’t be news and it certainly shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, but yes, new data from Circana shows that—as we told you in 2017—women play video games. In fact, more than half of all Switch owners are women. And a very vocal bunch of idiots are reacting about as well as you’d expect to this “revelation.”
Just don’t do news about Twitter reactions. It’s nothing but outrage bait.
True; this is lazy journalism.
That said, it’s absolutely a real problem. Women aren’t safe participating in many online spaces because a minority of misogynists make it a toxic space for them.
It starts young, too. Girls just don’t show up when I make “gaming” spaces at school. They don’t feel welcome.
I get why journalists go to Twitter, too. It’s a lot easier to find and provide “receipts”. Women who post about their experiences are dismissed regularly with statements like “I don’t see it so you must be making it up,” completely missing the point that they don’t see it because women have been eliminated from these shared spaces already.
Is Kotaku’s business model rage-baiting to generate clicks? Yes.
Is toxicity toward female gamers online a real problem? Also yes.
Some of my friends get annoyed when I take that stance, but it’s absolutely possible for both statements to be true simultaneously. I want women to feel safe if they want to try online gaming, and it’s counter-productive when sites like Kotaku constantly post fear-mongering articles about it rather than offer any solutions.
I used to browse twitter occasionally, but almost every tweet now has really low quality troll post underneath them. It feels like Twitter just consists of people who find everything outraging and they complain about everything.
It used to be that there were some interesting back and forths on Twitter, but in the last year or so all I see is outrage and insults.