You would think that the Internet is just overflowing with people eager to engage in discourse about life, music, or pretty much anything! However, God must have been playing a sick, practical joke on me because I barely made a single friend after visiting several chat rooms. Maybe my troubles spurred from my unique alias or nickname choice, which was EOTC—my friend’s band which stands for Envy On the Coast. I figured, why not advertise a little for them while schmooze with total strangers from around the world.
After numerous rejections, which were quite rude (supporting the chilly nature of the internet fueled by anonymity), I eventually encountered ugadawg. He—I never found out his real name—was a senior from the University of Georgia and turned out to be a very nice guy, at least that was the impression I formed. To be fair, he got major brownie points in the Big 5’s openness and warmness traits just by simply not blowing me off like many of the chat’s members. We spoke about how gorgeous the southern girls are at UGA, music (he asked what EOTC stood for), and what our respective majors are. He is a Biology major and used to play football for his school. For all I know though, he could be a 45 year old, 120 pound, level 30 dungeons and dragons master, but I digress. He also nonchalantly added that he neverrrr goes into these chat rooms and that tonight he was just very bored. Again, sounds suspicious, but I will give ugadawg the benefit of the doubt.
Ugadawg seemed, from what little cues I had, to be a nice person. Like we read in class, it was hard to get a sense of his level of neuroticism, extroversion, and agreeableness via CMC. I potentially fell victim to the hyper-personal model’s behavioral confirmation process because right off the bat, I believed that ugadawg was nice since he was one the few individuals to respond to me. This process’s notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy may have added to my positive feelings toward him regardless if they were warranted or not. Additionally, the channel in which the encounter took place, a chat room, and the disrespectful members present influenced the impression I made of ugadawg. I encountered a lot of rude people in the chat, hostile remarks, and some very interesting and lewd emoticons. My conversation with ugadawg was even interrupted numerous times by these individuals when they, for the sake of being irritating, sent large blank blocks or paragraphs in the chat room. This made it incredibly annoying and difficult to follow the chat room discussion. Due to this blatant contrast, ugadawg seemed like Mother Teresa.
My overall experience in the chat room can be explained by many of the theories. The impression I formed of ugadawg would agree with the SIP and hyper-personal theory. Contrary to the CFO perspective, I did not have a neutral or negative impression of ugadawg, but rather a very positive one. I felt that, given more time, I would be able to make a more accurate, positive impression of ugadawg, which is in accordance to SIP theory. Additionally, the hyper-personal model may have influenced my potentially exaggerated, positive impression of ugadawg because of the behavioral confirmation process and the contrast between him and the other members in the chat. The hyper-personal model may also explain the impressions formed concerning the rude individuals in the chat room. Due to the over attribution process, I judged all the members in chat solely on the few very rude things I witnessed them say. This caused me to put more weight on their malicious comments which potentially helped form my exaggerated, negative impressions of them.
4 comments:
Your blog title made me "lol" so I couldn't resist posting a comment.
You make excellent points about all three theories, and I think your post is a great example of how more than one theory can explain the same situation.
The SIP and hyperpersonal theory interrelate, because as the professor pointed out in class, the hyperpersonal theory "borrows" some ideas from a lot of other places, and one such idea regards that of time. I agree that given more time you probably would have gotten to know ugadawg better, but your experience goes beyond what the SIP would predict because you did have somewhat intense feelings about this stranger (he is caring, really likes his family etc.). The hyperpersonal theory is also effective in interpreting your intense feeilgs for all those rude chatters who could apparently smell your body odor. Even though your interactions with these peopel were short (but not so sweet), the hyperpersonal model better explains your intense, negative impressions rather than the SIP alone.
Great job! But make sure you wear some virtual deoderant next time.
Wallace mentions that email addresses, like screen names, can influence a preconception of an individual. ugadawg is a silly, banal, and dated name -- one that, if not created in jest, would be the product of a dubious intelligence. Seeing the name, I immediately decided ugadawg was an false alias (for a non-student), though I recognized, too, that it may be the creation of a socially dated individual (the word "dawg" seems to be humorous at best nowadays).
I am glad to see that you didn't have the initial bias I would have had; you were able to have a personal, positive conversation with ugadawg despite the possible falsities of his statements. Perhaps, as he said, he was just a bored student on a random message board. Good conversation!
That stinks about the other people in the chat room, but in a way it was beneficial for you because it gave you something to talk about and it just so happened to be something we went over in class. I agree with Diane in that the hyperpersonal model describes your anger towards the other people in that chatroom more so than SIP. At least this ugadawg chatted with you so obviously your virtual smell isn't too bad. Good post!
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