The online space I choose for this assignment was a chat room via www.userplane.com, which is considered to be a synchronous space since people were talking at real time. This link was displayed on the AIM Today home page as the place to go chat with new people. Userplane was founded in 2001 by Michael Jones, Nate Thelen and Javier Hall and has a presence in more than 25 countries so I figured this my be a good link for this assignment.
To the website has two ways of logging in. One way is by being a guest with a username and the other way is by becoming a member. This option of logging in allows you to be anonymous each time you log in since people can have a different guest name each time. I did not feel like signing up since I do not visit the Chat Rooms on a regular basis so I first went under the screen name jaddius03. Apparently, my screen name did not attract much attention because I tried three different chat rooms and could not find any one to talk to. I decided to give it a rest since I just spent 20 minutes getting rejected by fellow chat roomers. After my break I decided to log back in under a different name of Cornell Man 11. This time I got lucky and someone had responded to my message of “If any one wants to talk IM me” and this is where my journey started.
My observation came from a 20-year-old woman who lives in Virginia and was bored so she decided to go in the chat room to use up her free time. The conversation started off like a normal conversation asking how I am doing and how my weekend was, however she wasted no time asking me how old I was (A). I told her I was 18 and she said that she was 20 so it was not a big deal. She then asked me where I was from, and because she doesn’t really know me and I don’t really know her for this purpose I said I was from the Syracuse area (L). After she told me where she was from she then wanted to confirm that I was a male since my screen name said Cornell MAN 11 (L). At this point, about 5 or so minutes into the conversation, I have finally realized that she just did the famous A/S/L on me but in a very sneaky way, so I asked her if she goes into chat rooms often and she replied that when ever she is bored she loves to come into chat rooms and just meet new people. So at this point I am saying to my self (wow she is a really open and warm girl) let me talk to her a little more and find out if this is just an act she is putting on. So we started to talk about Cornell, college, and sports.
About 45 minutes later, I realized that during this whole time I have never seen or met this woman in person before and I am having the type of conversation with her that I would have had with a friend. I realized after the conversation that since I couldn’t see whom I was speaking with, I couldn’t make any type of assumptions about her based on our conversation. Since I did not have any information about her physical appearance, attitudes and mannerisms that you usually encounter when you meet someone face-to-face, I can only base my assumptions about her based on the text exchange with her. If this were a person that I selected randomly out of a crowd, I probably would have looked at the person and determined before hand what I might talk to her about. This example links to the hyper-personal model. At the end of the chat, my point of view toward this woman was intriguing from many perspectives but what was most amazing was that I didn’t even know her name! I found this interesting because in face-to-face conversations, when you first meet someone, there is usually an exchange of names.
My conclusion about her was that she is an outgoing and confident person, who was able to answer and comment on any question that arose during the conversation. I found speaking with her very pleasant and easy. The impression I formed of her was, I believe, far stronger than any type of impression that I would have formed with someone that I had just met in-person and talked to for 45 minutes. This experience has helped me to further my understanding of the power of social media. I realize that social media serves an entirely different need for its users than face-to-face conversations.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I found the first part of your experience interesting – about how your screen name did not attract many people. I also had a similar issue, but rather than being about the screen name, it was about the chat rooms that I entered. I have not had much previous experience with chat rooms and I googled “chat rooms” and tried out a few. In some, people would notice right when I entered and would immediately say hi or request a private conversation. While in other chat rooms, I would enter, observe, wait and finally type “hi” and only get back a few responses – people would just continue on with whatever they were talking about. In some of these chat rooms, the people seemed to really know each other, asking where “Mike” was or if anyone knew how “Samantha” was feeling. I felt as though I was invading their privacy by entering and they for the most part ignored me. I think that a large part of this is may be a result of online deception. People may be more hesitant to talk to others because of this easy ability to deceive and if they have established a rapport with others and a consistency in the chat room, they may be less likely to include others or talk to random people.
I found your post very interesting because it sometimes amazes me how open some people are when they are talking to strangers online. You've never met this person and don't even know her name yet you had a conversation with her like you have known her for quite sometime. You talked about your weekends, your schools, and things that you are interested in. About the screen name issue, did you notice if she was online before you changed screen names? It's interesting to see how people choose who to talk to based on their screen names alone; in no way was your name even associated with your screen name. The screen name may also have something to do with the openness that she felt with you and why you were so friendly. She may have not been so friendly had she started talking to you on the other screen name. A name can put an image of a person in your head; you, to her, were Cornell Man, a nice guy to talk to.
Post a Comment