Students mock woke identity survey by submitting sarcastic responses — Oregon State University researchers blame 'rise of online fascism'

A team of researchers at Oregon State University blamed the "rise of online fascism" for students' sarcastic and mocking responses to their woke identity survey, according to a June paper published in the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies.

The researchers' paper, "Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy: Interpreting Malicious Responses to an Online Questionnaire about Transgender Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science Student Experiences," accused the students of "tamper[ing] with the study outcomes and/or harass[ing] the researchers" by submitting responses that allegedly included "slurs, hate speech, or direct targeting of the research team."

"The responses contained homophobic, transphobic, ableist, anti-Black, antisemitic, and anti-Indigenous content. Online memes associated with white nationalist and fascist movements were present throughout the data, alongside memes and content referencing gaming and 'nerd' culture," the paper stated.

Researchers aimed to "better understand how these responses relate to engineering culture by framing them within larger social contexts—namely, the rise of online fascism."

According to the research team, 50 of the 349 surveyed students provided "malicious responses."

When asked about their gender, 24% of respondents claimed to identify as "a helicopter or aircraft," including an "Apache Attack Helicopter," "pansexual attack helicopter," and an "F-16 Fighter Jet." Other students replied, "There are only two genders," "a human being," and "I'm just here for the gift card."

Respondents were then asked about their "racial/ethnic identities."

One student replied, "What else do you want to know? What I ate for breakfast? This question is unnecessary."

"Come on man, these questions are stupid," another student wrote.

Students were also instructed to list any disabilities.

"Like all transgenders, my disability is the inability to come to terms with biological reality. Madness, essentially," one student replied.

Another respondent stated, "My country is run by communists."

Researchers blamed the students' sarcastic responses on the "larger trends of online radicalization into white supremacist and fascist conspiracy movements."

The team of researchers claimed that the students' answers negatively impacted their mental health.

"The malicious words and slurs directed towards our research team had a profound impact on morale and mental health, particularly for one of our graduate student researchers, who was the primary data analyst. As a transgender woman who was already in therapy for anxiety and depression regarding online anti-trans rhetoric, managing the study's data collection caused significant personal distress, and time had to be taken off the project to heal from traumatic harm," they stated.

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