Whoever told you that you could be whoever you want to be probably never anticipated how true those words would prove to be in Internet chat rooms. After spending the last hour and a half browsing through chat rooms and meeting a variety of different people, I am in utter shock. For the sake of preserving the integrity of this blog as well as your own innocence, I am going to censor some of the crudeness that I experienced during my adventure into the virtual world. Nevertheless, my conversations were quite a ride that made me squirm even though they only comprised of a few details here and there.
Primarily, the first things that I noticed when I logged on were everyone’s user names. Whether they were simple like Alyssa or Corey23, or cut right to the chase like 22/m/cali; each told me something right about the person right before I even talked to them. Some decided to be more improper with their names, and I did have quite a chat with tonguealways1st who was one of the more decently appropriate user names that I saw. Nonetheless, this aspect of online chatting falls under Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model and the over-attribution process. This theory states that the few cues will lead us to making stereotypes about that person and will lead us to base entire judgments on the information. I immediately formed biases and opinions based on their user names which further influenced whether or not I wanted to start a chat or avoid one with a certain person within the first two seconds.
The next thing I noticed were the icons the user’s used to represent themselves. These ranged from smiley faces, to lips, to skulls, to six packs, and to girls in thongs. These pre-selected symbols also lead me to form an impression of the person right away, which again is part over the over-attribution theory. However, the use of these icons also somewhat falls under behavior confirmation theory. The person who chooses to be the women in the less than modest bikini will start acting like a woman would wearing such a revealing bikini and the guy with the skull will most likely act like a tough guy. The icons are actually symbols revealing an aspect of their personality that they wanted to portray and fulfill in the chats.
Unfortunately, my actual conversations with the few people I did talk with went from polite formality quickly to vulgarity and I was forced to end the conversation immediately; however, I did learn how to get a feel for people immediately. I was able to form quicker judgments and act upon them without giving myself a second chance to get to know the person better, as opposed to what we often do in reality.
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2 comments:
Hi Jillian, I like how you took the thinking of the Hyperpersonal Model to the extreme with your evaluations of fellow chat roomers. In class, we have been discussing limited cues as in that you only talk to a person for a little while, or that you only have the words they give you and you can’t see or hear them. You, however, took it a step back and based your impressions on cues that were even more limited. You started making your opinions before you even talked to the people. Understanding that user names and icons are the decision of each individual person, and that therefore, they can speak volumes about who that person is, or at least wants to be, is crucial in developing early impressions. I think it shows a really good understanding of the Hyperpersonal Model for you to be able to identify at its highest level. User name and icon are about as limited as cues can get.
Hi Jillian. I agree with Dan, great job. The most interesting part of your experience, for me anyway, was how you noted that not only are people online using icons and user names to portray themselves simply, but they are doing so within the Hyperpersonal model. It is almost as if having experience within the chat environment would lead users to adopt user names and icons that convey whatever idea they want to convey in as simple a way as possible. It would be interesting to look back and chart how chat rooms went from having someone actually ask "a/s/l?" to having someone use "22/m/cali" as their user name and eliminate even that simple step in the social process. This oversimplification is what distills the chat environment down to one factor: sex, and making it seemingly devoid of normal social interactions.
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