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Comment by eric4smith | Hacker News Reader

Not surprising.

If you're a guy, you're gonna be watching people doing work or creating things.

If you're a gal, you're gonna be watching more relationship/people oriented content.

All over the world, men are fascinated with these kinds of activities. I've seen men being fascinated by these things in every country and continent I've ever been on. I guess in Riccione, its more of a tradition to stand a look every day.

I'm a programmer, but I'm watching videos about

Construction, road painting, lawn care, truck driving, metalwork and CNC, factories, farming -- yeah, some relationship stuff too. But in general, that's the differences in genders when it comes to this stuff.

No one should be surprised.

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You know, you are probably right statistically, although the true coefficient is biased (maybe in either direction) due to selection effects and societal endogeneity.

However, I always wonder, when people say things like "if you are a guy, if you are a gal" with such force and authority... what about the outliers, and what about the overlaps of these distributions?

I know a gal who loves nothing more than analyzing ongoing construction sites. I certainly know several who love to watch programming videos.

Wonder how that feels, when someone brings all the biotruths at ya, and you happen to sit at that point in the preference distribution where looking at technical going-ons is actually what you enjoy.

Like, how large is the percentage of people who literally have never met any woman who is genuinely interested in technical things, and feel totally comfortable making such absolute statements? Must be some good percentage, at least.

"I'm probably right statistically" - Please, let us try to accept the world as it is. Not as we would like it to be.

thank you!!

A strange thing about your comment, beyond it making easily verifiable claims without substantiating them, is that you focus on the gender of the spectators. You could have focused on their age, their posture, that they look at only construction and not other forms of public labor, or that this has a name in Italy and not elsewhere. Why the fascination with gender?

Well, you will have a hard time de-gendering "umarell", as it is - before and besides - this particularly popular use, nothing but a diminutive form of "uomo", i.e. "man".

The first few lines of the Wikipedia article:

>Umarell (Italian pronunciation: [umaˈrɛl]; modern revisitation of the Bolognese dialect word umarèl [umaˈrɛːl]) is a term in the Italo-Romance variety of Bologna referring specifically to men of retirement age who spend their time watching construction sites, especially roadworks – stereotypically with hands clasped behind their back and offering unwanted advice.[1] Its literal meaning is "little man" (also umarèin).[2] The term is employed as lighthearted mockery or self-deprecation.

Maybe it is not fair, but it is definitely intended as "male only" and as such very gender-oriented.

For the record, (from the facebook of Danilo Masotti, the writer that popularized the term), female "umarells" are documented to exist, though tagged as "extremely rare":

https://www.facebook.com/umarells/posts/zdaure-e-cantierirar...

A great tactic to shut down strangers who you disagree at the bar or whatever: demand evidence for obvious claims. This actually has been verified, look into studies relating to how children react to toys whose apparent target audience is the opposite gender. And also look into the widely accepted phenomenon that men and women in developed countries tend to gravitate more towards occupations traditionally associated with their own genders, even when presented with other opportunities.

The source material is all about men. What's wrong with you?

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