#3--My Attempt at Being Older, Wiser, Wittier etc.

I decided for this assignment that I wanted to be who I thought I would be at age 37 if my mom had her way: a high school teacher. My mom's whole side of the family is high school teachers: my mom, her sisters, her mom and dad, her cousins, her mom's sister, and her dad's brothers. It was a perfect answer for me to give, especially since I know what kind of work being a high school teacher entails, having graduated recently from high school.

I entered a synchronous chatroom at chat-avenue.com, under the chatroom category of "Adult Chat". I hoped my experience would contain grown-up, mature, and non-lewd discourse--a conversation in which I would be able to get to know my target well and hopefully see how well my impressions of a 37 year old would go by.

When I entered the chatroom, it was cluttered by the same sexually explicit comments, so I wrote "Is anyone 30 +?" so I wouldn't waste my time with people who would stop chatting with me once they knew my fake "a/s/l". (From previous experience earlier in the night, I found out the 30+ women category is largly discriminated against in internet chat.) Soon enough, JerseyGuy35 private messaged me and through conversing with him, I found what seemed to be a very polite and nice man. His name was Kevin. He was 35, from New Jersey, and self-proclaimed "shy" man.

In order to keep up the facade to Kevin, I asked him first about his job. This is what I assumed adults did. As students, we want to know what university and what major a person is in, and the older equivalent would be a job. When Kevin told me about his job as a UPS guy, I told him witty and completely fake teaching stories. I made up how I had one troublemaker named Joey who cheated during every test, and how I had dated the P.E teacher. Then, when he asked what I had done that afternoon, I said I went with some of the other teachers to a restaurant and ordered martinis, and then went home to grade papers. This is what I assumed people would think of teachers of doing on a stressful Monday night (although real-life experience with my family was completely different).

In general, I most clearly expressed my "ought self." I thought that being older would have qualities most closely related with my ought self--older people are more kind, compassionate, mature and moral. In turn, I was extra kind to Kevin. I also correlated being professional with being older, so I was sure to not put many exclamation points after sentences. I tried not to mispell many words, and made an effort to use correct grammer and punctuations. I even corrected Kevin's grammer when we used "your" incorrectly. I didn't use many emoticons, and made sure to sound a little distant and unsure of how how MSN messanger worked when asked if I had a MSN screenname. I also managed my impressions by telling Kevin actual truths about myself so I wouldn't slip up and get confused when he questioned me on a detail. For instance, I told Kevin that I was originally from Long Island (which I am) but I now live and teach in Western Upstate New York.

By the time our almost hour-long conversation had ended, I could not manage my impressions any longer. Poor Kevin was telling me sob stories about his loneliness at age 35, and how he wished he could talk to women, and how he felt so weak at his job at UPS delivering packages when he weighed only 130 pounds. I felt guilty at decieving him, and told him that I really was 20, and his allusions to a romantic relationship just weren't going to happen. He seemed genuinely hurt, saying "wow....wow...thats mean." Me, in my "actual self" tried to dispense to him words of wisdom that would give him the courage to talk to women. I truly did pity the man, and wished he would have more self confidence.

Since our chat conversation was one-on-one, it was easier to manage my impression. In a chatroom with many users, I might have been subjected to more scrutiny and more detailed questions that might have spiraled me deeper and deeper into more lies. The ideal self, the self that contains qualities we wish we had is easier to convey in this one-on-one settings for this reason. In this experience I also tried to use the "ought self" and I found it easier to act this way in this online space. Many people in chatrooms seemed pre-occupied with either fighting or exchanging pictures, so it was easy to act moral and posess values that many others weren't expressing at the time, especially since I already was "older" than almost everyone in the chatroom. The "ought self" I expressed contained many attributes of the "ideal self"--for instance I felt that since I was older, I should be more knowledgable, witty, and experienced. However, since the chat was pretty fast paced and near synchronous, many "actual self" qualities masked behind the fabrications I told. It was hard to keep up the facade of being 37 years old when a rapid response was demanded of me. However, Kevin didn't seem to notice or question the details I told him before revealing my actual self.