After searching 15 minutes for a perfect chat room, I decided to enter the one titled “Pool players” As soon as I entered the chat room and looked at the statements some people were making, I knew I was going to encounter some weird people. However, I decided to give it a try and keep the hope alive that there are some nice people who could help me. I wanted to keep a conversation going with someone so I asked, “can anyone teach me how this online pool game works??” One person replied and their screen name was ‘HUNG’. A little scared I still decided to talk to this person who was a 19 year old male from the
The conversation remained pleasant the whole time with him explaining to me what to do and how to play the game online. Even when I tried to get on his nerves by saying, “dude, I don’t get that part…why can’t you do a better job at explaining that to me?”, he was nice and replied that he was sorry. This conversation lasted 20 minutes and by the end he was asking me what my AIM screen name was. Even though he seemed innocent, his niceness and his comment made me very uncomfortable and I decided to leave the chat room.
This CMC experience for me definitely supported the Hyperpersonal model. With the lack of cues, my impression of ‘Hung’ was more exaggerated and intense. Maybe this person was just being nice, but because I couldn’t hear his voice and couldn’t see any visual cues, I thought that he was creepy and a little too friendly. Furthermore, this conversation also negates the SIP theory by Walther (1993) since the information was related very quickly through this chat and I was able to develop a clear impression of this person. In addition to the SIP, the Cues Filtered Out theory did hold a little ground since it says that the lack of cues in CMC would lead to neutral, negative and undeveloped impressions. Even though my impression of ‘HUNG’ was not neutral, it was undeveloped and negative.
My conversation with ‘HUNG’ was kind of doomed from the start because of his screen name but even when he was nice, I had my reservations about him. Also, I thought it was a little odd that a 19 year old from the
1 comment:
That sounds very interesting. Evidently, your impressions were formed extremely clearly and strongly from the beginning and nothing he was able to do would change it. I think this probably supports hyperpersonality theory in a twisted way - you made a very strong judgement about him early in the conversation and it was so strong that in spite of all his niceness, you were unable to overcome your initial impressions.
I had a similar experience once upon a time. I was in a room with a few people, one of whom had a screen name that I really wouldn't ever want to post on this blog, nor ever reproduce either on the computer or in person. In any case, the conversation turned into a heated debate about global warming and environmentalism. As it turns out, this kid with a grotesque screen name turned out to be a great humanist who was strongly in favor of preserving the environment etc. etc. etc. and so I was able to look past his ridiculous screen name and see something else in him. I guess the outcome of the story is different from yours, but it highlights whether we're prone to changing our first impressions of people that we meet on the internet.
thanks
ashish
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