Picking Up Women, Putting on Masculinity: A Computational Analysis of Seduction Forums

• In Event: 289 - Regular Session. Masculinities

Abstract

Recent attention to the actions of famous pick-up artists and seduction experts has raised public interest with regard to the discourses around women, sex, and emotion among men. In this paper, we employ computational methods, including topic modeling and dictionary methods, to examine the ways in which men discuss sex, women, and constructions of masculinity in an online seduction forum. We interrogate the relationship between anger and sex, the forum’s structure and culture and its related front and backstages, the constructions and performances of masculinity in the different forum communities, the specific anxieties and vulnerabilities surrounding sexual behavior described by forum users, and the socialization process and organization of the online seduction forum. In so doing, we pose early findings with regard to the kinds of conversations men have on these forums and suggest some future directions for this area of inquiry. We also discuss the future of applying innovative computational methods to the rich theoretical history of the sociological study of gender, masculinity, and sexual behavior.

Authors

• Gillian Gualtieri, University of California-Berkeley

• Cyrus Dioun, University of California-Berkeley

• Dilip Ravindran, University of California-Berkeley