Comments on: Sexual Survey of 4chan Users: 6481 Bracingly Honest Responses

By: Popzealot

Popzealot — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 08:05:25 +0000

Wow!!

Despite it all, they seem a little prudish when it comes to toys.

Silly kids don’t know what they’re missing.

By: megan

megan — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:51:21 +0000

This is most certainly not the largest sex survey ever performed! (See: the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior). But although this may not be unscientific, the results are pretty interesting.

By: officemike

officemike — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:09:01 +0000

It’s an interesting survey if we want to know the preferences of straight, white males in their teens and twenties: the overwhelming majority of respondents. What about everyone else?

By: genkouhande

genkouhande — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:24:22 +0000

I gave her the link to your article in my brief interview as one example amongst many of people in support of the outcome of the survey against the few critics I’ve personally heard from. She did seem to turn it towards moot’s side by giving the article the title “Moot On 4Chan User Survey: “It’s Total Garbage.”” rather than “4chan Users’ Survey” and actually talking about what the study results were. Also, moot’s claim that I wanted it to be “scientific” is pretty empty, since no survey type study can be “exactly scientific”, since there’s no control. I did my best with the trap answers as mentioned in the article, and wouldn’t say I’m 100% confident with the results, but the numbers seemed pretty steady from 5000 onwards. Not sure how this will play out now that it’s becoming popular.

Thanks for saving a copy but I’ve also been saving copies as time goes by (why I know results have become “typical”), and plan on doing a follow up survey in probably 6 months to see any changes in answers to current questions, add a few questions, and to test the reliability of this pilot study. I would consider the study to be probably over now that it’s been influenced by non-4chan users. In any case, have fun with the results :3

By: Etienne Perret

Etienne Perret — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:14:25 +0000

How is getting off by imaging anal or oral sex a fetish?
I consider oral, anal and vaginal totally normal ways to engage in male to female sex. Oral and anal are totally normal was for male to male sex.
Oral, vaginal and anal (with a strap-on in some cases) are totally normal female to female sex.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:08:05 +0000

I’m always happy to find more data on sexual preferences but 4chan is not known to be filled with the most responsible or reliable people (I have no idea if this is true, just the stereotype). That said, the size of the survey is what gives it any sort of credibility. Almost 6500 people is a massive survey and I’m happy about that.

Considering the double level of self-selection here though (people who choose to be on 4chan and who choose to take the survey), I’m not sure if this can or should be applied to anyone outside of 4chan users. It’s a nice bit of data though.

By: Jason Riedy

Jason Riedy — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:36:34 +0000

While not necessarily “garbage”, constructing statistically honest surveys is devilishly difficult and quite possibly impossible. I can understand a detailed rebuttal of the questions and structure. TC definitely over-stepped in calling for fresh, biased input, and many cited surveys have the same problems. Consider the “surveys” on many news web sites. I would caution against taking any one survey as “correct.”

Good results *tend* to appear from later analyses of multiple surveys combining results with demographic information about (likely) respondents. As one base survey, this has value. On it’s own? That needs to be determined from the wider survey of surveys. My observations are ignoring any names or reputations involved but are considering the history of surveys.

By: lux476

lux476 — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 13:39:41 +0000

I think that your assumption that this “study” is a “snapshot of the online sexual landscape” is wrong. If you look at the question “What boards do you most typically lurk?”. 72% of the users visit mostly the /b board. And this board is kind of extreme, for example necrophilia, childporn… .
6534 users participated in this “study”, but how many users visited 4chan at that time? How many users answered the question more than once? You can’t say anything about the margin of error.

In my opinion is this “study” neither representative for 4chan nor representative for the “online sexual landscape” and therefore useless, because of the lack facts I mention above.

But I have to admit, that this data is exactly how i expected to be(Age, Age of starting masturbating and so on). I think with a better margin of error and more representative data you will get similar data for 4chan. But to get representative data with an good margin of error for the whole “online sexual landscape” is another thing.

By: violet

violet — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 07:45:45 +0000

@End_User – Absolutely. I think that if you know the culture even a little, you know you’re going to have people voting up extreme things just to be extreme, and projecting what they want to have people perceive. Pranking, too – obviously, it is physically impossible to spend “over 24 hours a day” on 4chan.

That said, I’m with you on taking this as more realistic (and likely more accurate) than anything I’ve seen yet. I don’t think anyone has asked anonymous communities if they enjoy such a range of behavior – illegal to vanilla – since Kinsey. And no one – no one – liked him doing that.

I think the margin of error is there for sure, though I also think that error margins are likely to be higher in regulated, funded sex studies of (for example) kids and teens who are far less likely to pick something extreme (because it’s funny/true) but who are much less likely to self-report their interests and activities, for a whole host of reasons.

I see the knee-jerk backchat about this on HN, and I think, wow. They don’t understand how data and information flows in the sex world.

I think this is a really valuable thing.

By: End_User

End_User — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 03:34:44 +0000

Keep in mind that although I believe this study over a state sponsored study any day that 4chan users can be in it for the shock value of their answers instead of answering honestly. I wonder what the real margin of error is here.