Assignment#2

So far, I liked the material covered in INFO245. Although it takes about 20 minutes to go back to Engineering quad. I decided to stay in this class and enjoy relatively long commute to the James auditorium. When I received assignment#2, I was a bit puzzled. I have never had an assignment like this one. So, I started looking for a random chatroom in google. I went to chatting.com and other chatting websites. However, most of the people who I encountered wanted me to tell them my asl and wanted to have a sexual conversation. It was surprising that some of them were actually thought I also have this kind of expectation from them. So, unfortunately, my search for random person to form an impression was unsuccessful. However, I want to talk about the relationship that I build over years. It was five years ago. Although I never chat with random people in these days. At that time, talking to random people was one of my hobbies. I usually went to a Korean website called buddybuddy.com. I am not sure whether it still exists or not. There I met a guy named hwang912. As usual, we told each other our age, sex, and location. He was a year older than me, living in Korea. At first, he seemed cold and not friendly because the sentences he wrote were quite short. However, as we kept talking we found out that we had common interest and common view on current events. At the end of our first conversation we gave each other email address and nickname for the instant messenger. From then we talked on the instant messenger and sent emails to each other. Although I do not talk to him as often as I did before, we still keep in touch and wish to meet sometime in person in future. I think my experience is a typical example of developmental aspect. Although, CMC has limited amount of information available to form an impression of a stranger. If one keeps talking to the person, he or she will eventually be able to know enough about this person to form a relatively correct impression.

Assignment 2: Lets Stare at (observe) that Guy!

In a chat room, one is plugged into a synchronous multiple user messaging service. With conversations about many different things occur simultaneous between just a select group of “chatters” or among the whole room. This is the online space I ventured out to find my target.

Upon entering the chat, I did not immerse myself in the conversations, I merely took a step back and observed the conversations unfold. In this specific chat room, the users were discussing peer-to-peer software, another form of an online space where both discussions and files are shared between users. Most of the users ignored the trivial questions asked by the “noobs” as new users are often called, but my target seemed very friendly and ready to assist any of the other users with his knowledge. The gender was assumed on my part from the nickname used: “Tyler_Durden”. The reference to the main character in Fight Club could easily have been made by a female user, but it seemed unlikely.

As for his demeanor, he was quickly stressed by the little detailed questions for which the users demanded answers. Tyler would often give an emoticon to depict his humor even after rude remarks. The emoticons clearly signified the user’s warmth and agreeableness.

As the conversations became further involved, acquaintances became like best-friends. Even though the users had seemingly just met, their use of sarcasm and good humor led me to believe that my impression of Tyler and the others could not be SIP. The impressions were neither negative nor neutral, in fact the friendly, open users had already grown on me and the jokes that they told induced a few chuckles here and there from my part.

Therefore, I must assume that the impressions that I had formed from the encounter was entirely Hyperpersonal. I had taken the very few minor clues from the user’s textual speech to imagine a guy with a kind and friendly demeanor. It led to the assumption also that the user could not be older than 30 and no younger than a high school student, since his knowledge base was quite strong and his chat "lingo" seemed up-to-date. However, race or social standings could not be assumed from any of the interaction.

As the hyperpersonal model had predicted, I did not learn much about Tyler_Durden in breath but in terms of the intensity of the impressions, I had developed impressions to the extremes.

Stalking a Wikipedian

Wikipedia is an especially interesting online space because not only is every user’s actions, edits and comments visible to anybody, every past action is kept in its history. In this assignment I chose the user Check-Six as my target. I observed his user page, article contributions as well as discussions with other users for the last year. Creepy huh? While I did not have any direct interaction with the user I can make quite a few assumptions about his interests, personality, and demographics. My preconceptions of the Wikipedia community are that the average Wikipedian has a higher probability of being a white male, being technically inclined (dorky), having access to a computer, and having too much time on their hands.

A Wikipedia user page naturally has many more cues than other text based online spaces like blogs, or forums but still conveys its information through text and is drastically different from a user page in another social network like Facebook. Check-Six has chosen to include a great deal of information about himself in his About Me section and his userboxes (self identifying boxes). What was initially surprising was the sheer amount of information given about himself on his user page; he is well educated, lives in San Francisco, speaks English and Chinese, has published a book on airplanes, likes guns and is a Star Wars geek. When compared to other social networks or Ftf interactions, Wikipedia users are still 1. Hidden behind a text only profile 2. Aren’t explicitly linked to other users through friend or school networks. This is probably why users are comfortable sharing more information than they normally would in Ftf or on other social networks.

From his contributions to talk pages, he obviously knows a lot about certain subjects but he occasionally mixes up phrases (for example he said pick nit instead of nitpick) which immediately shifted my perspective of a well educated person to an immigrant who has learned English as a second language.

My impression of Check-Six is still very impersonal even though I know could list more facts about him than anybody I would meet in a normal Ftf interaction over a few days. It is like I have exhausted any verbal and interpersonal probes about Check-Six but am clueless about non verbal, vocal and situational characteristics. I feel that my impression fit closely with CFO predictions. There was definitely decreased social presence even when compared to Facebook just because I couldn’t associate a face or personality to a genderless username. I ended up relying on verbal cues to deduce non verbal factors.

Harsh, though quasi-friendly when in privacy

I entered an asynchronous online chat with a user, “HarshLick,” on a forum entitled I Hate Music. Though I was previously registered on the site, I had never participated in a discussion on the forum, nor had I frequented the forum more than several times since joining one year ago.

I chose HarshLick as a chat partner because his sexually aggressive (extraverted) yet silly avatar cued an attempt at self-selective presentation. The genderless HarshLick was using the "zero-history" anonymity of the forum to create a mostly brooding, detached persona, as if to mimic the avant-garde music HarshLick was devoted to. The curt, and obviously carefully crafted forum responses indicated neuroticism more than any other traits in the Big 5.

The forum's users do not self-identify with gender, geo-locations or age, though demographic information can be intuited from the topics discussed in the forum, the location of attended concerts, and the age’s mentioned (estimated). The topics—including various aspects of creating, finding, and listening to experimental music—tend to attract a male, above-21 demographic. HarshLick, due to cues written in his messages, e.g. "when I saw them in '89," revealed himself to be male and in his early 40s. Between HarshLick and me, there were no talks of relationship drama, nor exchanges of information regarding emotional or quotidian activity. However, this “task-oriented” exchange did not confirm the "coldness" of our computer mediated interaction, as the Reduced Social Cues Theory might suggest.

From the forum posts, which usually appeared at the rate of 7 per hour, I observed that positive intra-member connections were formed, though through shared or common experiences, through strong agreements on certain subjects, and through a mutual appreciation of pertinent music. Certain linguistic cues—use of hyperbole and other words semantically indicating intensity—helped me ingratiate myself to HarshLick. Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model predicts that feedback tends toward this “Behavioral Confirmation.”

Keeping with the forum’s topic, I noted and praised a recent release by the artist, Aaron Dilloway, and specifically referenced HarshLick’s review of his earlier work; it would not be considered unusual in the forum to single out an individual to engage in a user-to-user chat. Upon taking a liking to my musical taste, Harshlick was willing to personal message (or PM) me with a list of other websites I should check out. HarshLick used a minimum of verbal cues that I imparted to form a more detailed, though group-stereotyped impression of me – in line with the "over-attribution processes" of the Hyperpersonal Theory. In this personal, peer-to-peer space, HarshLick was more warm (agreeableness). In a forum situation, he was more careful to choose what he wrote (lack of openness). Overall, our interaction fell in with tenets of the SIP and Hyperpersonal Theories.

ASL?...Assignment 1

For this assignment, I decided that the best way to interact with and observe another person online would be via a form of synchronous chat room. Since this is not the sort of thing that I usually do, I simply "Googled," "chat rooms," and sifted through some of the options, finally deciding on "chat-avenue." At first I entered a chat room specifically created for college students, but was extremely overwhelmed by the pace at which people were conversing; it seemed as if everyone already knew each other, and it was a little too much for me to take, so I left that chat fairly promptly. The next chat room I entered was for Singles. I thought this would be an interesting environment in which to get acquainted with a stranger, mostly because I was interested in what types of people I would find and what they were looking for in such an environment. While this chat room too had a fairly fast pace going already, and messages strewn with sexual provocations, I stayed it out and it didn't take long for me to find a viable subject to study. The first person I acknowledged in this overwhelmingly fast-paced and hard-to-follow environment was a user named "duane." Duane was apparently interested in chatting with a nice girl that he could get to know better. Because my username had the number 44 in it, duane automatically assumed that I was 44 years old, which I found very interesting that he immediately made that judgment about me. This, of course, was his first question because due to my name he could already assume that I was a "grl." Upon assuring duane that I was not 44 years old but that I was infact 22 (lie), he told me he was 47. I then moved on to "Cam." Being in a Singles chat room, you enter the environment with the assumption that everyone is looking for a specific person that they can connect with because they're lonely and looking for some sort of attention (this is how I jumped to conclusions and over-attributed with stereotypes). Because of the stigma attached to an online meeting/dating environment, I was very wary of who I would come across, and it was initially quite difficult for me to acquaint myself to this sort of setting, so I decided that if would be best if I played a role other than my own. I would take note of what my chatting partner would say-- his online language, the topics he chose to discuss, his location, his interests, so that I would be more interesting to him. The whole time, I was wondering if Cam was doing the same thing. After a very brief conversation in the chatroom, Cam prompted me to do Private Messaging with him. Being in a chatroom for singles, I have to admit that I was very nervous at first about what would be said once we were "alone." I made outrageous stereotypes from the very beginning about the kind of person Cam was. First of all, he's the kind of person that goes on chat rooms for single people. Second of all, he prompted for a personal chat, and the first question was of course, "ASL?" It was almost shocking how quickly he asked for those details; for some reason I thought that the "ASL" thing would be taboo by now, but apparently there's absolutely no desire to beat around the bush here. Soon thereafter, Cam asked for an AIM or MSN screen name, because these made it easier to “exchange pictures” and things. I had no pictures I wanted to share, to say the least, but then I remembered that I was supposed to be playing the role of someone that WANTED to meet people in there. So I asked Cam what his intentions were on this sort of site, and he went into greater detail about his life and interests, and his desire to simply meet and get to know people in an online environment. I kept waiting for Cam to make some creepy sexual comment, but it actually didn’t happen. Afterwards, I felt sort of bad for making those immediate judgments on Cam and his intentions. I jumped to conclusions according to the stereotypes that I was familiar with, but it’s almost impossible to control making these assumptions, because they really just act as a defense mechanism. Somehow the more we think we know about someone, the more we perceive that we have some sort of control in the situation. I felt like I shouldn’t have made those assumptions in the first place, but at the same time I kept thinking that maybe I was right and that Cam’s inner creep just hadn’t hit the surface yet. I think this goes to show that once we make a first impression, it really is hard to let go of. However, my experience most aligns with the Hyperpersonal Model, because in the beginning I admittedly over-attributed on the very little data and cues I had to work with, and I also very carefully used selective-self presentation in order to portray the character that I thought would be the most interesting for Cam. However, these initial interpretations aren’t set in stone, and the stereotyping doesn’t necessarily have to prevail, as with more time, more data is received and we change our opinions accordingly. More than anything, though, the one thing that I couldn’t get out of my mind throughout this whole experience, was how Cam was probably a member of our COMM 245 class, attempting to do the exact same thing that I was doing.

World of Warcraft: A World of Its Own Indeed (Assignment 2)

Last year, I saw a South Park episode based on a popular computer game, World of Warcraft. It was hilarious, but I didn’t think too much of the episode until this blog came up. I though that this would be the perfect opportunity to explore World of Warcraft for myself. I have never been into computer games, but I figured I would give it a try.

I approached one of my fraternity brothers who I suspected might play this game, and I was pleased to discover that my assumption had been correct. He logged on as his character, a warlock who was both an “enchanter” and a tailor. I was skeptical of this game, but I decided to give it a chance. What I discovered over the next half hour of playing is mind-boggling. In fact, World of Warcraft actually, in its own right, is its own, separate world. Its complexity astounded me. There were so many things to take into account that I found my head spinning. Even with a play-by-play explanation of what was going on in front of me by my friend didn’t completely help the situation.

After the brief tutorial my friend gave me, I decided to engage in my first interaction. My friend was on a very high level in the game, so I decided to talk with a lower level player who, like my friend, was also a warlock. His user name was Avaleen while his real name was not revealed, leaving some sense of anonymity in the game. He was only on Level 7, so we began discussing what specification my character was. In other words, what my character specialized in. Avaleen was trying to decide was specification he wanted to pursue, so he was grateful for the advice my friend and I gave him.

Avaleen’s character was a warlock, but a female one with purple hair. If I was going to create a character online, I certainly would not want to be a female with some weird hair color. In addition, the language Avaleen used completely confused me. He used endless amounts of mysterious abbreviations and acronyms. To my surprise, my friend knew exactly what he was saying. Apparently, the game even had its own language! I was quick to judge Avaleen, as I pictured a huge nerd with glasses and a pocket protector, sitting at his computer all day, speaking his magical language, trying to rise to the elite rankings of World of Warcraft. I pictured him staying home on the weekends, avoiding parties and other large social gatherings. In other words, I pictured Avaleen to be a huge dork who I would not really want to associate with. I made all these judgments based on the way he looked in a computer game and on the way he talked to other fictional characters.

I think that my experience was most in line with the Cues Filtered Out theory. Because of the nature of the communication, my impression formation was obviously only based on verbal cues. While I could see their character and interact, it is not the same as face-to-face communication with nonverbal and vocal cues. Therefore, I made hasty, harsh judgments about Avaleen based solely on what he was saying and how his character looked. In face-to-face communication, we base our judgments on many things, not just verbal cues. I realize that people probably think of my friend in the same manner I thought of Avaleen. Yet in my mind, my friend is a completely normal person. It is very possible that Avaleen is very similar to my friend. Therefore, this type of computer mediated technology caused me to make negative, underdeveloped judgments, which is in line with the CFO Theory.

A Whole New World...to me

Although I am not typically a big fan of chat rooms, I decided to venture outside of my comfort zone and explore the psychological space of chat rooms on the Internet. I was curious to understand why it is so appealing to have a random conversation with a random person. In this nearly synchronous space, I wanted to see how much I could really learn about a person in just a small chat. I thought it necessary to take the plunge and choose a chat room environment that covered topics that were entirely outside my normal social interaction to make it truly an interesting experience. Let me preface this assignment by saying that I am neither a male nor do I have homosexual tendencies…

After selecting the first chat room website that I stumbled upon in my search for a psychological space to explore, I was fascinated by the wide array of topics that were covered on just one website. With my desire to explore something entirely outside of my element, I decided to enter a chat room for gay men. Not expecting to strike up many conversations, I chose a rather sexually ambiguous name, Jessie, to be able to just observe the chat room and observe people’s interactions with one another. However, after logging into the chat, I was almost immediately asked to have a private conversation with Le, a thirty-five year old man from Upstate New York (at least that’s what he told me). I assumed that he was a rather forward and open about himself. He appeared to be very extroverted, he was directing the conversation and he was the one who initiated the conversation after all. For the first time I truly experienced reciprocal self-disclosure. After Le told me some details about himself, I felt compelled to tell him about myself (minus my gender & sexuality). I am normally a person who doesn’t trust people and am hesitant to reveal details about myself, however, in this social interaction I felt an obligation to disclose information. Although ASL is the norm, Le asked my age and location but made the assumption that I was Male. Just because I was in that chat room and he didn’t bother inquiring if his assumption was true, re-confirming that you can’t just assume things, like you can in face-to-face interactions.

The conversation with Le started out as friendly and harmless, discussing our age, where we’re from and finding commonalities between us (he’s from upstate New York & has friends that live on Long Island). Going along with the Hyper-Personal model, Le exhibited traits of selective self- presentation; He typed responses with no mistakes, correct grammar & punctuation (capitalizing the names of towns), which led me to think that he was educated and conscientious. However, this harmless conversation was thrust towards a rather inappropriate direction after I asked what I thought was a safe question, “ What are your interests?” and after that I quickly ended the conversation and my impression of Le was entirely replaced by a far more negative impression. Again, his forwardness and openness are apparent in just his few selected words.

My impression of Le was most in line with the Hyperpersonal model. With just the 10 minute conversation with Le, I believed him to be extraordinarily open, forward & uninhibited. I was repulsed by how quickly the tone of our conversation changed and in that short instance, my impression of Le was formed. In addition to the selective self-presentation, I think that Le exhibited the behavioral confirmation of the Hyperpersonal Model. By being in this particular chat room, it may have led Le to behave more openly and more forward, because implicitly he behaved the more like the way people may have expected him to in this channel. The limited cues in the short interaction that described his age & sexuality already created a stereotypical image in my mind of who this person was.