Learning About "Kyle22"

This weekend I ventured into some online chatrooms for the first time ever. I’ve always heard about chatrooms, but I’ve never really taken the time to venture into one so I didn’t know how to start. I decided to Google chatrooms, and I ended up in some really explicit chats, but after clicking on some hyperlinks I finally ended up in a chatroom for people who like rock music. After inquiring a bit about others’ tastes I ended up starting a private chat with “Kyle22” after we realized we both like the All American Rejects.
As soon as our private conversation started “Kyle22” begin looking for cues to determine more information about me, and I did the same. We started with the typical “asl?”. I learned that “Kyle22” was a 22 year old male from Californian. I immediately started to make assumptions about Kyle based on stereotypes that are engrained in pop culture with shows like Laguna Beach and the OC. I assumed Kyle was a surfer dude and really laid back, especially considering that he was in a chatroom about rock music. After telling Kyle where I was from, our conversation returned to the topic of music. We started talking about how we first started liking the All American Rejects and what our favorite songs were from their two albums. He had some really interesting insights into some of the tracks and he seemed really knowledgeable about music.
As our conversation progressed I told Kyle that I work for our local rock station her in Ithaca and he told me that he works for his college’s radio station as well (he is currently a senior). Having the experience of working for a radio station this really seemed to tell me a lot about Kyle too because you have to be really responsible and passionate to be successful at the radio station.
Based on our whole conversation I feel that I painted a rather vivid image of Kyle in my head. He’s in his senior year of college in California who likes to surf, and hang out with his friends and listen to music. More in depth however, Kyle is a very down to Earth guy who has a lot of insight into lyrics and a lot of passion for music. He can be depended on in many situations and is always willing to reach out to new people and is always up for a good time.
Thinking back to our readings and lectures I feel that my impression of Kyle follows the hyperpersonal model because the impression that I formed is a very positive impression, not neutral, and has very little breadth. First, I definitely over attributed the few cues that I did have about Kyle: his age, that he was from California, he likes rock, and that he works for a college radio station. I used stereotypes as well as my own personal experience to fill in a lot of the blanks with other aspects of his personality that fit in with these cues. Secondly, because we had met in a chatroom that was on the set topic of music, Kyle definitely selected what he was going to present to me. Our conversation didn’t venture too far out of the realm of music; Kyle chose to reveal a great deal about his musical like/dislikes and other experiences relating to music. This leads to a much more intense impression to be formed because I was given such a great deal of information in regard to this one aspect of his life. Finally, because I wasn’t having a face-to-face conversation with Kyle and that I was only listening to music while chatting with him my cognitive abilities were readily available to help me form an impression of Kyle rather quickly because I was able to pay a lot of attention to his phrasing and the emoticons that he used a lot to show how he felt about something. In turn all of these phrases like “cool dude”, “yeah man”, and the emoticons with sunglasses were also over attributed to help form a very strong impression of Kyle.