Assignment 3: Adventures of My Mind

The psychological space on the Internet that I decided to go into was the chat room. I used the same website as last time which is called www.userplane.com. The website’s program was fairly simple to use and because I had some experience and therefore I knew I would be able to do an identity switch by pretending to be older. Out of all the options listed for the identity switch, I don’t think I would have been able to form an impression of someone of the opposite sex because I don’t know exactly how the female mind works. This is a synchronous space since people were talking at real time, so the room for error when talking as a female to a guy was very large and very risky.

Since I have used this program before and failed due to an uninteresting screen name, I decided to start this assignment off properly by using my NET ID as my screen name since its more professional looking. The only adjustment though was that I changed the numbers to 85, so if they asked I would say that the significance was the year I was born making me 21. For today my name is “jas 85” and I am a 21 year old from New York City. In reality, I live right out side New York City, but more people would be interested in a city image then in a place that no one really knows that much about.

Now with a new image in mind I am ready to start chatting, and within 5 minutes of entering the room and just saying hi, I had 2 private messages. The first message was a woman in her 40’s thinking that I was older because the first thing she asked was a/s/l. However, the next IM was from a different screen name, “Belly_Dancer.” My first thought was she is going to probably be a very cute girl who can dance, two qualities I like a girl to have. She started the conversation off by asking me how I was and what I had planned for today; now my mind had to shift to a 21 year old’s mind who lives in New York City. I told her I was probably going to run in Central Park, meet up with my friends for lunch and hopefully figure out what we were going to do tonight. After I said that she said that New York City was one of her favorite cities and that she wants to go back again sometime. After I found this out I showed off my city knowledge of the night clubs, restaurants, sporting events, shows, and anything else that went on in the city. It was very cool to show off to her since she said she was from a small town in North Carolina and was only able to see a couple of attractions in the Big Apple.

We continued to talk about other things besides NYC like our hobbies and activities we like to do. Suddenly I realized that during the last assignment I never asked for the woman’s name so this time I asked and she told me her name was Tina. Names can really create an image; I knew a Tina from High School who shared many of the same interests as this woman so I started to think of Tina from home and just by switching some characteristics around, I formed my new Southern Tina, an amazingly good looking girl who is very fun and athletic. After about 10-15 minutes of talking, I returned to reality because she told me that she would want to come visit me sometime since I was very sociable and cool. Now my image of Tina went from being a perfectly nice girl to being weird and too forward. I also felt a little nervous since I’m not 21 and I don’t live in the city but outside of it. Due to these uncomfortable feelings, I decided it was time to end the conversation and head off to “central park” or in realty go grab some lunch and finish my analysis of what different techniques I used in the conversation.

After reading over my discussion, I came to the conclusion that I had used both the "self-presentational tactics" and also the "multiple selves" theories that we had read and discussed in class. I used the ideal self, ought self, and actual self model while I was talking with her because I was trying to be someone else; however that person I was pretending to be was me just 3 years older and also doing things I wish I was able to do. I expressed at times qualities that I strived to have, qualities I felt I should have, as well as qualities that I had at the present time. Despite the multiple selves theories I also used the self-presentational tactics. During my conversation with Tina, I gave a hidden self-description (I didn’t tell her straight out but it came out through the questions she asked). I gave an attitude expression which described certain attributes that I possessed and listed some fake social associations, and used Sets, Props, and lighting to a certain degree as well. Throughout my conversation, I didn’t consciously plan to use any of these theories listed above, but after reviewing the conversation, I realized I used all of them pretty extensively.