This evening I ventured into a place I never thought I would encounter- an online chat room. I found that although this space is supposedly, “synchronus” or “nearly synchronus” often bad internet connections and people continually entering and leaving the chat room made the communication process conversation span over several minutes. Conversely, if the conversation has been conducted in real time, the things said would have only taken a few minutes.
Alas, I’m getting too technical already, let me back up. So, after finally finding a chat room to enter (there were only a few English ones to select), I happened upon a chat room called “Dreams.” Already I had preconceived notions about the “chatters.” I imagined the members of the chat room as middle-aged men looking for some fodder for their sexual fantasies. I pictured perverts with plenty of time on their hands, willing to prey on sexually curious teenage girls. Chat room reputations are comparable to houses of ill repute in my opinion. Everyone knows they’re there, but no one wants to talk about them or admit that they’ve explored those “dirty” areas of society.
I began chatting with Thomas07 and drew the opinion that he was not very smart and an unimaginative person. He continually left out essential words from sentences and could not articulate what he was feeling (especially in regards to dreams he had experienced). He over-used “LOL” giving me the impression that he wasn’t very interesting and had no backup conversation topics or substance to his character. Thomas told me that he was a freshman at a community college in
Around this time, Sunflower820 entered the room. She claimed to have “taken my chat room virginity,” and then began talking about being a vegetarian. Sunflower also claimed to be a bit of a “hippy.” Immediately, I pictured an
Already, you realize that I immediately determined the sex of my subjects strictly based on their screen names, although they never came out and said their gender.
I had a very one-sided view of both of my subjects, since I had only encountered them in this one space, at this one given moment in time. I was unable to observe the target in a variety of situations and was only exposed to the information they disclosed to me in this close format. I had no pictures or non-verbal cues to rely on, strictly text and the limited connotations one can get from text and symbols. Given the limited time and setting, I did receive an impoverished impression of the chatters.
I concur with the Social Info Processing Theory, that with time, I could have reduced unfamiliarity and increased the positive image of the strangers. However, I believe that my experience in this online space was more relevant to the Hyperpersonal Model. With my limited information I received from Thomas and Sunflower, I deduced exaggerated impersonations. Selective self presentation would also be a strong aspect of this situation, since Thomas and Sunflower were choosing the way to present themselves to myself and the rest of the chatters.
Finally, I concluded that I subconsciously formed very exaggerated dimensions of Thomas and Sunflower based on singular impressions.
I was also wondering what the significance of the online space or medium is in forming impressions of individuals in online communication- obviously we will encounter more of this in the future lectures…J
4 comments:
I really like your analogy between chatrooms and houses of ill repute; my experience when I first started trying to find a chatroom to complete this assignment definitely confirmed it. I think it’s really interesting at how much attribution you put into analyzing the username of the person you were chatting with, somehow I looked over this a bit when I started to form my impression of the person I had met.
I also think that it’s possible that the behavioral confirmation aspect of the hyperpersonal model may have been present in your conversation with Thomas07. You began to form your impression of him very quickly and this probably affected the way that you spoke with him throughout the rest of your conversation. You mentioned that he began to overuse LOL, this may be due to the fact that you were giving him feedback that he was acting in a certain way and then he continued to fulfill that impression that he had made upon you. I think it’s really interesting.
I find it extremely interesting that such a large class all went out into the vast cyber world and yet had such similar experiences. Some of the common themes of those people who visited chat rooms were; all chat rooms have a negative connotation at first instinct, the person with whom I am speaking could be some type of sexual predator, and the immediate question of “ASL.” Of these themes and some of the other common themes, I wonder if they are merely norms of the chat room world (for example, is it a norm and expected to ask ASL), or, if in fact, many chat rooms are negative, many people are sexual predators, and regardless of the chat room topic, they all lead to one thing.
One of the most interesting parts of your blog was the concept of synchronicity within a chat room, and to what degree a chat room is synchronous. Though my blog was about a comments section on a news article, I completely see what you’re saying. There are definitely some aspects which make it, in a sense, asynchronous.
Hey Caton- I was hurt a little bit from your post. I love sunflowers and to this day have Sunflower as my Screen name (SN), but I am most certainly a male…I think. Sorry, I just felt like joshing you, I couldn’t resist. My SN is not sunflower so don’t try instant messaging me. I really enjoyed your post because you made great points and it was wonderfully written. However, I have to poke fun at you for your diction when you used to concur—it made me giggle. I also agree that one’s SN holds a tremendous amount of weight in concern to impression formation. Due to the lack of cues available in CMC, the impression developer must reallocate his or her cognitive resources (hyper-personal model) and use different elements of the exchange to form an impression. In my personal experience with this assignment, I ran into issues with my choice of SN or nickname for the chat room. I decided to go by EOTC—my friends’ band—but the name left many of the chat members confused. Like Mike, I also enjoyed your analogy between chat rooms and houses (or homes, haha) of ill repute. However, it’s like the saying goes, “Houses of Ill Repute, Can’t Live with Them, Can’t Live without Them!” (Birnbaum et al, 2007).
Hey Caton, I really like your post because your experience sounds so similar to my own and I think you add some very interesting insight. I also entered the chat-room environment, very aware of the stigma that is attached to it and the affect that this had on the way I viewed the other people in the chat-room, before even talking to them at all. We grew up alongside the internet, and as the darkside of chat-rooms was exposed, we were often immediately instructed to stay away from them forever. That's why it felt so wrong for me to enter one to do this assignment, and perhaps why you felt wrong about it as well; it was as if we were very aware of the fact that we didn't belong there. One thing that you mention is that the people you chatted with used selective self-presentation to appear to you and other chatters in a certain way, but it would also be interesting to look at the way you selectively self-presented to them as well, what with your apprehension about the whole chat-room phenomenon, maybe you unconsciously made this known to them, or saw them in a certain light right off the bat, as I did, before even getting into a conversation.
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