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The Rise Of The Chickclickers
from the young-women-storm-the-Web dept.
There are few reliable numbers on Net use by gender, but one high-tech Wall Street analyst says his firm's research suggests that the majority of Web users -- possibly as high as 60% -- are now female. And younger women, especially those between 13 and 30, are the fastest growing single demographic online.
"Five years ago, there were not that many women on the Internet," Carol Kovac, a vice president at the Watson Research Center at I.B.M. told the New York Times recently. "Today, we're on there and using it for everyday things."
Contrary to any lingering stereotypes, they aren't the least bit wary either of embracing technology or going online. They have adopted the Web enthusiastically, discovering new ways to use it, giving the lie to the notion that the Net is a male playground, or that it primarily isolates people. Says one Web developer, these young women finally have their own medium. With e-mail, AIM, Web sites, and mailings, they're no longer dependent on the goodwill of parents and teachers for the tools to connect with. In many ways, they're creating a different kind of medium -- communicative, community-centered,culture-driven. Beyond the wildest dreams of any slick and usually dumb women's mag, they define their own agenda.
Along with the spread of the open source ethic and the free music and culture battles, the geek girls -- or Chickclickers as some dub themselves, are perhaps the single most important social phenomenon online. And online, they make different choices than men.
"We are everyplace now," e-mails Roz67, "and in rapidly growing numbers. And we are different from guys. We don't need to prove our technical savvy, though we have enough of it. And we don't need to prove our feminism either. We are just thrilled to find one another and to talk about the things WE want to talk about."
Some of these women appear to embrace a new political value system. They are post-feminists who take their equality for granted and don't make it a central issue in their online lives. Via the Web, they are creating new media that don't patronize or dismiss them, treat them as stupid twits, or focus obsessively on the stereotypical female images that have defined traditional media for decades. Their Web sites reject the idea that women are only interested in men, apparel, cosmetics and recipes.
Heather Irwin, creative director of Chickclick (a highly navigable, user-friendly and colorfully-designed site) and a former Hotwired editor, says her site's research indicates that the heart of the female movement online is the 13-30-year-olds. They're smart and they're "using the Net for community, for research, for job hunting and for networking." Offline, Chickclick has noticed, there is a huge surge in these same women reaching out to one another to talk and meet.
"The 13-17 year olds are going to be a major force of their own as they reach adulthood and they seem to have an amazing feeling of sisterhood for each other," Irwin predicts. Although young men often behave differently online than their female counterparts, the same age group is a huge part of sites like this one (Slashdot) and also sees itself as belonging to a new kind of community.
The rise of the Chickclickers is significant on several levels. Anyone who doubts that men and women often make distinct technology choices online ought to visit Chickclick and the many "sister sites" that are linked to the top of its homepage.
It's clear on the younger women's sites -- chickclick, bolt.com, gamegal.com, Teenpeople.com (and sites like Mode, Jane and Jump, one of the first-ever sports sites aimed at young women) -- that there are radical differences from male-dominated sites. And they are markedly less hostile. They use technology to form community, yet the mechanics of the technology are subordinate to what the technology permits them to do. These sites are also distinctly different from Web sites aimed at older women, like oxygen.com and women.com. The latter are less political, and focus less on pop culture, more on so-called "traditional" women's interests -- food, fashion, lifestyle.
"I guess a lot of [us] don't care about the programming code any more than we need to see the insides of the TV before we use it," said Ginger, posting from ROCKRGRL.com, a Chickclick sister site. "The technology is important because it enables us to be here. But I don't care all that deeply how it really works."
In chat rooms and forums that are more personal and less combative than many public sites on the Web, the discussions and threads go on for weeks, even months. Almost all these younger sites link intensely to other sites. Although sites like Chickclick do include stories on cosmetics and appearance, it's often with a political edge -- sniping at the stick women on TV and in glossy magazines, and trading high-school horror stories.
Chickclick's news service Shewired bristles with attitude as well as information: stories on women-owned techno-businesses, female cops, politicians and mass murderers. And artists and performers -- one thing these sites do have in common with more male-oriented geek and nerd sites is an obsessive love of pop culture. Chickclick is crammed with TV stories, movie chats and music-sharing discussions. The site is colorful, smart, newsy and centered around conversations, both one-on-one and many-to-many.
These Chickclicker sites reinforce what has always been the great potential of the Net and the Web -- building new kinds of communities, not hustling dog food and stock tips. The disparities aren't really that surprising. Men and women have completely different histories online, as well as different instincts about using the network. The Net was built and designed almost exclusively by men, since the institutions responsible for its creation and development -- government, defense, engineering and academe -- were overwhelmingly male.
Now, younger men online are interested in techology -- programming, software and hardware, among other things. Women are also interested in Net-offshoots like gaming, but seem more interested in using the Net to find other women, to have some say in issues they care about, something often lacking in their offline lives.
Of course, men and women are often misleadingly stereotyped as well as uncommunicative, hostile and unsupportive of one another. But men do also connect socially online, sometimes through mailing lists, chat rooms and messaging systems, music-trading sites, but also sometimes via prolonged and intense collaborative involvement designing software and writing code,and gaming. The communication appears more indirect, even disguised. But despite alarms from researchers, politicians and the media about the Net-promoted loneliness, most people go online to connect in one way or another, not to stay apart.
Is online gender segregation inevitable? For the short run, almost certainly. But a Web site that focused on technology along with social and cultural issues and which offered humane and rational chat forums might fuse the two cultures. And it would be a hell of a Web site. Attitudinally, there is lots of common ground between Chickclickers and their male counterparts. Both relish the free atmosphere online, and chafe at the restrictive environments of many schools.
Gender aside, as online communities evolve, it isn't clear whether they will inevitably fuse or remain distinct. "The Net is not going to transform the world immediately into a unified place," writes Mark Stefik of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in his new book The Internet Edge. "We have many differences in our cultures and values. ... Embracing too much at once is overwhelming."
But some similarities stand out. "High school is hell for us as it is for smart guys," Donna posted on a Chickclick sister site called http:www.smileandactnice.com. "And the Net is a godsend. We can find each other, talk to each other and give real support and useful information. We trade information about boys, education, colleges, sometimes even jobs. It's very powerful out there. We find the kinds of communities we often don't have in our schools and towns. "She and many of her friends visited established Web sites at first, Donna said, most of them dominated by men. They found the environment useful, "but there is just too much hostility and posturing." And she added, she and many of her friends like to use technology, but don't want to know as many details about it as some men.
"It's been my experience that these young women, to a much greater degree than their male counterparts, are willing to put a vast amount of personal information out about themselves, are willing to connect with others and want to talk about their lives and experiences online," one female Web editor reports. "They form amazing cliques just like in real life. They create alter egos, fantasy stories about themselves and their friends, share photos, swap stories, etc., and they actually form very strong friendships and bonds that often extend into the real world. I think that for a lot of young girls, using the computer is no longer a 'geek' thing to do."
Clearly not. Both genders transcend concerns about geekness.' Now that everybody's grandma is online, along with teachers, stockbrokers and priests, going online is considered less of a 'geeky' experience all the time.
The personality and diversity of expression on sites like Chickclick is astonishing sometimes, a precedent set by landmark sites like Riotgrrls.com Chickclickers tear into Dr. Laura, the homophobic talk show host. In the ChickLounge, they talk about work and self-worth and popularity, dissect the curious role of the supermodel and Hollywood's white-trash obsession, deplore fashion victims and argue about whether parents should encourage children to compete in beauty pageants.
Online, women don't have to hide their brains the way they often do in school, e-mailed a teacher named Grace (Two years ago, I rarely got e-mail from women. Now it's more than 30%). "It's just like being a student. The isolation, the need to hide your intelligence," she says. "I don't want to sit in any more lecture halls projecting phony deference for authority and fake tolerance for my pseudo-peers." Online, she says, she doesn't have to.
As Grace shows, the female rush online is by no means limited to teens. "It wasn't until my late 20s (I am 37 now) when I sat down in front of a computer and logged onto the Net for the first time that suddenly, everything changed," e-mails Melissa. There were thousands of 'me's out there. All trolling the lines of cyberspace for others of the same ilk. I discovered IRC and mailing lists. I instantaneously went from a lost soul to one with a community. I made friends all over the world. I met people I never would have met had I not logged on. And I was communicating constantly."
Lynn Weinberger points out that it's still often difficult for young women to show open interest in science and technology, especially in middle and high schools. "I was unusual for a girl," she was constantly being told, particularly in the seventh and eighth grades, when boys and girls started paying more attention to one another. "I was the nerd with the long hair. I kept to myself and learned as much as I could about the new MacIntosh computers." Weinberger was, according to her teachers, "too quiet ... but it is hard to talk when nobody cares what you have to say, and when every time you open your mouth to speak you are ridiculed by everybody, teachers and students."
Today, she writes, "I hope that people accept me for who I am. I am a female geek, which makes me different. But so what? It makes me all the more unique. This is who I am, and I am finally at 22 years old proud of that. I do not hide myself in silence any more. Yet I can make a bold statement like that and then walk down the street looking at all the people with more popular lives and hipper clothes than me and still feel envy. I will always fight this.'
So do many older women, who are also online in increasing numbers. The Institute for Women and Technology, located at Stanford University, links to scores of sites serving women in engineering and other technological and scientific fields. Femina.com is a collection of women-oriented Web sites, as is Womenconnect.com. But the Chickclickers don't need help navigating the Web. They appear completely at home online, and most have been using computers since primary school. As much as parents cluck about obsessive online use, it seems the Net can be a profoundly empowering tool.
The rise of the Chickclickers may be, along with the open source movement, one of the most far-reaching evolutions in the history of the Net. Because women are drawn to communities and to connection, they may be more likely to involve themselves in politics, or provide standing targets for advertisers. It's surely easier to reach large numbers of them. Their sites offer more potential for continuing conversations about technology, politics, culture and other issues, since there is less flaming and other forms of hostility to get past.
And since women are also pouring into sub-specialties like Web creation and design, they're likely to have considerable impact on all kinds of sites and Net communities. "Perhaps because they had some catching up to do, women have a particular sensitivity to the plight of the people using and navigating the Net and the Web. They are clearly designed and make it easy to ask questions and -- here's something -- get real answers," says Kate, a San Francisco freelance Web consultant. "Their influence is to make the Web more coherent and user-friendly, something male designers were a bit slower to do."
The open-source movement has turned out to be one of the most interesting and significant social movements emerging from the Net. Leapfrogging past its many implications for technology itself, OSS is challenging one mainstream institution after another -- the entertainment industry, education, politics, media -- to pull back the curtains, and topple the barriers between individuals and the information they want and need.
The Chickclickers may ultimately be just as important, as they are building enduring communities that look as if they will last. If the current patterns continue, they'll quickly become one of the biggest subcultures online. They share common sensibilities about politics, culture and technology. They intuitively grasp the Net's landmark potential: to connect people and information in ways never before possible.
Re:Chickclickers? (Score:3)
Read the whole article before jumping to conclusions next time.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
They May Use The Internet, But . . . (Score:3)
They may use the Internet, but . . .
What is the ratio of men to women that use it for their daily pr0n needs? Certainly there are some women who are using it for that role, but probably not enough. It's unfortunate that the Internet is being so grossly misused for this "business" stuff and this "life enchancement" stuff.
Sure, maybe Suzy Q can find out how to contact her congressman, where the local Red Cross is or what the gross national product of Madagascar is, but little Johnny can point and click his way to an abundance of naked flesh faster than you can say "grab your peripherals".
It really is a good thing that more ChickClickers as Jon so quaintly labeled then, are pouring onto the Net. Anything that improves the chances of Joe Six-Pac's IRC cybersex being with a real flesh and blood female is a good thing.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
Re:Chickclickers? (Score:3)
This is called product placement.
Notice that Jon Katz talked to the head of a site called ChickClick? I guess she wouldn't object to all women on the Web being called chickclickers, would she?
Kaa
Female gamers are the best... (Score:3)
Hmmm... of course so do most of the guys I run into in real life....
Heck, my Wife beats the hell out of me at Tekken and any Racing game you can name....
Anyhow, I'm straying from my point, my point is that it's a good thing that more females are getting onto the net, it means I'll have more victims to frag...>:)
Valis
Missing something? (Score:3)
Looking at these sort of sites will not give you a full perspective of women online. The women you find in female oriented sites are not representative of all women, they are representative of women who are go out of their way to do women-only things. However, they are the only people online who you can reliably identify as being women. Most women online go to the same places that men do, and do the same things that men do. I hang out on slashdot. I buy books from amazon. I (and probably most women) have no desire to visit any site called ChicksClicking.com or whatever it was.
In real life, the only place my gender makes any difference is in my love life. On the internet, it makes even less difference. Most of the time people can't even tell what gender I am. Is the fact that (gasp) half the world is female going to wildly change the online world? Nope. Hopefully the gender-bias of the available pron will change to accommodate us ;) Maybe we can buy bras online. Whoopee!
Is online gender segregation inevitable? For the short run, almost certainly. But a Web site that focused on technology along with social and cultural issues and which offered humane and rational chat forums might fuse the two cultures
What a lot of rot. Slashdot is a prime example of a site that focusses on technology and also (technology related) social issues, like whether women are on the web or not. We seem to have what are fairly close to humane and rational chat forums here. And guess what? Lots of us are women! We don't segregate ourselves. Thus you don't notice us. You just assume we are all men. And it _doesn't matter_.
It's true, but (Score:3)
This statement is true, but there were not many people at all on the internet (relative to today).
I also wonder about what portion of the demographic is made up of the retired community. It seems to me now that my grandma spends more time surfing the internet and writing email each day than I do.
Re:They May Use The Internet, But . . . (Score:3)
None - it is a well known fact that women look at 'erotica' instead.
Demographics of Slashdot (Score:3)
I use the web for getting computer tech info. I installed FreeBSD on my desktop computer at home and have used the internet to find help when something doesn't work properly. I also use to the net to get mp3's and song lyrics, and find quick info on any topic that pops into my head that I hadn't thought about before. I have generally avoided web sites focused on women because they tend to be heavy on romance, shopping, and beauty which I don't need more info about. Get way more than enough of that sort of stuff from TV.
The article points out that women have a voice on the net which I find to be true. In high school and even in the professional workplace environment, I find that my voice is drowned out. Many times when I start to speak, some male will start talking over me, and if I continue talking, he will start shouting. This subtly gives women the message that they have nothing worth saying. (And yes, I have spoken to my employer about this, but that has changed nothing.) The net is unable to shout over my voice. Many time, the net may not realize that I am a woman.
As for being called a "chick", it is am improvement over "girl". I guess. I don't respond to either, anyway.
Re:Women and online chatting (Score:3)
The joke about the furvor over using the term "chick" is that I even use that term sometimes.
Yes, I like to chat, I also like science, and gaming, and tech stuff. Why do we have to label people? If you labeled me, I guess I would be a geekette. LOL ^_^
Overall, my point is that gender roles and interests are more blurred than they used to be. Some girls like the same things that guys like. Big Whoop! Am I a freak or something?
Ok...that is my two cents. Ciao!
3 Kat ^_^
Re:Good. (Score:4)
Yeah, women and men are different because people are different. By no means do I object to more women online, but this overblown sense of importance gets aggravating quickly.
I must admit that I really fail to see the point of making such a distinction between men and women online. While there's certainly some benefit to having certain discussions with people of your own gender, these communal feminist (for lack of a better term) websites really don't help anything, in my opinion.
You talk about the problems of having just guys hanging out and how mailing lists would benefit from a more equal distribution, but that's not what this solves at all. You end up with women (and a good deal of them adolescents in formative years, mentally) who are coming online just to congregate with other women.
Why exactly can't people just get online and just find some interesting fora to browse? Must everything in our damn culture be about gender? Can't we just once treat women online just like anyone else?
You'll probably see a lot of comments about how many males (mostly teenagers) act immaturely towards females online, hitting on them and acting crudely and such, but women retreating to gender-centric fora doesn't contribute to equality any more than some ircluser whose first question is "age/gender/location?".
Re:Chickclickers? (Score:4)
It's only recently that differenciation has started with sites like handbag.com [handbag.com] etc catering primarily for women.
Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen, I assume (IMHO) the only reason these sites exist is that research has shown people are interested in suchthings and that the reason the research has been carried out is because of the growing commercialisation of the 'net as a whole.
In the "old" days there were a few of us and we just did our own thing and it didn't matter what you were (although real girls were always a exciting find on muds and such like). Now with advertising attempting to become more focussed and specifically targetted, it's becoming important to know who/what you are so THEY can hit you with the right adverts.
Personally I hate it all really and I think we should all go back to the good old days before the web and IRC when the most complex sites around ran gopher and you did your meeting on an lpmud.
Well perhaps not quite like that
Troc
$_ = "News for Nerds"; s/News/Arguments/; (Score:4)
Really like what? Not all of slashdot is his target audience, he appeals to a certain faction very very consistently with the party line. As for the remainder, he does his best to inspire dislike...because that fattens the powers that be too. Katz is like the "new world" liberal equivelent of Rush Limbaugh, a small percentage adore his every incoherant babble, the rest tune in because they are drawn to it by anger, the urge to fight, yell, or what have you.
Well first, I think Katz is absolutely the bottom of barrel insofar as "journalism" goes. Secondly, just because the majority of journalists today are worthless hacks, does not mean it is acceptable. Nor, for that matter, does it mean that Slashdot should foist Katz's crap on us.
I find this interesting in a way too, but I'm not suprised at all. If you look at the number of comments on Katz's articles, his "articles" easily draw the most comments of any other type of article or author when you average them. In other words, it can be reasonably assumed that Katz articles generate the more banner ad impressions (read: money) than any of the competing alternatives. Even though only a percentage of those comments praise him, the remainder of slashdot appears to be drawn to his stuff anyways (to flame, to argue, to play "devils advocate", etc.), and pack his pockets just as well (if not better) than his fanatics.
The fundamental problem with Katz boils down to an even more fundamental problem with Slashdot. That is, that while Slashdot claims to be "news for nerds", it is really "arguments for people who like to argue about stuff 'nerds' are interested in." Most of the 'content' on slashdot is arguments, there is little "usefull" content on slashdot that I would call usefull. By usefull, I mean, say, technical questions, like how to install/modify/hack a linux iopener. But these kinds of articles are rare, and they don't (or rather can't) draw a consistently large audience anywhere near Katz's numbers. Most everything on slashdot is of political nature. Since most people in this world are idiots (including slashdot), we have never ending useless arguments for the most part. Those who wish to cling to their absurd beliefs will do so generally, irregardless of the strength of the opposing arguments. To boil it all down, Katz is numero uno when it comes to drawing the arguments. He is slashdot's reason for existence personified.
My objection to this, of course, is that Katz is absolutely the most meaningless. The fact that he is even called a journalist is insulting. I suppose some part of me hopes I can get the "slashdot juniors" to wake up and smell the coffee. I want them to realize that they're being played. Perhaps then, slashdot will have a financial incentive for turning away Katz. Until that time, well I can argue too... =)
Good. (Score:4)
It is because women and men are different that I value their viewpoint and contributions. I have a feeling that even the average open source mailing list would have an entirely different feel if the gender ratio were closer to 50/50.
It is up to us long time male denizens to make everyone feel welcome in our little communities. I think it would make everything that much more interesting.
Then again, if you browse this thread at -1 I bet you'd find a different feeling entirely.
Hotnutz.com [hotnutz.com] - Funny
Chickclickers? (Score:4)
It's not enough to refer to every single person on Slashdot as a 'geek', as if we were all cut from the same cloth and were the exact same person, but now you're branching out. Now, you've taken women who use the Internet and lump them together as "Chickclickers". Not only is the name vaguely insulting, but you're once again assuming that you can simply lump a group of people together under a name and it'll all be good.
People aren't all the same, Jon. Drop the stereotyping, and maybe your points will be better heard.
Re:You go, girl! (Score:4)
Maybe this will correct some of the imbalance in net content.
Oh boy! Just what we need... Two million sites with pictures of naked guys.
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Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
Women and online chatting (Score:4)
I have a teenaged sister who will pretty much spend every last spare minute she has chatting online, and most of her friends do the same. It's definately not considered geeky any more among a fair number of the younger people here, anyways.. More of a replacement for the 3-way daisy chain phone calls with 15 different people on the line. (Although you'd think they could visit each other in person when they aren't at school or a party.)
What is more interesting to see is the older females in this group. The ones in the late 20's and early 30's who are not online for recipes, but to chat. I'm sure it's far from normal, but siblings of two different people who work for me are both addicted to online chatting. One ran (note past tense) a quiet craft shop, which now closed until further notice so that she can stay at home and chat. Could the woman not do this on a computer at work, even? The other one quit her retail job to do same.
I don't really have any opinion on this behavior, and I neither condemn nor condone it.
It's just... interesting.
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Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
Females Online (Score:4)
[warning: metaphor ahead; take with a grain of salt] It's kinda like the frontier towns. You have a largely male oriented society where you have shootings (flames), range wars (flame wars), bars (hostile chat rooms), brothels (you figure it out), and so on. Then people start bring there wife and kids in from back East and the wives decide to clean the place up and all of a sudden you have a modern city where the bars and brothels and ect. are pushed back to the fringe.
And lets be honest here. If we ever want the media and society in general to take us serious (beyond IPO's and cracker stories)then we need this kind of influence. Personally I welcome it. There will always be the rough parts of town if you want them. There will also be the people who lament the good ol' days but most will be happy and just ignore those.
So we are in a time of change and we need to decide what kind of net we want. Do we want a city that's quite and nothing ever really happens or do you want a city like Moscow where it's crazed, the police are on the take and the Mafia generally runs everything? I vote for something in the center of those two.
Exactly. (Score:4)
Sometime at the beginning of the year, my friend's roommate brought a girl back to their room who looked at my friend's computer (a work of art, caseless with all sorts of wires sticking out) and said, "eew, there's too much computer stuff in this room for girls." I was enraged and embarrased by her reaction, but it is a disgustingly common one.
I had spent hours installing Linux on my computer in good part to show that I could; to provide an example that girls and computers are not mutually exclusive.
Every time I need to do some programming work, though, I have to ask guys about it, because the other girls don't know; yesterday I had to show one of the compsci majors how to use TeX.
this is probably just confused rambling, but I've got to go to class now.
Holy shit!!! (Score:4)
A word for the wise: Open source is a trend, and arguably a movement. Women are NOT a trend.
Change is good... (Score:4)
Passed Over (Score:5)
- Fe-mailer
- Witch
- Script-gurlies
- Mamallama
Come on, Jon, there are so many girlie fields that you (and probably I) have left out. Why must you only focus in on the chickclickers? Please, do some more research next time. You might find a much more diversified group of stereotypes to choose from.Women use e-mail, and why shouldn't they have their own type of e-mail? Today, more and more women are fe-mailers, using one of the oldest of mediums to spam other women.
We can't forget the trolls, now can we, but troll is so male. Let's acknowledge all the women on Slashdot trying to piss off other women with their own title (and moderation status, Rob?).
With the rise of women online, more and more are turning to the annoying methods of their male counterparts in an effort to annoy the patriarchal IRC server admins.
These are girls who are new to the whole gaming experience. They're not very good, but all the other llamas tend to congregate towards them because they are women.
Katz Formulated (Score:5)
b) Periodically monitor their changing, but consistent, gripes and hopes. "society", "jocks", "corporations", "open source", etc...
c) Write flowerly articles fully agreeing with them. Where possible, offend all those who otherwise would not read articles.
d) Rinse, Repeat.
...If you notice everything Katz writes essentially fits this model.
The Rise of the ShitBullers (Score:5)
Opinionated persons between the ages of 1 and 100 are pouring online. They're at the heart of the rapidly growing movement of bullshitters onto the Net. Political correctness aside, men, women, sheep, and bullshitters are not alike, at least not online. They may have equal skills, but they choose to do very different things. Along with Slashdot, Open Source, Linux, Napster, JenniCam, the Hampster Dance, and Mahir, bullshitters may trigger another political, media and social transformation in cyberspace.
There are few reliable numbers on Net use by bullshitter, but I'm going to just guess and say that the majority of Web users -- possibly as high as 99% -- are now bullshiters. And younger bullshiters, especially those between 13 and 30 who are 3l33t, are the fastest growing single demographic online.
"Five years ago, there were not that many bullshitters on the Internet," Jon Katz, who wants to be a columnist when he grows up and a regular contributor to Slashdot.org, told #phuzzybunnies on IRC recently. "Today, we're on there and using it for everyday things, like flaming on about Micro$oft and surfing for porn."
"$ BiLlZ gAtEz SuX mY DiCk" Katz added repeatly for the next 10 minutes.
Contrary to any lingering stereotypes, they aren't the least bit wary either of groping technology or anything else that crosses their paths...
George Lee