• spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    > pretending to be a girl online so that i can get just a little attention from a human being for once
    > talking to this guy, seems really sweet and we have a bunch of common interests
    > mfw i actually start to really care about this guy
    > he alludes to abandonment issues in his past
    > ohno.jpg
    > panic, tell him i have to go to bed
    > try to go to bed but can’t sleep from guilt
    > can’t bring myself to message him the truth that i am a girlpretender attention whore
    > decide just blocking him is the least painful option for both of us
    am i a bad person?

    • Samsy@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      I bet everyone has pretended to be the opposite sex online. Maybe just for the giggles. But anyone who does that all the time, straight to hell.

      • PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space
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        4 hours ago

        I can’t find the original source right now, but a study found that 50% of men pretended at least once in their lives to be women online, whereas 0% of women pretended to be men.

        • Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works
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          4 hours ago

          I doubt the 0% part on women. I have met many women who claim to start off indicating they are male in online games, and avoid voice. Once they feel like they have a group of people who aren’t going to perv on them they make their gender known.

      • TheSlad@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        I never have on purpose, but in games i like to play as female characters. This was very useful in runescape back in the mid-2000s. Desperate guys would just asume you were a girl IRL and give you free shit asking to be your boyfriend.

        • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk
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          12 hours ago

          I got a load of grief for playing Fortnite as Penny, mainly from a family friend who kept banging on about “oh look, that’s his type there!” or “like a buxom blonde, do you?”

          I’m like motherfucker she’s British and she’s an engineer so I’m choosing to play as her because that’s awesome as fuck, not because what’s between the legs you fucking buffoon

          If she’d started popping off about just playing Fortnite I’d have been “yeah fair enough mate, maybe I am a shithead” but the whole implied “you’re a guy so you must fancy her if you’re using a girl model” just really got on my tits… to use a poorly timed expression.

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            11 hours ago

            I only ever played beta Fortnite, so I don’t really know who we’re talking about, but I thought all of the characters were generic, I didn’t know there were classes.

            • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk
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              2 hours ago

              It’s been a while since I played, I only get involved in the live events these days.

              I don’t think there are classes in Battle Royale, but Save the World had different “classes” in the loosest sense.

        • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          I play guitar hero as Casey Lynch. I figure why play as who you look like when you can play as who you want to look at?

          If I were going for accuracy to body type, I’d have to pick Lars Umlaut…

        • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          All my WoW alts were female because my then-girlfriend thought dudes were giving her all kinds of stuff because she was such a good healer. To prove a point I made a level 1 female character and undressed on the Orgrimmar mailbox, and made more gold than her main had in like 10 minutes. Sleeping on the couch was so worth it.

      • Farid@startrek.website
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        1 day ago

        That’s kind of a weird assumption. What qualifies as pretending? I don’t think I have ever done that.

        • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I’m a woman on Lemmy with a gender-neutral username, which means I don’t have to try to “pretend” anything - people assume I’m a guy by default. Hell, it also happened back when I was on Reddit and used a female-coded username, which is even more confusing.

          I can only imagine the gender performances these guys are putting on if they’re able to easily convince others that they’re women. Some people apparently take “there are no women on the internet” literally and can’t seem to process when women appear online (in a non-porn context, at least. Which is really disheartening.) I’ve had people full-on argue with me that I couldn’t really be female, because I once posted a picture that included my hand and apparently it “wasn’t feminine enough.” (That’s what I get for keeping my nails short and disliking nail polish, I guess. Who knew even women’s hands are expecting to conform to rigid gender expectations?)

          • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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            23 hours ago

            imagine the gender performances these guys are putting on

            Hello, fellow woman. Would you like to go to the bathroom together and have periods?

          • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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            1 day ago

            back on reddit almost everyone was a white young middle class male westerner, so that was my default assumption. and i rarely read usernames there.

            lemmy breaks this for me because it sounds like people want to be themselves much more. feels way more free and diverse, and its nice.

            • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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              11 hours ago

              Based on my All feed everyone on Lemmy is either American or, for some reason, German.

          • Mr. Satan@lemmy.zip
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            1 day ago

            Being a woman is gay, so you must be fake.

            Conclusion, women on the internet are fake and gay.

        • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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          1 day ago

          Say you’re a girl when you aren’t a girl in order to fool the other person into thinking that you’re a girl

          • Farid@startrek.website
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            1 day ago

            So if men playing as female avatars in games don’t count (that openly admit to it), then I would say it’s probably a very small group of men who actually do that.

      • spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        or straight to therapy and hopefully a trans supportive community haha (not that it would excuse catfishing)

        • Diurnambule@jlai.lu
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          2 days ago

          I try to not reveal my gender when speaking online. I don’t fell it pertinent and it is nice to be able to act which ever role you chose to at the moment.

          • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 day ago

            Bingo, bango! Whenever gender comes up, I flip a coin for what I’ll answer. With rare exception, gender is meaningless in most places and is only being used by the other side as a red herring at best.

        • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 day ago

          I had an acquaintance who used a voice changer on dnd online, and was both given crazy loot and allowed to act like an absolute ass without consequence. It’s amazing how thirsty some folks can be.

        • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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          1 day ago

          For me it was Habbo Hotel. I’m hearing this sort of shit is rampant on Roblox. It’s nice to know kids are keeping some traditions alive.