Adrienne & Bill

So I’m chatting with Adrienne Brawley the other day, and we’re discussing web shows since we’re both shooters and editors. We were talking about my post Personal Brand? No Crossover, and the topic of internet show hosts came up.

I “matter-of-factly” mentioned how several female show hosts either ACTIVELY HIDE their boyfriends or whatever and some of them merely omit the fact that they’re in relationships, to which Adrienne replied something to the effect of “But the guys don’t have to say who they’re dating.”

That’s where I lost whatever point I was about to make, because all main & auxiliary mental power was diverted to attempting to recall even ONE instance where a guy was asked about that.

Once I realized I wasn’t going to be able to cite a single instance in the 2+ years I’ve been involved with internet shows, I started thinking about WHY I couldn’t come up with one. :) What I decided was,

Nobody Cares Who Guys Are Dating

According to my Quantcast demos, my site has a 65% female readership. BlogHer has 61% female readership. Rocketboom has 65% male readership. Digg has 58% male. Wallstrip has 56% male. Blip.tv has 51% male. The point is, that according to statistics, it’s mostly males that are watching internet shows (even though studies are saying there are actually more females on the net, they just don’t identify themselves in surveys as female).

So, basically, there are a lot of guys that watch these shows, and if you go to IRL conferences or at least look at the flickr sets from these conferences, you’ll see there are a ton of guys at these things as well. There really isn’t a lot of representation for the female population. So that’s one reason why there isn’t any pressure on guys to disclose their dating status. Nobody cares.

Remember Dig A Tech Girl and Dig A Tech Guy? You probably don’t, because I didn’t either! I had to google all over creation to remember what the name was. Interestingly enough, when I finally found the guys’ page, the first two entries were Chris Boucher and Oz Sultan.

Chris, Rana & Bill

Bill & Oz

Anyway… At the time, ALLLLLL the attention was on the girls and none on the guys. There were a lot of complaints that a lot of the women on the list didn’t have ANYTHING to do with tech and that it was yet another reason to line up attractive females and rate them, as we Americans love to do! (and probably the rest of the entire world) :D

What Difference Does It Make?

I would love to see a study (which is clearly infeasible) about the effects on viewership / community participation for a female show host before and after she revealed that she was “involved”. Off the bat, I’m clear that a) it’s nobody’s business and b) her relationship status has nothing to do with whether she has a fun personality or can read a script beyond a 2nd grade level. Personally, I think that in most cases, it wouldn’t make any difference at all. I think that in most cases, people like what they like about a show host and their relationship status has no bearing whatsoever on their performance in the show, on Social Media sites where they follow that host or IRL.

The case where it WOULD make a difference is when that particular host is playing up her sexuality or sensuality in order to gain followers. If guys are only watching her show for T&A, it’s pretty likely that they’re imagining they have some form of a shot of being in a relationship with her or at least messing with her at some point. Revealing that she’s “spoken for” would put a completely different spin on her act and lead to several (if not MANY) disillusioned followers.

Opinions?

Ultimately, I don’t have an opinion on this topic, haha. I just wanted to post about it because I was so surprised that I was completely stuck with no response when Adrienne mentioned the disparity. If you have something to add, please write a comment below and we’ll discuss it.

The way I see it, it’s “same as it ever was”. Guys like looking at attractive women. That’s never going to end. There’s no reason why it SHOULD! :D I don’t think that should put any extra pressure on female show hosts to “play up” their attractiveness or sensuality, but we all know that “sex sells”.

As far as I can tell, the most SUCCESSFUL female hosts just so HAPPEN to be attractive, but they also know what they’re talking about, bring quality to their shows and also happen to be decent Human Beings IRL.

~Bill Cammack

Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
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