Men Are Sabotaging The Online Reviews Of TV Shows Aimed At Women (fivethirtyeight.com)

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting article today which accuses men of sabotaging the online reviews of TV shows aimed at women. The publication cites an example of "Sex and the City", a show which apparently won plenty of awards and ran for many years on TV, getting hammered by males on IMDb. Compared to women, who amounted to 60% of the people who rated the show with an average of 8.1, men gave it a 5.8 rating. It's not an isolated case, FiveThirtyEight says, citing several other instances where the male audience has downvoted shows aimed at women audience. From the article: The shows with the largest proportion of male raters are mostly sports, video game web series, science fiction and cartoons. The programs with the highest proportion of female voters are -- at least the American ones -- mostly from The CW and Freeform, the new name of the network previously called ABC Family. This list is pretty hilarious. Beyond the top 25, shown in the table above, male-dominated shows of note include: "Blue Mountain State" (92 percent male), "Batman: Beyond" (91 percent), "Batman: The Animated Series" (90 percent), "The Shield" (90 percent), "Ballers" (90 percent), "Justice League" (90 percent), and "The League" (88 percent). "Star Trek: Enterprise" is the most male-heavy of the various official live-action Trek enterprises, while "Battlestar Galactica" still managed to grab 15 percent of its ratings from women, which is somewhat shocking. For women, other skewed programming includes "Private Practice" (71 percent female), "Gossip Girl" and "Gilmore Girls" (67 percent each), "Grey's Anatomy" (60 percent), "Scandal" (60 percent), and "One Tree Hill" (59 percent).

Comments

Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[omnichad]

Just because someone's not your intended audience, doesn't mean a review from them isn't fair or valuable. If it was better TV, it might have favorable ratings across the board. And most, if not all TV programming is very pandery and not very quality.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Fwipp]

Sure, as long as you define "universal appeal" as "things that appeal to men."

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[tom229]

I think you're making wild conclusions with your data. How many women are forced to cuddle on the couch while her husband watches Southpark? I'd be willing to bet not many. I've spent countless hours of my life watching terrible shows like sex and the city to meet imposed requirements of "quality time", and I know I'm not alone. When you already have an idea in your head it's easy to find causes for it isn't it? There's no conspiracy. No one's out to sabotage women's television.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[johnsmithperson123]

And if you get forced to watch it, you give it a poor review. QED.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ceoyoyo]

Doesn't matter. Characterizing one demographic choosing to review a particular set of TV shows as "sabotage" is clickbait sensationalism at best. This is an opportunity for sites like IMDB to detect a gender based split and report it:

"'Sex and the City' received an overall 3.8 stars, but female reviewers rated it 4.7 stars."

Or you could get even more useful: "General Hospital received an overall 1.0 stars but the distribution of ratings is non-normal, suggesting that while most viewers thought it was a waste of airwaves, a small demographic really enjoys the program."

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

You know, the entire Gamergate movement was predicated on the notion that feminists had no business reviewing games that were geared towards men. "Let them make their own games" was the rallying cry.

You didn't understand gamergate. It started with the exposing of corrupt and biased favorable gaming reviews.

The message you're misstating is actually not that feminists had no business reviewing games, but they had no business trying to enforce their values on game developers as a whole. See the overblown Overwatch "scandal" about Tracer's victory pose.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Not really; a lot of men are forced (under penalty of no sex) to watch their wife's shows, while men don't play the same game. That means men get stuck watching crap they don't like while women do not. Men, then, vent by reviewing the crap they have to watch, hoping that their voices will be heard and the experience will improve for them. Women, not being forced into watching men's shows, don't do this.

And yes, if you are going to force me into something, I am going to throw my weight around to make the situation more favorable for me.

Fortunately, my wife and i enjoy the same shows, pretty much across the board, and respect each other enough to not force each other to watch what we don't like, so we don't have that issue. My wife is not most women, though, and I am not most men, so I'm not speaking from personal experience, but simply relaying experiences shared with me by my other married friends. And if you don't want to take my word for it, fine, don't; read the rest of the discussion on this topic for a couple hundred other examples.

Sabotaging?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of SJW bullshit is this? Maybe men just have different taste in TV shows. I can't imagine too many men wanting to watch The Bachelorette, either. The low ratings are just a reflection that men don't like the show. It's not sabotage. Cut the SJW bullshit. Why is Slashdot so full of SJW nonsense lately?

Re:Sabotaging?

[ScentCone]

First off, anyone using the term "SJW" is completely full of shit.

Why? It perfectly, succinctly describes what it's all about. It's dead on.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Anonymous Coward]

When a boyfriend and girlfriend want to watch different things on TV, the girl wins out. Men get stuck watching girl shows. Women don't get stuck watching guy shows. As a result, men have the knowledge to rate girl shows poorly. Women don't see the guy shows, so they have no reason to rate them poorly. This isn't sabotage. Slashdot needs to cut the SJW bullshit.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[rossz]

Are men supposed to simply sit down and keep their opinions to themselves?

That is exactly what the radical feminists are demanding.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Your.Master]

You didn't read the article.

The difference is that when men don't like shows that are aimed at women, they apparently rate the show, but when women don't like shows that are aimed at men, they don't rate the show. There are shows popular with men and unpopular with women, and vice-versa, and the latter get way more "wrong-gender" votes. No particular reason was proposed as to why this is. The call to action was to recognize that single-number rating systems obscure important details in general.

Re:Suprise

[Archangel Michael]

TV show ratings now = Misogyny

Perhaps THAT is the problem going on here. Its like the crap my wife says when I watch MMA or Car Shows or whatever, and the derogatory comments she makes about them, but should I say something about sex in the city I'm a fucking pig* .

*Not really, making stuff up that I've seen in other couples do.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[jareth-0205]

It's junk food for the SJW agenda and anyone interested in benefiting from it. Men (the least likely to benefit from any modern social justice agenda) are acutely aware of this and develop appropriate opinions.

See, this worries the fuck out of me and is why I'll give time to this so-called agenda even though it riles me too - because since when have we become so fucking selfish that any other group trying to improve their lot immediately means we have to fight it? Maybe we should recognise imbalances (even if they are in our favour) and help to right them?