The Guy List: The CHIVE and its readers
The Chive is more than just a website for men. It's also a men's mirror with a huge number of female contributors. Tweet
Highlights
A website called The Chive may have started as a humor site, similar to the Onion...
...but it quickly morphed into "The World's Largest Photo Entertainment Website and App".
Why the folks at The CHIVE and their readers are, as a band of brothers (and sisters), one of us:
We think of The CHIVE as the exact opposite of The Lord of the Flies, which we summarized in the PM article “Boys will be boys, thank goodness” like this:
“Few books have had a more colossal impact on the way we think about ourselves than William Golding’s 1954 classic Lord of the Flies. The story of English schoolboys shipwrecked on a deserted island descending into mindless barbarism (recreated in the terrific 1963 movie) packed such a wallop that the term itself became shorthand for the notion that we exist behind the thinnest veneer of civilization, and left to our own devices, we would turn to anarchism and savagery. Golding was targeting especially the males of our species – but that’s because Mean Girls hadn’t yet appeared.”
TheCHIVE gives us a chance to prove that even with no adult supervision we will not just allow the world to descend into a state of chaos and violence.
But over at The CHIVE, guys get our chance to prove that with no adult supervision we will not just stand by and allow the world descend into a state of chaos and violence. Instead, we will naturally and peacefully organize around a few core things all guys can all agree on:
Humor. Hotness. Humanity.
Yeah, we know: “Humanity” sounds like bullshit when mixed with soft-porn (“Hotness”) and frat-boy jokes (“Humor”).
But it’s not bullshit.
For instance:
- Chive readers (aka Chivers) have formed “Chive Nation” chapters all over the US and meet regularly.
- The motto of these chapters is “Party with a Purpose” and here is a run-down of the kind of “purpose” or charity work the Chive community has done to date:
- Chive Charities focuses on veterans and first responders with medically-related needs, and others (including lots of children) who are suffering from rare medical conditions.
- 143 ADA vehicles have been provided to veterans, first responders and others suffering from rare medical conditions.
- 126 home renovations have been completed to enable the disabled to stay at home.
- 820 pieces of medical and therapy equipment have been provided.
- Chivers have donated over $6 million to Chive Charities and, according to Wikipedia, in some cases have donated over $100,000 within 24 hours for specific causes.
- You can help, too, by donating and sharing Chive Charities projects on social media.
Thanks to their emphasis on “Humanity,” The CHIVE has been fucking with the narrative about men — and women — since 2008.
You know the narrative we’re talking about:
“What kind of guy is going to spend a lot of time on a website that’s full of women submitting soft-porn images of themselves, along with lots of frat-boy humor?”
“And what kind of woman is going to want to hang out with a guy who spends that kind of time on a site that’s full of other women submitting soft-porn images of themselves, along with lots of frat-boy humor?”
It turns out that one thing the great success of the Chive Nation proves is when you mix “Humor” and “Hotness” with “Humanity,” you attract a lot of great guys and a lot of great women who want to be around those guys.
Also, what a big surprise: It also turns out men like being around women who can laugh and enjoy (instead of being offended by) frat-boy “Humor” and “Hotness” with them.
Let’s pay tribute to the founders of The CHIVE:
It seems appropriate that the ultimate “bro-bait” site would be started by brothers. John and Leo Resig launched The CHIVE in 2008 with the goal of creating “…a curated website for viral content that they could eventually sell to The Onion.”
Did they know the combination of humor, hotness and humanity would also enable them to build “The World’s Largest Photo Entertainment Website and App” and attract a community of 30 million users and more than 800 million content views every month?
And did they know that ultimately all that viral content would come from Chivers themselves, who submit over 5,000 pieces of content every day?
And finally, we must ask, did they ever dream that so many beautiful women would work so hard to submit so many beautiful photos of themselves?