Re: Blank = Gay?
I dunno - I did a random poll of my AIM buddy list and found that more people didn’t think no, but didn’t necessarily think yes. I asked both gay and straight friends.
The question I asked was: “if somebody left their “looking for: ” {men/women/penguins} field blank in their Facebook profile, do you assume that they’re gay?”
Responses:
- Straight: “open-minded”, “sometimes, yes”, “no”, “some sort of gay”, “i’d say bi”, “it comes to mind if i really start to wonder”
- Gay: “Yes”, “No but perhaps questionable”, “yep”, “no” (this one also said “yes they usually are gay” and “i assume people are straight until they state otherwise”)
Other factoids:
- More likely to assume yes if the subject is a guy
- Less likely to assume yes if a large amount of other information is not displayed
- I asked my friends, so responses could’ve been skewed one way or the other
So there ya have it.
Now that the first VP debate has fizzled out, we need something new to think about. How about the way people resolve SNS profile ambiguity?
This topic has come up quite a bit in my conversations with friends, so I thought I’d bring it to my Tumblr for discussion.
If a male leaves the “Interested in” or “Orientation” part of their Facebook/Myspace blank, do you automatically assume they’re gay? The general consensus among my friends is that if you’re straight, you would have no problem putting it on your profile and that blank equals gay.
If I’m honest with myself I have to admit that I’ve thought this a number of times when looking at profiles online. So dear followers…thoughts?
I’m heterosexual, but I leave my orientation field blank. My feeling was that by signalling I’m straight, or worse, “looking for,” I might come across as using the ‘net as a way to get dates. Not that it’s not good at that, or that I’m not looking, but maybe I’ll save that for the day I’m on Match.com.
Still, it does seem kind of silly now.
