I chose the first option and for the psychological space I entered a chatroom again – a different one this time. It was rather hard to find another chatroom that didn’t require making any accounts or personal information. For my “identity”, I decided to be an old(er) male, around the age of a grad school student (if anyone asked specifically). After “being” a girl in a chatroom last week, I was expecting a few differences in my chat experience this time around.
To appear not too desperate, suspicious or overtly creepy, I picked a random name for my username and hoped someone would see it amongst all the blatantly sexual names. However, it didn’t work. Not in the slightest. After a brief greeting in the main chat, which went mostly ignored, I just sat there for about five minutes while people “advertised” themselves and not a single person messaged me. Finally I picked someone with a “regular” name like mine, and went ahead with the usual “asl” asking that most males seem to do in chatrooms. What really surprised me was how quick she replied, and how immediately open she was towards me. Her age, location, along with her current mood spilled out easily. Trying not to sound too interested, I then asked her what was wrong. The next dozen lines that came out were either exaggerations, lies or the girl really did live in a soap opera. Dropping out of school, being pregnant, a cheating husband, horrible job, there was apparently nothing off limits. In fact, she rarely asked about me and just kept typing about her dreadful life.
I was pretty shocked at how open this person was, and felt rather sorry for her (if everything she said was true) but being a male, I couldn’t act really sympathetic without giving myself away. Instead, I resorted to swearing and bashing inappropriately at her cheating boyfriend, with an occasional “sorry to hear that” in between. It was hard to act all “macho” and tough – which was the type of persona I chose for my male character, since I couldn’t act like a sensitive guy without sounding like a girl – so I threw in a couple more bad words, improper grammar, spelling and little cues. To express myself nonverbally as a guy, I eradicated my usual heavy use of “lol”, expressions of laughing, and emoticons/faces, and kept my text plain. When she finally asked for little snippets about me, I gave the bare minimum details of myself, my appearance, my work – basically whatever she asked but nothing more.
For this experiment, I don’t feel like I extensively used any of the “possible selves” from Goffman and Jung. Most of the time I stifled my actual self, by the way I typed and the words I chose. There was no ideal self in the persona I created – which I regret but it was easier to act out a stereotype – although I was much bolder as a male, which wasn’t a bad quality. My true self was probably not present, unless it’s that I can pretend to be a different person online.
Comment 1:https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3186874989969223722&postID=1859906233502165287
Comment 2：https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3186874989969223722&postID=4523834848444763753
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I really liked your entry because it reminded me of the techniques I used to sound like a male. Unlike you, I tried to choose a name that would stand out in a chatroom and encourage a female to IM me. I noticed that often in chatrooms males have "hotguy" something or other, or "hotathlete" etc..the basic point being they include a word about how attractive they are. Thus I included “hot” also in my chatroom identity name. You are lucky that a girl started talking to you right away when you imed her. I tried four girls before one actually responded. Like you, I tried asking ASL and other questions of the sort because in my previous weeks experience that is how most boys started conversation. As you explained the methods you used to sound male I felt like we shared the same thought process. I too tried to keep my answers short and brief and not show too much emotion. I usually am a heavy emoticon user also, so it was tough to not use any. I think you described your methods of being a male very well, but I think you could have related it to what we learned in class a bit more. I know you wrote that it was hard to apply it to theories, but I think if you thought about it hard enough you could have made a few more connections.
Post a Comment