Everyone knows how some forums tend to skew heavily towards one gender versus another (women: parenting, pets, fashion. men: sports, games(ing), history.)
Which type do you think as more “drama” (cliques, passive aggression, etc.)?
My more male dominated internet social hangouts seem to have WAY less drama than my wife’s woman dominated internet groups, as evidenced by the number of stories she tells me about who is mad at who about doing what.
Limited sample size and all that but I’m sticking with it.
Men. Reddit is my cite.
Male “drama” is different from female “drama”. As such own-side drama just feels like normal give-and-take, but wow do those oppsite-sex folks pile on the drama.
I’d also suggest that male drama tends to skew towards younger guys. Everything with young guys is about establishing the pecking order. Lots of one-up-manship, insults thinly disguised as kidding, etc. PSXer’s recent thread about virgin shaming is all about him taking shit from other guys who’re doing it solely to establish pecking order.
The thing is most guys don’t recognize that stuff as “drama”. It’s just how guys interact, or so they think. But to women it’s exhausting to read/listen to this stuff. As we often see in the ladies’ laments here on the 'Dope.
My own bottom line is that stereotypically women care about all the relationships between all the people in the group. As such that’s a lot of potential connections and frictions. Men care only about their relationship with the guy just above and below themselves in their estimation of the pecking order.
Fewer relationships of interest equals fewer perceptions of “drama.”
And for some especially self-selected groups of mostly asocial guys the central activity, be it D&D or robot building, is the only thing that matters and the other participants could be Vulcan computers for all they care. Those groups can have essentially zero “drama” by anyone’s definition. But they’re still mighty weird-looking to anyone outside that odd little psych profile.