#quantitatively

[mood-owl]

a fallen star

--

(do not repost or use w/o permission)

[sergeantjessi]

Okay, the fic is almost done, I just have to hurry up, and then I can focus on doing uni work

*1k words later*

Okay, the fic is almost done, I just have to hurry up, and then I can focus on doing uni work

*1k words later*

Okay, the fic is almost done, I just have to hurry up, and then I can focus on doing uni work

*1k words later*

Okay, the fic is almost done, I just have to hurry up, and then I can focus on doing uni work

*1k words later*

Okay, the fic is almost done, I ju

[allgremlinyaps]

officially debt free

[yandere-yearnings]

love that's cheap in that i will give you the world if you ask for it, but i'll give the world to anyone who asks for it. in that it never had to be you. in that i'd pour my heart into any empty person who comes my way.

or love that's cheap for the way it's a fire that burns out quick. today i'll tell you to stick your hands in my ribcage and hold my heart like it's yours, and tomorrow your face is just a blur in my mind and i can't differentiate between your name and everyone else's.

love that's cheap because it's given to you easily. because you never had to earn it. where i accept your sins, not because i can see who you are beyond them, but because i said i love you and now i have to let it blind me.

it's no loss to you, so you indulge in it.

and then you can't stop.

[noknowshame]

Okay but can you tell us about that 30-50 page paper, bc that sounds interesting as fuck

oh for sure!

so for context, I am in a phd program studying entertainment media psychology. specifically I study how people perceive and form attitudes towards characters. the paper is for my candidacy exams, which is basically a test that says I am ready to start my dissertation/thesis. there's actually going to be three 30-50 page papers, and I'll spend the entire semester this fall writing them. I'm not allowed to know the exact essay prompts yet, but I at least know what the topics are going to be generally because I decide that

the first paper is going to be on differences in perceptions of fiction versus reality; for instance, do we morally judge fictional characters on the same grounds as real media figures or even people we personally know? the literature on this is just a complete contradictory mess. basically, some argue that our brains are not actually good enough at distinguishing reality from fiction for there to be measurable differences in judgement, while others argue that awareness of fictionality actively allows us to displace our usual sociomoral concerns. my argument is essentially that both are right, and the problem is that researchers are conflating real vs. fictional with entertainment vs. non-entertainment contexts, and the latter is primarily what affects processing differences, because humans are great at judgment in context regardless of whether the fourth wall is the defining boundary (think of what you can do in a boxing ring that you can't do five feet away in the stands). and this isn't even beginning to cover what "real" even means in the first place

it's way more complicated than that (hence 30-50 pages), but that's the gist.

(see below for more on my second and third papers)

I'm hoping my second paper is going to be on the way that entertainment contexts affect the basis on which we form judgements. while you probably hope the people you interact with in real life are morally trustworthy to an extent, it is much more damning for a character to be uninteresting, irritating, or poorly written than it is for them to be immoral. at least in my view. the problem is that for literal decades, every time we've done a study on character judgement (and this includes my own research), we strongly and consistently find that morality is mostly what people base liking or disliking a character on. I tend to think that this is an -us- problem, so my second paper will grapple with that. if we can see with our eyeballs that viewers including ourselves love immoral characters, why can't we get them to tell us that in a research setting? what's wrong with our methods that's creating this gap between real-world observation and experimental findings? I think its character liking that we are measuring incorrectly, but don't even get me started on that

my third question will likely be on how viewer "expertise" affects judgement processes. for example, I have this suspicion that one reason why tumblr users (including myself) think its stupid for people to judge characters like they're real is because we're all really obsessed with narratives in some way and tend to process them from a more external/analytical standpoint than the average viewer. in light of that, I'm interested more broadly in the extent to which different forms of perceived high-level knowledge (e.g., at the scale of text, medium, genre, topic, etc.) change what we pay attention to and therefore how we form attitudes towards characters. this paper is the one I'm most nervous about because its actually like ten different questions in a trenchcoat and I don't know which one my committee will actually want me to talk about

as you may expect, my biggest concern is staying concise and focused. I have way too much to say about all of this, even for a 50 page paper

[psychotrenny]

It's really funny to me that people are more concerned about a random rich failson (like his family owns a fucking golf course) getting subjected to the internet panopticon because he probably murdered another rich guy then they are about the aforementioned murder. Like shooting the rich, that's perfectly fine. Admirable even. But digging into stuff they chose to post online and talking about it; that's just too damn far. Like I don't want to throw around loaded and mostly meaningless terms like "internet-poisoned", but it seems like some people have such a warped sense of proportionality that they're talking as though "internet celebrity" is a more serious fate than "gunned down in the street"

[kittykatninja321]

dc worse dad poll is seemingly on hiatus but i am impatient and desperate to know how this matchup will shake down so:

feel free to go crazy with the propaganda in the notes, write essays, provide panel evidence , etc etc get in your lawyer bag

[polar-bears-making-pancakes]

thank you for a tag @phantrashcan and @philsmeatylegss :]

Shuffle your on repeat playlist and list 10 first songs:

I will follow you into the dark - Death Cab for Cutie

Come Over (Again) - Crawlers

LA Devotee - Panic! At The Disco

Famous Last Words - My Chemical Romance

Dance, Dance - Fall Out Boy

Vertigo - Alice Merton

The Ballad of Mona Lisa - Panic! At The Disco

Tear in My Heart - Twenty One Pilots

I'm Not Okay (I Promise) - My Chemical Romance

Angel Of Small Death & The Codeine Scene - Hozier

tagging, only if you want to: @neonvqmpire @karinasomnus @livingproofoftbd @the-star-rigel @dnptheinfinity @dreamingdruka

[notastupidurl]

Promoting this again! We have surpassed our goal (thank you all so much!) and now we're trying to get at least 20 more participants. Every participant will be entered in a raffle to win one of 10 $50 Amazon gift cards!

https://alvernia.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2m19korI5kKlTU2

——————————————————————————

Blurb from the original post:

Hi everyone!

My name is Rachel (she/they), I'm a master's student in the third year of my clinical counseling program at Alvernia University, as well as a queer masters-level therapist at the Counseling Collective in PA. My professor, Dr. Anthony Vajda, and I are conducting a a study titled "Weight Bias and its Occlusion of Gender Identity Development in Transgender Individuals" and we’re looking for folks to participate!

If you are currently 18 years old or older, identify as transgender or under the transgender umbrella, and are willing to share your opinions about weight stigma and transgender-related topics, you qualify!

If you agree to participate, you will take the survey, which takes 10-15 minutes to complete. All information collected from this survey is anonymous and will be treated as strictly confidential. Your name will not appear on this survey. All participants will be entered into a raffle to win one of many $50 Amazon gift cards!

Your participation would be greatly appreciated and crucial, as it would provide invaluable insights into transgender identity development, weight bias and stigma, and their impact on mental health.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration!

[wellnoe]

i am perhaps more amenable than a lot of people to the characterization of history as 'fiction', but that's because i think the really strident knee-jerk denial of that concept leads to a lot of weird appeals to objectivity or platonic truth or normative/pseudo-scientific forms of historical writing as un-stylized, or un-aesthetic. and i think all those reactions can lead to a very complacent and unintentional engagement with history as a discipline.

[gil-estel]

trying to research PhD programs but struggling bc my area of interest (the science of how children learn math) is grouped in different degree programs depending on the university (edpsych, psych, cognitive science, human development) so I end up having to look up every single faculty member across like 3 different departments for each potential university 😭

[katzenklavierr]

"Adding a 'see results/click button' option for a poll with a targeted demographic ruins the sampling" I agree but also if the button is not there people will click on one of the other options regardless of how well it applies simply bc they want to participate. People will also lie on them for fun or to intentionally skew certain options. You should not be relying on Tumblr polls for anything but satisfying casual curiosities and you should take their results with a heaping spoonful of salt.

[cicadasrcool]

This is probably a long shot, but I'm taking a quantitative methods seminar, and I'm struggling to understand which tests I should run (I tend to be a more rhetorical and qual researcher...). Any SPSS heads out there who want to help me out with this rough draft flow chart I'm trying to make?

[amaryllis-sagitta]

Dismantling the polarizing logic

I don't know if it's useful at this point or if anybody wants to hear it but the cursed sensation of deja vu didn't want to leave me, and being me, I have to analyse it until I'm done.

My deja vu has been relevant to a pattern in fandom criticism that I'm seeing very clearly for a few years in the context of fandom polarization and the targeting of subgroups.

I will illustrate the point with 3 examples that are memorable to me personally:

Spawn Astarion vs. Ascended Astarion

Solavellans vs. anti-Solavellan/ anti-Solas users

Veilguard critical users vs. veilguard positive users

Of course, these are only three examples that have affected the spaces where I have circulated, some have affected my mutuals and followed users, so I had limited access to some impressions at leas. Still, these don't represent the full scope of recent (especially post-pandemic?) fandom experiences.

With regards of these 3 group dynamics, I have noticed a certain disproportion in the perceived vocal power of the subgroups when stacked against a larger audience. There seems to be a quantitative component to this, one of sheer numbers, and a qualitative component -- that depends on what's closer to wider normalized behavior.

Because of user engagement statistics, Spawn Astarion fans are considered a quantitative majority. Because of wider differences in preference towards morally dark content, they are also considered a qualitative majority.

Because of some statistical estimations and because of these romances' canonical availability only as a straight romance option for female characters, Solavellans and Cullenmancers are considered a quantitative majority among the DA shippers, as well as a qualitative one (female characters in a straight relationship vs. queer relationships).

Voices critical of Veilguard, both in bad and good faith, are perceived as the quantitative majority on two fronts: 1) grifters who manipulate online community engagement and 2) older fans disappointed with Veilguard's decisions in terms of the storyworld continuity. It is harder for me to determine what could constitute a qualitative majority here -- but unfortunately, it probably has a lot to do with culture war aligned actors forcibly portraying themselves as "the norm" and trying to make everyone else feel unaccepted. These tourists make attempts to portray themselves as "concerned old time fans", aiming to conflate critique based on merit with hate.

This is a pattern we observe in online hate all across the board: haters co-opting discussions based on merit and conflating any discussion on certain hot topics with spreading hate. It's how Gamergate co-opted the problems of AAA game quality, anti-consumer practices among AAA publishers and corporate review bias.

Now, what I believe might be used to antagonize the group is the prerogative of equity as balancing the voices out. It's based on several premises:

1a. Quantitative disproportions in discourse constitute inequity - users who share views with a larger subgroup are "more heard" than others. 2a. Qualitative disproportions in discourse constitute inequity - users who have particular preferences are "more heard" than others. 3a. It is desirable to amplify the "less heard out" voices in favor of the "more heard out" ones.

And now for the real whammy: I don't know how to call this kind of fallacy, I haven't had logic classes for a long time, but look what happens if premises 1-2 are manipulated to suggest that we're constituting discrimination instead:

1b. Users who share their views with a larger subgroup are discriminating against the less heard out group by openly sharing the said views. 2b. Users who have particular preferences and tastes are discriminating against the users who don't share these tastes by sharing their preferences.

Ergo

3b. Countering the perceived "majority voices" with "minority voices" is an act of fight against discrimination.

In each of these dynamics, I've seen pushback from the "minority voices" claiming that unhealthy amounts of group pressure have been applied to them, that they were actually feeling shunned down and repressed and that the majorities are somehow misusing their force of sheer numbers to engage in cyberbullying. I haven't had an opportunity to test these claims. But what follows almost inevitably is mutual accusations of being "weird" at best and sharing reprehensible views at worst, on behalf of having a certain gaming preference. And the factor of sheer numbers might as well be at play here.

On the other side, if you watched the "majority" communities, you'd see complaints about reactive generalizations, dogpiling, mass misrepresentation and other forms of cyberbullying as the "minority's" backlash to criticism. A common response to the "majority's" alleged power play is to mark them as the "truly problematic" side that either has deflected their true attitude, or represent an even worse attitude than the one being criticized. With Astarion, this happened on the grounds of sporadic glorification of the dark ending as "healthier" being called out, and the following accusations that Spawn Astarion fans perpetrate the culture of purity, demand that Astarion be a "perfect abuse survivor", and "infantilize a SA survivor". Cullen & Solas romancers were ad hominem'd as "predominantly straight white women" as a result of some shady contents with the ships in concern emerging - most recently, after an author of an AI generated Solas-centered fic was called out on the basis of a largely anti-AI sentiment within the community. Finally, Veilguard critical fans, who do critique based on merit and specific points within the text of the game itself, have been complaining that they've faced defamation, harmful generalizations, and association with the cyberbullies who doxxed a pro-Veilguard author of a somewhat biased fandom survey.

In either case, a cycle emerges: sporadic behavior in a "minority" group is called out. The response from some users is disproportionate due to their immaturity, imperfect etiquette, or the preconceived social pressure being shouldered by the "minority", which leads to the "minority" claiming further persecution with a snowballing chain of accusations and a muddy game of telephone. Somewhere in the middle, psy-op level instances of cyberbullying (brigading, witch hunts, doxxing, hate spam) happen in a flash, sparking further outrage. The "majority" soon also reports attempts of groupthink-based defamation for supposedly discriminating against someone weaker "just existing". Increasingly inflamatory responses are exaggerated as the main group modus operandi on both sides, polarization ensues.

In other words, cyberbullying snowballs thanks to a combination of non sequiturs and ad hominems through association (if a person has an X preference, they must belong to an Y group that has an unfavorable reputation). And to be brutally honest, there's so many takes that look like people weren't taught to chain thoughts together, and so much mental spaghetti that makes it look anyone can say anything and have a following that will attach emotions to it. It's really exhausting. And I think it's a major danger when people hop on the vibe-based bandwagon instead of analyzing if something makes any sense.

Moreover, the prerogative of equity leads people to be more lenient towards "minority voices" no matter their methods - adding another common social justice argument that articulation doesn't need to be perfect to be valid. This, I think, creates the risk of bad actors baiting the "minorities" to say objectionable things that will be called out, and use the callout itself as an unfair act that paints the "majority" in a bad light.

I believe this is why social justice arguments appear so early on whenever this kind of a fight erupts. It has been already mentioned many times how people are acting as if they were correcting forms of discrimination within the group dynamic, even if the social critique terms are being used to interpret the text of the games in concern, without pointing any fingers. And the attempts to dismiss that logic are really misplaced, in a sense that a "gaming is not a place for activism" argument really fails to show the pressure points in which the logic of activism can be applied to antagonize users in spaces infused with discourse.

One vital difference to bear in mind: judgment over texts does not automatically imply judgment over groups, or judgment over personal choices.

Another thing to remember that might be hard to ask for: opening yourself up to the community requires a certain dose of stamina. The chances of being misunderstood and receiving disproportional backlash for something humanely flawed are heightened. Sadly, until the overal online etiquette improves, there's little to be done about that on the individual level.

And the third, final thing: at the end of the day, we need to become less reactive to things MEANT TO HARM THIRD PARTIES IN OUR ORBIT. ESPECIALLY THE PEOPLE WE MIGHT PERSONALLY DISLIKE. SHOW SOME HEALTHY SKEPTICISM TOWARDS GENERALIZATIONS. I will never understand how convenient it seems in this fandom to join these knee-jerk chains of judgment, that might put a target on the people who might annoy you, but only in order to HELP THE CYBERBULLIES do their thing and hide in plain sight when everyone else is squabbling.

All in all, I think it's always worth to ask the question: in this day and age, who will gain from discord that tries to make the left-leaning critiques of media look oppressive, and tries to make the left-leaning communities look like they're constantly at each other's throats, when somewhere else there might be order, discipline and accord? Who might be the kind of people actively trying to make it look like some subgroups are both oppressive and pathetic, depending on the current need? Please think about the implications and don't fall into traps.

We already have "No-one is immune to casual privilege-based biases".

It's time to add "No-one is immune to being dragged into psychological warfare".

[threemoonwatchers]

Okay gang more polls for science (the WoF fic again)

[bayrut]

submitted grad school app #2 yay!!!