See you at the pub after work

I was chatting to Alicia yesterday. We spoke about a lot of things but one thing worth mentioning was regarding guys with guy friends. She beat me to a blogpost about the subject but I think it's probably still worth sharing my perspective for what it's worth.

I guess I'd not really thought about it at great length but on my friends list of maybe 25 friends only 2 are male. Alicia said that she knows of male friends who "outright dislike other men in SL." This shocked me actually.

For me the lack of males on my friends list is not so much a dislike of other guys in SL, but more just a lack of opportunity maybe. Most of my friends have arisen through the world of blogging - me reading their blogs and somehow getting people to read my spurtings. And that environment is massively weighted towards the oestrogen-heavy sex. As such most of my friends are female. And then I hang out with those females and there are other lasses around and then we become friends. It's kind of self-perpetuating in some way perhaps.

And when I do hang out in a mixed group often it would seem premature to offer a guy friendship. Maybe we just take longer to accept one another than lasses or something. Which is weird because in RL I am positive this is different. Guys bond so easily over talk of sport or lasses or whatever in RL whereas lasses sometimes...erm...take longer to bond. But why is SL different?

Somtimes when I have tried speaking to guys in SL I have found that a lot of them are overly macho - wanting to 'impress' the women maybe, or just wanting to be the alpha male. Maybe it's because so many men in SL are trying to get with the scantily-clad hoochies that any other guy is seen as a threat muscling in on their territory. Maybe.

At other times I have had some great chats with guys. I remember when I first arrived in SL hanging out at the Pond (finally some people nearly on my timezone!) there were some great blokes there. And they even spoke to the other guys rather than simply directing talk to the group members with boobs. I remember one time when I was exploring and I came across a guy with a t-shirt/bike shop and we had a long chat and he even let me take his chopper out for a ride (no, that isn't a euphemism!).

So for me, and definitely for some other guys around the place, we are not averse to male friendships. We just don't come cross paths very often.

My aim for this week is to increase my male friend quota. If nothing else, it'll keep Alicia quiet ;)