I'm using the net (As a guy) for 20 years now, and I was surprised.
This is taking place at an alarming scale. Some parents really missed the mark in teaching their kids basic human manners, and I'm not even talking about the golden rule...
Early on people said "There are no girls on the internet," and the sentence was supposed to embody the anonymity of the internet and the renaissance notion that a person should be judged by the merits of their arguments and not the labels attached to them. Someone claims to be a girl? No, you are talking to a middle aged dude having a chuckle. Maybe I have rose tinted glasses here, maybe it was always jerks saying there are no girls on the internet.
It morphed into "Tits of GTFO," because, given the anonymity of online dialogue, it seemed to some pernicious few that the only reason to mention being a woman was to seek attention.
Online dialogue grew vitriolic, "Its only the internet," trolls would throw at anyone trying to inject civility and good manners into flame wars. "I f'ed your mom," became a bit of a goto for a general passing derailment since it got to most people. If OP mentioned any detail about themself, (racial, gender, age, relationship status, mental issues) this was used to make more specific insults. Moderators struggled to keep up.
The networks got faster, streaming voice became possible on games. Voice isn't anonymous. The online dialogue started giving away details (age, sex, socioeconomic background), when team mates in pick up groups got frustrated with one another they started to reach for the sexist, the racist, the particular insults. Women learned not to speak up in chat to avoid the onslaught.
A lot of us became inured to that "12 year old claiming to have banged our mom last night", but those ridiculous insults take on a nastier edge when that "12 year old" knows details about your life. If you regularly game with women, you will see it. The mere fact that people believe there are so few women gamers is due to their fear of speaking up, there are more than there appear to be on the surface.
I do think the insults become more frequent when the jerks know you are a woman. They also know you are inured to the generic insults. Few women are inured to rape threats I think. I'm a bit surprised Eric didn't get racist comments in the OP's unscientific study.
I'm happy you haven't experienced the internet as I have, it has always been a nasty place and a lot of us sat by and pretended like it was different than real life as if there weren't real live humans behind the keyboards. I've been guilty of that. I still don't know what to do when I encounter such nastiness, much to my dismay.
No, it was supposed to embody the fact that there were literally very few women on the majority of online message boards and chat rooms for a long time...
The obvious thing to do is to remove anonymity from the Internet. However then what do we do about peoples rights[1] to free speech?
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[1] Not every country gives this right to it's populous.
That would force this woman to put her real name and photo up there. I could imagine she might not be comfortable with that.
here's the article: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-cre...
China is run by a authoritarian oligarchy that wants to suppress any challenge to it's power. The planned "social credit" system is part of that suppression.
FYI, this oligarchy has a list of "perils" that include:
> “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation [1]
It's not trying to solve your problem with people's online lack of manners, and any imputation to the contrary is part of a smokescreen.
> It's a solution... but i'm not sure if it's the right one
It's the wrong solution, full stop.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lead...
You're missing the point. The US should not emulate China's authoritarian systems of control, regardless of how well China can do them or how they might seem applicable to some aspect of American life. They are the tools of authoritarianism, and to bring them here is to allow authoritarianism to creep in.
In China right now it's being touted as making everything in life seamless.
To me it's the most terrifying form of the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive (warning, contains spoilers)