A Chat with Guest3928

This project actually turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. It is harder now a days to find free open chat rooms on the internet. I tried Yahoo! and AOL but they wanted me to download their software. At last, I remembered Meebo.com (an online IM-service aggregator) had just added a feature called "Meebo Rooms" where you can randomly chat with other users of Meebo based on similar interests, a la "old school" AOL chat rooms. So, I booted up Meebo and hopped into a room called "Girl/Boy Chat".

I was expecting a fury of chatting to pop up, but to my surprise, the chat was rather slow. Before "going private" I wanted to get the feel of the chat. I typed, "Yo whatsup?" and waited. A person replied, "ANY CHiX IN HERE??". I replied that I was indeed a "CHiX". She then says that she is a "CHiX" too and that she is from "CALi". I tell her I am from MD. Then, she leaves. Quite a shame...

Next, a person with screen name Guest3928 asks if anyone wants to chat, and if they do, private message him. I jump at the opportunity. I im him "yo whatsup?" and he replied "n2m asl". I was very temped to tell him to divulge his "asl" first, but decided to go with it. I gave him my stats, and asked his. He said he was a 15 year old male from WI. My immediate reaction was that I cant believe Im talking to a 15 year old. My second reaction was that this was probably an FBI agent and I was going to land myself a spot on the hit TV show "Dateline: To Catch a Predator" .

I asked him what his hobbies were. He said he was a "sk8tr". I told him I liked video games. I asked him if he played Nintendo. He said no. He sent me his myspace page, which can be seen here. I think he is trying to make himself look significantly more "big and bad" in his myspace profile. Its a little ridiculous actually.

Then, the conversation took a surprising turn: He asked me if I was cute. I wasn't sure how to respond, so I said it depends who you ask. He asked me if I had any pics. I said I did, and I sent him a particularly small older picture of myself. After about 5 minutes, I got no more response. Guest3928 had left.


I imagine that Guest3928 left for a variety of reasons. Maybe I wasnt cute enough for him. Maybe I wasn't his type. Maybe h e found a more interesting lady friend. Maybe he was the FBI agent and he had decided I wasn't a predator. What ever it was, Guest3928 certainly did not tell me many secrets of his life .

I got some pretty big impressions of guest3928. Over all, I would say that I thought of him as a 15 year old trying to rebel or sound cool for his age. I got the impression that his parents didnt spend much time regulating what he looked at on the internet (as evident because he was talking to a 20 year old female). My strong impressions would suggest that the conversation was more evident of the hyperpersonal model. I also dont know much about him other than that he likes to "sk8". Thus, the lack of breadth also supports this model.

I also believe that he was trying to act older and more "gankster" (or something equivalent) by asking me if I was cute, which he portrayed through his myspace. If this is true it would be behavioral confirmation. I think he was also selective portraying himself as someone who really is big and bad in real life... even though he is apparently only 15.

My experience with gyest3928 was overall negative and rather insincere. The whole conversation made me more and more cynical towards him as it went on. I dont think I will be visiting meebo rooms again in the near future.