Hiya, I brought this up briefly during the last UPF chat, but since that's not actually the best medium for a real conversation I thought it might be better suited to a forum thread...
I've been thinking about this ever since I've gotten more into Youtube video game channels over the past 5-6 months and have had trouble finding any female video game "personalities" that I really gravitated to. It's still pretty much an all-boys-club overall, and I guess I'm trying to figure out if it just works better that way for some reason. Often my problem with those (women) I've seen is either they're kind of in the background and don't seem able to participate on an equal footing, overly styled and primped (as if they're just there for eye candy) and/or overly self-conscious on camera (acting out a role or just generally behaving unnaturally). I know there are some channels where females are more prominent members, like Yogscast, which is nice but in that case I just didn't find the style of commentary that engaging. I'm not sure if it's my fault as a viewer for feeling this way (some kind of primal female competitiveness effect that's making me allergic to other female gamers?), or if what I would like just isn't out there for me yet. I will say that from a ruthless practicality perspective, all-boys-clubs do at least eliminate the distraction of sexual politics from this kind of content. Female gamers are usually being appraised heavily based on their merit as potential girlfriends, and face being immediately devalued if they don't measure up on that scale. The things that the GB guys get away with, i.e. being ultra casual in dress/disheveled and it being alright to be a bit overweight (i.e. the rebellion against self-consciousness that I really appreciate in this channel), are fundamentally much harder for females to get away with on the internet.
So any thoughts on whether you think a woman could really fit in as a prominent member of the Giant Bomb quick-look/bombcast environment? Or do you prefer it as an all-male group? Also, I was curious about what female gaming personalities people here think well of now or have liked in the past.
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