up until about five years or so ago, there were virtually no women in the hobby
This is just not true. It's deeply ironic that people trying to "do good" are some of the ones keenest to erase women and minorities from the history of TTRPGs.
EDIT:
I'm reminded of the history of MMORPGs. In the EverQuest/DAoC era, about 30-40% of players were women (and I mean players, not characters, to be clear - that was more like 50%). This was reliably surveyed by Nick Yee and others. In the WoW era, these numbers continued, decreasing slightly as a percentage as a huuuuuge tidal wave of teen to early twenties boys descended on the hobby, but remained above 30% (and started going up again as WoW's appeal broadened out).
But it was notable that some groups of people resolutely refused to believe this, because in their guilds, everyone was male. So clearly the women in other guilds were "lying" about being women, because as the "witty" phrase said back then "there are no women on the internet" (i.e. anyone saying they're female is just a man trying to scam you, a truly incredible misogynist claim).
And they were wrong - we had voice chat and even video back then - and the were even wrong about there being no women in their guilds - there were, but they had to pretend to be male to avoid having misogyny or sexual harassment directed at them - and a lot of those women ended up leaving for less-horrific guilds.
Eventually most of those people grew up, and those denialist attitudes largely faded away apart from in the grimiest corners of the 'net - there's still huge sexism/misogyny in online gaming but it's not the same "women don't exist" kind.
Why am I bringing this up? Because I saw a 20-something (now, so like born in about 2000 god help us all - I was playing EQ before he was born) on reddit claiming that there were no women in MMOs in the early WoW era (he didn't even seem to be aware that there were earlier MMOs, and casually dismissed it as meaningless when it was pointed out), and he knew this, because people had told him so, and he'd read forum posts where people said it. And a bunch of kids who were also not there at the time, were of course agreeing with him. It wasn't until he got yelled at by a lot of MMO-grogs who actually were there and then gradually downvoted into oblivion that it got sorted. And he kept saying he was right all the way down.
I'm not drawing a straight comparison here but it's certainly reminiscent of the attitude to me - "there are no women on the internet".
Excellent job on being technically correct. Well done you.
This is an extremely unhelpful, anti-discussion and self-congratulatory attitude on your part.
The poster wasn't just "technically correct". They were fully correct, and you were attempting to change history - both in terms of what you posted, which was drastically at odds with the reality, and the reality itself.
I would be very interested to see what the responses would be in, in a society that was 80% white, you expressed the belief that minorities were "virtually non-existent" .
Quite.
By that logic, minority ethnicities are "virtually non-existent" in Europe, because most European countries are over 80% white - Britain is 87% white, for example. Yet our prime minister, our secretary of state and others are minority ethnicities, and I don't think the 13% of the country who are non-white regard themselves as "virtually non-existent".
Personally,
@Hussar, I'd suggest that instead of digging the hole deeper on this comment, you maybe admit you were wrong? Even I am capable of doing this on occasion. And claiming people want to "kick you out of the hobby" because they disagree is a bit dramatic, no? If this level of disagreement what "people want to kick you out of the hobby" looks like, then about 50% of ENworld wants to kick me out of the hobby lol. Which I suspect is untrue.
