I’m not completely new to the chatrooms, so I knew more or less how to go about meeting people and starting chats with them. Nonetheless, I am always a bit caught off guard by the blunt way people communicate in the chatrooms, especially in a private message. The most one can get is a “hello” before the other party “cuts to the chase” and pops the question “ASL?” I can understand this brusqueness a bit better now, after that this course brought to my attention that people assess the ASL? question within a fraction of a second in FtF situations. This question sets the standards for our tone and choice of topics and words in the conversation. And I always find it a bit funny that people accept the answers to this question without much thought. The “truth bias” is a key part of the mentality here: even though they know you may be supplying them with a false answer, people want to trust you anyway. Also, there is basically no way for them to verify the answer, so they can only take you as what you say you are. Such “blind trust” is unimaginable in FtF conversations, but it is the norm in online chatrooms. It’s almost a part of an implicit agreement when you enter a chatroom.
Under these circumstances, I received a private message from Rocko, a guy in his 20s from Australia. The identity part is quite useless, since it can be entirely false. But I asked anyway, because it gives the other party a chance to select their self-presentation, to pick who they want to be in this conversation. My impression of him is that he’s a fairly extraverted person, adventurous, easy-going, who doesn’t necessarily give too much thought to his conscience. That seems a harsh thing to say about a person after the initial encounter, but that’s definitely the feeling I got from him.
Which puts this pretty neatly into the Hyperpersonal model. I definitely can’t imagine clearly how he would react in a large variety of situations, but I feel I have a pretty good mental picture of him in certain aspects. He probably doesn’t care much for academic performance in school, probably has quite a few friends but doesn’t stand out much in a large crowd. Some facets of personality are very clear (intensity) while others are completely missing (breadth).
And it’s interesting how his impression of me oscillated from one extreme to the other as our conversation progressed. “Wow, that’s wild. I’ve never known a girl who liked it” when we were talking about music and “Hmm, you sound prudish” when we started talking about school. FYI, I’ve never been called prudish in my life.
Overall, it was a nice experience because it showed me the theories actually work in some cases. I was quite surprised that our impressions played out the way like one of the models predicted. And that there’s actually psychology involved when you enter a chatroom.
3 comments:
Yang,
I found your experience to be particularly interesting because the person you chatted with seemed to blatantly comment about the information you shared with him, and openly make judgments based on a short interaction with you. I experienced the same type of situation in my chatroom encounter and found it rather strange. In a face-to-face situation, one would rarely say something like “Hmm, you sound prudish” to someone they had just met. I suspect that the anonymity of a chatroom space limits inhibitions – particularly when making judgments, or expressing opinions. I also think this contributes to our impression formation of others. Perhaps because the other person seems so blunt, our impressions of their personality become much stronger or intense – inline with the Hyperpersonal model. It certainly had that effect for me.
Like you, I also find it a little disconcerting when people in chat rooms asked me ASL before asking me some other questions becuase I feel right from that question on they are judging me. That is what Rocko did to you. He made judgements about you from the moment he started talking to you. These are judgements that one would normally, in face to face conversation keep to oneself. Even with CMC, one would normally keep judments about another person to him/herself; however, I think that by telling you that he thinks you are prudish, he made the conversation and the brief interaction you had more interesting. You were certainly able to make more judgements about him and maintain your social interaction with him using the hyperpersonal model. He was trying to make as few limitations as possible in trying to make a friend online and in doing so made your interaction that much more intense.
I like how you put the idea of asking ASL with almost nothing but a hello. It weirded me out, but ask you reminded, it is because it is one of the first things you notice in FtF. I don't feel as creeped out now about when they do that.
I noticed people making their impressions and telling me right away as well. That is probably part of the selective self presentation. People are willing to sacrifice some of their self-presentation control on CMC just so that they can cut the time that is involved in the developmental aspect from the Hyperpersonal model. This in turn, amplifies the intensity of the impression you get. So it all builds on itself, each element in the Hyperpersonal model building on itself.
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