One of the best ways to meet someone online is entering a chat room due to its synchronous forum style that allows for a conversation in “real time”. Being extremely unfamiliar with the world of chat rooms (I’ve had no previous experience in them), I searched “chat room” on Google and clicked on the first one listed. I was brought to Para Chat, a website which simply advertised to join a free chat. The website prompted me to give a user name and then brought me into the Lobby Room, which was the main message board. My user name, Lucinda (a friend and I always use that name for things) was a bit reserved in contrast to others, ranging from incest_sex_male to a-wow-date, which were more directly to the point.
The Lobby Room itself was extremely overwhelming, as I’ve never seen so many disorganized postings rapidly rush out onto on a message board. I didn’t even have an opportunity to attempt to jump into one of the myriad conversations because moments after I entered the Lobby Room, three windows immediately popped up with people inviting me for personal chats. I declined speaking to Horny4u and Male_Alone because their user names alone made me a bit uneasy.
Andreww seemed harmless enough and I began talking to him. Right away he described how he looked and asked me to do the same. I was a bit taken aback that he immediately sought to find out my appearance before anything else, but as this was part of the experience, I told him some of my physical attributes. We chatted for a little and all of a sudden, he made a comment that made it very apparent as to which direction he wanted to take the conversation. When I didn’t respond to his liking, he realized this was not going to be his lucky night with cyber-sex and abruptly ended the conversation.
My impression of Andreww was formulated based on the hyperpersonal model. Within two minutes of chatting with him, I not only conjured up an image of what he looked like, but I felt like I could guess certain aspects of his personality. My image of Andreww was created due to Selective Self Presentation, as he kept on emphasizing certain physical characteristics. As we continued conversing, I realized that I used the Over-attribution Process, as I stereotyped him as a very confident, popular person due to his apparent extroverted personality and status as a jock. He had a very smooth segue into the more lewd part of the chat which implied that he had not only done this before, but created the assumption that he had a way with the ladies. Since he hastily ended the chat, my opinion of him wasn’t too positive, but perhaps if we continued talking, he might have dispelled some of my impressions about him.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Chatting online using mIRC (assignment 2)
In order to complete the second assignment, I decided to join a chat room, because I thought it would be a guaranteed way of meeting someone randomly and being able to interact with them. I chose mIRC because I had no idea where to go to find a chat room, and I knew about this program. When I first joined, all of the default channels seemed to have little activity, so I decided to look for a random channel on a subject I would know well. I eventually entered the channel #wow, which I thought would mean "World of Warcraft," but it actually stood for "Women of Warcraft." Nevertheless, it seemed to have some activity, and the discussion was essentially about the game, so I decided to stay. It made for an interesting experience, but also one that I have encountered before when talking to online gamers.
My experience in the chat room was quite uneventful at first. I was talking to someone who had just come back to playing Warcraft after having taken a 6 month break. After some discussion, I had mentioned that I had just recently quit playing the game (which is actually true), which then incited the wrath of someone with a little too much time on his hands. For the sake of his privacy, I won't use his online nickname. As much as I wanted to avoid an online brawl, I decided to engage this individual. After a moderately long period of unfriendly interaction, I felt as though I had seen enough. I think that the beginning of the chat was the most representative of this individual's behavior, so I have included a screen-shot of the beginning of our chat.
This individual was rude, cold, and downright nasty. I would honestly have to say he was slightly neurotic and very extraverted, but far from being agreeable or conscientious. I cannot comment on his openness, because our conversation did not address the necessary topics. We didn't really try to find out much about each other with interpersonal probes: our conversation was more of a "flame war" than anything.
At first, I wanted to say that my experience matched the over-attribution processes of the Hyperpersonal model, but then I realized something: after talking to this individual, I had no clue to what he was really like. My first reaction to his kind of communication is to say he is a hostile person, but to be honest, I have seen his behavior online from many people who are agreeable in real life, including myself (I am almost always quite friendly, but I have said some nasty things online). He could have been angry at something else (perhaps losing in Warcraft) and just displaced his frustration on me. By the way he talked I could tell he was male, but I couldn't decipher much beyond that. Therefore, I would say my experience matched the CFO perspective.
My experience in the chat room was quite uneventful at first. I was talking to someone who had just come back to playing Warcraft after having taken a 6 month break. After some discussion, I had mentioned that I had just recently quit playing the game (which is actually true), which then incited the wrath of someone with a little too much time on his hands. For the sake of his privacy, I won't use his online nickname. As much as I wanted to avoid an online brawl, I decided to engage this individual. After a moderately long period of unfriendly interaction, I felt as though I had seen enough. I think that the beginning of the chat was the most representative of this individual's behavior, so I have included a screen-shot of the beginning of our chat.
This individual was rude, cold, and downright nasty. I would honestly have to say he was slightly neurotic and very extraverted, but far from being agreeable or conscientious. I cannot comment on his openness, because our conversation did not address the necessary topics. We didn't really try to find out much about each other with interpersonal probes: our conversation was more of a "flame war" than anything.
At first, I wanted to say that my experience matched the over-attribution processes of the Hyperpersonal model, but then I realized something: after talking to this individual, I had no clue to what he was really like. My first reaction to his kind of communication is to say he is a hostile person, but to be honest, I have seen his behavior online from many people who are agreeable in real life, including myself (I am almost always quite friendly, but I have said some nasty things online). He could have been angry at something else (perhaps losing in Warcraft) and just displaced his frustration on me. By the way he talked I could tell he was male, but I couldn't decipher much beyond that. Therefore, I would say my experience matched the CFO perspective.
Entering My First Online Chat Room
To complete assignment #2, I entered my first ever chat room. I’ve always used AIM or email to contact my friends because I’ve never been entirely keen on the idea of chatting with strangers over the internet. In the first minute of entering a site called “ParaChat”, I found cyber bullying, people asking for mothers, people requesting sluts, and people asking for certain nationalities. Needless to say, I already knew it would be quite the new experience.
After observing these quick, short conversations, I took up a chat with a person with the username “backstreet_boy”. To be honest, the username only caught my eye because it made me laugh and think of middle school. While briefly talk with me, this person would regularly stop to heckle other users in the chat room (i.e. “what kind of username is ‘starpeh’? that sux its so stupid”). Although this user didn’t outright tell me whether he or she were male or female, the more I watched and conversed, the more I felt that backstreet_boy was indeed a male. He would continuously talk about sports and how he worked out a lot. When he asked me “age/sex/location”, I lied, and happily explained I was a 22 year old female who lived in
I soon left the chat, remembering only how cocky and rude backstreet_boy came off as. Perhaps this was because of the anonymity the internet chat room offered – no one knew who this person really was, and therefore, he could act as he pleased because the impressions other people formed of him didn’t matter in or apply to his real life. His tone of voice and facial expressions were also not observed, resulting in a huge loss of cues usually used by people to judge new acquaintances. Obviously, my first impression was definitely not positive. Perhaps this was because I didn’t have a lot of information to base my impression around, so consequently I over-exaggerated anything he had to say (explained by the “Over-attribution process” under the Hyperpersonal Model).
Although entering the chat room was an interesting experience, I don’t think I will make it a regular habit. It’s not surprising that I over-exaggerated the little he had to say, I’m sure that if being in a chat room was part of my everyday life I would constantly get the wrong impression of people. The internet opens hundreds of new doors to people, allowing anyone to express themselves as they please. Chat rooms are the prime example of how people take full advantage of the anonymity the internet offers. I would definitely need more time to converse with this person in order to acquire a solid impression (as the “Developmental Aspect” under the Hyperpersonal Model explains).
Chat rooms- Assignment #2
After reading over this assignment I decided that the easiest way to observe an online target was by entering a chat room. Since I have never used chat rooms before, I did a search on chat rooms and decided on a site called chatfamily.com. Here there were several different types of chat rooms to choose from, including adult chat, teen chat, youth chat and gays and lesbians chat. I thought it might be interesting to enter a youth chat room, ages 13 to 17, and see if I could tell if the chatters were actually children.
In the chat room people were talking in real time, therefore it was a synchronous space. I entered the chat room feeling very skeptical and suspicious of who I would chat with inside. I had a preformed notion that I would run into pedophiles looking to chat with kids or something unusual along those lines. Scrolling through the conversation I looked for any obvious clues of an adult being present in the chat. I saw “does anyone like puppies” and decided that was an obvious clue. I answered back that I did indeed like puppies and was invited by the chatter into a private chat.
The person I chatted with said that he was 14 years old and lived in New York State. He was very open about his hobbies and school but never mentioned what he looked like, nor did I ask. We talked about simple things like movies and TV and noting sexual was ever brought up. This made me believe that he was in fact a fourteen year old and not some old creepy man trying to harass children.
The target was very open and agreeable throughout the chat. He answered the questions I asked him without any hesitation and for the most part his answers seemed to be honest. He seemed extravert because he was eager to go into a private chat with me and have a real conversation. I found myself using the hyper-personal theory when forming my impressions of the target. Through the short conversation we had, his straightforward questions and answers made me believe that he was really just in the chat room to talk, with no alternate motives. Maybe if I had talked for longer, or talked to him again, I would discover that he was indeed not being honest, but as of now I could not conclude anything of the sort.
In the chat room people were talking in real time, therefore it was a synchronous space. I entered the chat room feeling very skeptical and suspicious of who I would chat with inside. I had a preformed notion that I would run into pedophiles looking to chat with kids or something unusual along those lines. Scrolling through the conversation I looked for any obvious clues of an adult being present in the chat. I saw “does anyone like puppies” and decided that was an obvious clue. I answered back that I did indeed like puppies and was invited by the chatter into a private chat.
The person I chatted with said that he was 14 years old and lived in New York State. He was very open about his hobbies and school but never mentioned what he looked like, nor did I ask. We talked about simple things like movies and TV and noting sexual was ever brought up. This made me believe that he was in fact a fourteen year old and not some old creepy man trying to harass children.
The target was very open and agreeable throughout the chat. He answered the questions I asked him without any hesitation and for the most part his answers seemed to be honest. He seemed extravert because he was eager to go into a private chat with me and have a real conversation. I found myself using the hyper-personal theory when forming my impressions of the target. Through the short conversation we had, his straightforward questions and answers made me believe that he was really just in the chat room to talk, with no alternate motives. Maybe if I had talked for longer, or talked to him again, I would discover that he was indeed not being honest, but as of now I could not conclude anything of the sort.
Online Chat Room
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.
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.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Impression Forming
The psychological space on the internet that I chose to join was an online chat room. The chat room is a synchronous space, which means the people communicating in the chat room were talking in real time. The chat room is also very anonymous, in other words I do not really know who I am talking to at any given moment, so everything said must be studied with a bit of skepticism. The person in the chat that I observed described himself to be a 15 year old white basketball player. Throughout the chat he seemed to be quite an extrovert. He talked a lot about his physical characteristics and he even talked about girls and what he is looking for in the opposite sex. He made many surprising and lewd comments, which led me to believe he is open, and not afraid to say what is on his mind. The person did not seem to be particularly warm; instead he portrayed himself to be very arrogant and self-centered. Furthermore, he only wanted to chat with people in the room that sent him pictures of themselves. He did this so he could make sure that the people he chatted with were attractive and worthwhile to flirt with. The observed target did not display any cues that lead me to believe that he was neurotic nor conscientiousness. He continuously spelled words wrong, and used unfamiliar abbreviations and acronyms.
My impression of the person I observed in the chat was most in line with the hyper-personal theory. I viewed the subject to be a very stereotypical high school basketball player. Although he did not give a wide range of cues, the cues he did reveal were exaggerated in my mind because I focused more intently on them. The lack of cues actually caused me to focus on the cues that were given, therefore allowing for a stereotypical or exaggerated impression to be formed. For example, at one point in the conversation he said he wanted to chat with any blondes in the room. This statement made me think that he only liked blondes, and would not be interested in girls with any other hair color. However this is not necessarily the case. He could have simply been in the “mood” to talk to a blonde that day. He also talked a lot about his physical characteristics which caused me to think that he was obsessed with outward appearances only. This could simply be an affect of the selective self presentation theory. He might be much more than a “good-looking basketball player”, but that is all he chose to reveal in the specific conversation in this chat room. Maybe he was not comfortable revealing anything else, or maybe he indeed is just self- absorbed.
I felt it was very easy to form an impression of the observed target. He didn’t hold anything back, and revealed cues that made it very easy to stereotype him. The hyper-personal theory explains my observations of this person very well and also gave me insight into why I made the impression I did.
My impression of the person I observed in the chat was most in line with the hyper-personal theory. I viewed the subject to be a very stereotypical high school basketball player. Although he did not give a wide range of cues, the cues he did reveal were exaggerated in my mind because I focused more intently on them. The lack of cues actually caused me to focus on the cues that were given, therefore allowing for a stereotypical or exaggerated impression to be formed. For example, at one point in the conversation he said he wanted to chat with any blondes in the room. This statement made me think that he only liked blondes, and would not be interested in girls with any other hair color. However this is not necessarily the case. He could have simply been in the “mood” to talk to a blonde that day. He also talked a lot about his physical characteristics which caused me to think that he was obsessed with outward appearances only. This could simply be an affect of the selective self presentation theory. He might be much more than a “good-looking basketball player”, but that is all he chose to reveal in the specific conversation in this chat room. Maybe he was not comfortable revealing anything else, or maybe he indeed is just self- absorbed.
I felt it was very easy to form an impression of the observed target. He didn’t hold anything back, and revealed cues that made it very easy to stereotype him. The hyper-personal theory explains my observations of this person very well and also gave me insight into why I made the impression I did.
In order to complete this assignment, I decided to enter a chat room for the first time. As a novice chatter, I was unsure where to begin. I Googled the phrase “chat rooms” and stumbled upon www.chat-avenue.com. It was the first site I could find that did not require me to register, and so I entered “college chat” under the alias “dancer33”. There were about forty other users in the room and keeping track of conversations was nearly impossible. Instead of joining the group discussion, I scanned the list of users for a normal sounding name – or at least something not sexually explicit – and thus messaged “Eric”. Shortly after we began chatting, I received about five or six private invitations from other users. I accepted all of them, but all were immediately revoked when the inviter realized I wasn’t interested in cyber-sex.
Eric, like everyone I interacted with in the chat room, asked me my age, sex, and location first. He is 25, male, and lives in New York City where he attends a CUNY school. He wasn’t very conversational at first, so I asked him questions and prompted answers by offering bits of information about myself too. He admitted he didn’t like to talk about himself very much. As a result, much of our conversation was a vie for control through questioning. The more questions I asked him in an attempt to form an impression, the more questions he asked me in an attempt to turn the tables back around. Without realizing it, I was already forming a distinct impression of Eric’s character. He seemed apprehensive or distrusting, yet eager to learn about me before passing judgment. From this and other aspects of our interaction, I determined that he was probably a frequent user of chat rooms and the following about his personality:
Neuroticism: Eric did not seem neurotic at all, though I do not really know enough to say for certain.
Extraversion: I consider Eric to be an extravert because he was looking to chat, full of questions, willing to comment on the things I said, and secure in the things he said.
Openness: Despite his willingness to learn about me, Eric seemed pretty closed down when it came to revealing information about himself – particularly at first.
Agreeableness: After chatting for almost an hour, I found Eric to be very agreeable. In fact, I found myself really enjoying our conversation despite the fact that I’d only known him for such a short time (and only through CMC).
Conscientiousness: Eric seemed very cautious and slightly serious. I got the definite impression that he was quite conscientious.
My experience chatting with Eric matched the Hyperpersonal model extremely well. Although I had very little to base them on, my impressions were in fact extreme and consistent with over-attribution. His personality seemed a lot stronger than I expected to observe via computer mediated communication, and by the end of the conversation I really liked Eric. Additionally, we were able to focus our conversation on only topics we felt compelled to discuss by asking specific questions. In this sense, we were both practicing selective self-presentation and re-allocation of cognitive resources. Lastly, I found myself reaffirming his remarks about me, just as the model predicts through the behavior confirmation process. When he told me I was nice, for example, I attempted to make my comments and questions even nicer. Of course it was only after our conversation was completed that I realized how much of my impression formation experience could be predicted by the Hyperpersonal model. On the other hand, I am almost certain that my impression would mold and change significantly over time if I continued to chat with Eric.
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