Entering an online chat room is a weird enough experience for me in general. However, entering a Yahoo chat as a 63-year old male from Arizona takes the weirdness factor to a whole new level. Upon entering, I was immediately greeted by a couple of the friendlier users, but the truly interesting aspect of my interactions in the chat room began when I identified myself as 63 years old. Immediately, more people started talking to me. It was not, however, the same interest that one might find in a regular hormone-crazed chat room filled with teens. It was much more the interest one would expect to see people display when discovering a novelty.
It quickly became clear that a 63-year old man is not a common sight in any chat room. Without thinking, I began to embrace my concocted role, making sure to use proper grammar and punctuation in all my sentences, and to avoid the net jargon so common in the rooms. As soon as I started doing that, people started treating me as if I were a babe in the woods, so to speak. They seemed to be making the assumption that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and my presence appeared to be entertaining to a good portion of them.
After I had finished “puttering around” the chat room, I took some time to look back at my interactions in the chat environment and found some surprising observations. First was that I hadn’t fully embraced my constructed identity until I had revealed my “age” and people had started to treat me accordingly. This is very clearly the behavioral confirmation we talked about, and I was surprised to see how immediately it had impacted me: quickly after people acknowledged my age, my age-appropriate internet naïveté kicked in. Furthermore, I went out of my way to over-act the part. It seemed at times that I was making sure not to even remotely suggest any sort of familiarity with the chat room world, even though it is totally conceivable for a 63-year old to have such experience. Through selective self-presentation, I was boiling the essence of my character down to one key aspect, namely, no knowledge of net speak or chat room etiquette and making absolutely sure not to let the occasional “k” or “wut? “ slip in.
A last thing that was very intriguing to me is how weird the overall experience was. I’ve only rarely been in a chat room and have never deceived online to the level I was attaining here. For me, it was hard to resist the urge to fall into the normal chat-speak and fit into the room. The fact that it was harder for me to stand out than to blend in was very interesting and I think it brings up an interesting question regarding the idea of selective self-presentation: What is it that makes one human want to deceive another to the degree that one sees online?
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http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/09/3-feelings-over-internet.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/09/3-weekend-of-media-selection.html
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2 comments:
Spencer, it seems like your experience posing as a 63-year old male was a very interesting one. When I think of online deception, I believe it may be easier to try to “blend in” with the crowd, adapting to their style of speech and agreeing with their opinions. I like that you challenged yourself by choosing to completely stand out in this chat room by pretending to be significantly older than the typical chat room user. By focusing on textual details such as grammar, punctuation, and word choice, you were able to differentiate your speech style from the chat room norms and begin to mold to your new identity without even revealing extra information about yourself. The observations you made while reflecting upon your interactions in the chat environment really stood out to me. I completely agree that behavioral confirmation can support why your alter-identity really began to kick in after people acknowledged your age and began treating you like the 63-year-old you were pretending to be. I believe the over-attribution process played a role in this situation as well. From the information you provided, it seems as though the other individuals in the chat room only knew your age and location, allowing them to create an exaggerated impression of “you.” The over-attribution process, behavioral confirmation, and selective self-presentation seem to have reinforced each other, affecting overall impression formation.
Spencer, I thought it was very interesting that people believed that you were actually a 63 year old many online. Your self presentation tactics really worked in your favor. I think that the sets, props and lighting tactics you used really stood out to me when I read your blog. By using proper grammar and punctuation you definitely convinced the others that you were a senior citizen. This example also shows how self presentation tactics can easily be manipulated online on these psychological spaces. I too chose the impression management assignment and was able to easily convince an 18 year old that I was a 19 year old female.
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