big_mike and my strange chatting experience

I entered an online chat room, a synchronous psychological space on September 3rd, 2007. It was quite a different experience than I had ever been used to. The chat was near synchronous, as there was minimal time lag, there was little persistence (words were evanescent, and there was little record of past conversations), and a person could be completely anonymous I googled “chat” and logged in to the first chat room website I found. It was a chat room called “College Chat”, which sounded relevant enough for me to find a “target” to chat with that I would have something in common with. I used my first name as a nickname and within seconds of entering the room, I found 7 or 8 chat users private messaging me asking for “asl” or “age, sex and location”. It became apparent after a few minutes that the only person willing to have conversation besides those who only wished to exchange pictures or talk by webcam was a user by the name of big_mike, a college student in Michigan.
big_mike, presumably male, is a Caucasian 19 year old sophomore from Grand Valley State in Michigan. He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and liked swimming, listening to music and meeting new people. He is not religiously affiliated, but was baptized and does not identify with any particular political party or ideology. He expressed his interest in taking up crew at his university due to his 6’4” height (and the reason for his nickname).
I perceived big_mike as being warm from the outset since he was one of the first to private message me “hey” and then “i [sic] like your name.” He seemed very good- natured even as I questioned his motives of him being in the chatroom, saying “i [sic] just like to meet new people.” In terms of the Big 5 personality traits, I didn’t know much about his neuroticism by talking to him, but I assumed he must be very neurotic. The over-attribution process under the Hyperpersonal Model, lead me to believe that the lack of data (we never talked about any negative feelings or emotions) didn’t convince me he wasn’t neurotic. I over-attributed neuroticism to encompass all the people in the college chat room. Since the people in the room wanted to meet new people, and they were in college, I was confused on why they needed to talk to random people on the internet when they could step outside their room and meet many college students like themselves. This negative view was a stereotype of all the chatters who I assumed to be extremely neurotic. Since there were less cues (none of us talked about anything too deep into our personalities), this lead me to make more judgments and therefore more extreme stereotypes about the people in the room I was talking to, especially big_mike. The over-attribution theory explained many intense opinions I formed about big_mike, such as extraversion (probably not, in real life since he seemed to be in the CMC environment in order to talk and “meet new people”), and openness (if he was in the chat room environment where users were eager to exchange information about themselves, he must be pretty open). I thought he was also moderately agreeable since he had no big opinions on religion or politics, and merely liked to watch sports and listen to music. As for conscientiousness, I didn’t have enough information to make a decision on that aspect of his personality. However, when I was hesitant to disclose information about myself, he said “its okay i don’t like telling people my information too sometimes.”
In my opinion, the Hyperpersonal model, especially the over-attribution process contributed more to my attitude formation than the CFO Perspective or the SIP process. Although I did have some neutral, underdeveloped impressions of big_mike, who I perceived to be bland, introverted, neurotic, unintelligent and socially inept, the over-attribution process contributed more to this probably exaggeration of big_mike. Our conversation failed to convince me otherwise, that like many other chatters in the college chatroom, his need to “meet new people” through a CMC environment confirmed certain intense traits about his personality.
I seriosuly question the motives of those who go to the internet to talk to random people while they are at college, an environment where meeting new people involves walking out the door.