Just sad

Female usernames receive 25 times more harassing messages in chat rooms than male usernames. (Genderless usernames were also compared, although the news blurb doesn't give statistics. See upcoming IEEE conference paper.)

This makes me sad, angry, and even frustrated. I mean...

• Who are the people who do this?
  
• Do they think it's funny or something?
  
• Has twenty years of pushing the message that hyper-aggressive come-ons aren't cool failed to take root?
  
• Or is this malicious?
  
• How many Internet fuckwads or creepy stalkers does it take to generate those statistics?
  
• Are we talking two creeps in a chatroom with 350 subscribers who do nothing but harass female-gendered usernames, or a larger segment of the population? (Option 1 would not suprise me in the least.)
  

Bleah. It's demoralizing in its way because it's so different from my life experience, where most people are respectful and pleasant (except for the other drivers). You get to thinking that these kinds of Neanderthal problems are in the past, only they're apparently not.

Well, I assume there is or will be screening software, like spam filters, one could implement? If there isn't, someone could make some money on that, I betcha.