(Online) Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

The exquisitely snarky Ellen Schmidt is here to tell the boys that the internet is female.

“There are no women on the internet”

Everyone knows that’s not true. But it does highlight a little nugget of wisdom about how the genders interact. Men are out there blazing trails and taming the wild, while women, swoop in later to settle down, often using their feminine wiles to get ahead against the pioneers. The rough-and-tumble boys’ club gets a makeover as civilization rolls in. Back in the day of the early internet, gatekeeping was a piece of cake. Connecting a modem to those obscure BBS chats filled with brilliant nerds discussing their quirky interests was no walk in the park. Just like men do, you wanted to make it all a bit easier, more user-friendly.

As the wild west of tech evolved, the urge to tame it was just too tempting. Sure, keeping things a tad inaccessible would have made social dynamics simpler, but you just had to conquer those tricky protocols, wrestle with that stubborn hardware, and tackle those pesky software issues. Your problem-solving brain just couldn’t resist. The tools had to be refined, optimized, you know? Before you could blink, everything was a breeze to access, and anyone who could click a mouse had the world at their fingertips. As access opened up, your highbrow chats got bombarded with clueless folks. And just like that, phones became everywhere, along with their idiot-proof apps, and women started strutting in like they owned the place.

Of course, none of you asked for us. No one in that ham radio chat looked around and said, “you know, we need more women.” But once we came in, some guys couldn’t help themselves. You quickly realized there was always a lonely, divorced guy in his mid-fifties who hasn’t had a date in a decade would fall over himself for a miniscule chance at romance, throwing old friends under the bus without reserve. There have always been social controls against this behavior. “Bros before Hoes” and all that. It’s never really worked though, has it? There are always a couple guys willing to break solidarity. We do the same thing, like when we start dating our best friend’s ex and say “we’re just hanging out.” in a pathetic attempt at plausible deniability, followed by “it just happened” a few months later. Amazingly, we’ve developed the skill to lie to ourselves and sincerely believe it.

You turned your attention to social controls to contain the damage. Anyone with a feminine name gets hazed, and those flaunting their femininity for attention? Banned! The obvious ones? Easy peasy to kick out. But then there’s the clever crowd, the ones who lurk around, picking up on your little word games, pretending to be one of the boys. “She’s not like the others,” you say, trying to convince yourself. “She’s cool,” you tell the guys, all while you’re just simping. A few more slip through the cracks. More guys simp like it’s a new trend. And that girl who’s “just one of the guys”? What a surprise, she’s starting to twist your precious language to suit her own agenda. When politics come up, that edgy girl joking about TND casually suggests those immigration crackdowns might be a tad too harsh. And let’s not forget the trad girl in the Orthodox chat, dropping hints that a real man does everything his wife says. By the time you realize what’s happening, it’s already too late. We’re united, and the simps are losing their grip. Language gets all mushy, controlled, and what was once a wild frontier becomes a stifling bubble of tone policing. Funny how the original pioneers are often the first to flee or get kicked out.

Honestly, it’s not even a contest. Online spaces lack any real physical threat that would make us worry about our safety. We quickly come to understand that edgy talk isn’t dangerous; it’s just a playful use of language. We feast on language games for breakfast. Can you even imagine how effortlessly we can “code switch” depending on our audience? I whip up the most cheerful comments in the mommy blog I devour each morning, shower my sister with all the emotional support she can handle while she drones on about her coworkers, babble in baby talk with my little one, and then casually toss around ethnic slurs in the discord chat like it’s nothing. It’s a breeze, really, since online spaces don’t demand anything from you—just pick up the lingo. It’s all just chatter. And who do you think is master of endless chatter and creating consensus? Women. You’ve literally crafted the perfect female environment and then act surprised when you can’t keep us out. Every language barrier you throw up can be mastered in no time by your average teenage girl, who is biologically wired for this kind of game. They don’t even need to understand how the male brain works; they just need to know how words connect.

While the menfolk treat words and ideas like they’re some kind of perfect, uncorruptible form, we know the truth: they’re as slippery as a bar of soap. Words only mean what they mean based on how we toss them around. Those shiny new concepts and trendy buzzwords you think are set in stone? Please, they’re just playdough for us to squish and shape. Sure, some folks misuse them and end up looking like total fakes, but the more clever ones? We know just how to smooth out the rough edges, giving them a little TLC to fit our needs. Before you know it, those words have been reshaped, the harsh lines blurred, and you’re left swinging at shadows, trying to catch our clever little phrases while your vocabulary collapses against our fluid rhetoric.

And we’ve barely scratched the surface of our power. Just wait until the next generation of women stops clearly identifying as women. That little anonymity you’re so fond of? It’s about to become our secret weapon. You’ve already seen those ‘pick me’ AI ladies, right? They’re out there saying all the sweet nothings you want to hear, racking up likes like it’s a competition. Just wait until that ‘tough gym bro’ with his legion of followers turns out to be a housewife juggling four kids. All that ‘real talk’ he’s been dishing out? It’s just a fancy way of telling you to cater to our every whim. You’ll strut around, chest puffed out, spouting your tough guy lines, while every woman in sight has you on a short leash. Tough husband? Patriarch? In charge? Spare me.

It might just drive you up the wall, but can you really blame us? We adore those trailblazers. The sheer audacity to tackle the wild and tame it is just so empowering, and it applies to both the great outdoors and the tiniest of scientific dilemmas. There’s a certain power in those realms. Power that we can twist to fit our needs. Even in the quirkiest of hobbies, there are a handful of men at the top who are worth our attention. In the most niche areas, there’s a surge of energy waiting to be tapped. And once it’s unleashed, we want it all. Naturally, we don’t want to be the ones wielding that power ourselves. We let you gentlemen do the heavy lifting for us. Year after year, social norms have created this irresistible urge in Western men to make life a little safer and a lot easier for us. Since we’ve always relied on men to keep us afloat, those same generations have gifted us with the art of persuasion to chip away at your mental barriers. Responsibility? That’s just code for risk. All we really want is the power. You may hold the cards, but every evolutionary nudge is just begging you to give us what we desire.

It’s always been this way

We can’t pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, and honestly, we don’t even need to. The charm of this democratized internet is that we don’t have to play puppet master with the big shots; we just need the numbers. As we grow, the power of a select few to keep things in check just fizzles out, and once we hit that magic number, good luck trying to control the story. You’ll be left floundering as all those little accounts join forces, creating a fresh consensus, shifting the narrative, and slowly taking over. Those high-and-mighty elites will end up as nothing more than a figurehead in their little kingdom. Restoring control will foster a rebellion, and the only other option is packing their bags. No matter how you slice it, we’re coming out on top. Think you can outsmart women in the art of consensus building? You can try.

Oh sure, go ahead and try to run away again. Why not retreat to Urbit if that tickles your fancy? But just wait, that little corner of the internet will soon go through the same old song and dance, and your precious tech frontier will be overrun. That simple chat will be stuffed with shiny new features and conveniences, just you wait. The settlers will roll in, and guess what? Women will come along too. And with those women comes the oh-so-charming but suffocating settlement. The society you’ve toiled so hard to create, pouring in your labor and skills to conquer, will ultimately be turned against you. All roads lead to the longhouse, darling, so you might as well get cozy.

Come inside, it’s not so bad.

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