For this assignment I went into a yahoo chatroom (while I was on Facebook and AIM). I first signed on with a screen name that was just a bunch of letters. The first room I went into a went into was a regional one for d.c. and within 30 second i was invited into a chat with a "21/f" inviting me to see their private video webcam, i declined. I went into a few other rooms but nobody really wanted to talk to me.
Finally i signed off and changed my screen name to a girls name katie19851234. As soon as I signed into a chat room on yahoo messenger I got 4 messages. I started talking to one guy and told him I was a 22 year old female from New York (nobody seemed to want to talk to me as a guy). The person I met was a 20 year old civil engineering student from Egypt. I am actually an engineer so we talked about engineering for a little bit and then we started asking each other questions about each others' countries. He started asking about my interests and talking about television shows. I talked with him for a bit and then told him I had to go do homework. He asked me to add him to my buddylist and then he signed of with "goodbye friend." He definitely showed openness, agreeableness. He was warm and seemed friendly but kind of nervous. I would say my impression was in line with hyperpersonal.
The second person I met was in a 'university years'chatroom. He was a 39 year pest exterminator from Vermont who went by the screenname 'sketchihitchhikr.' During our 5 minute conversation I learned what he did, where he was from, and that he had a 15 year old son. He also went on to inform me that his son was 15, tall, had red hair, and was a virgin. But that his son's friend lost his virginity at 13 and he himself lost his at 16. We finished up the conversation by him telling me that I was just a baby at 22 and me telling him that I had to go do homework. We left it at that. He was very creepy. He was way too open about information I didn't want to know and he was not conscientious at all about what was appropriate to say. I would say that I used the hyperpersonal model with him too and probably over attributed his characteristics based on his age and job. He seemed very in control and although he was very creepy he almost seemed friendly in a weird sort of way.
For both I used the hyperpersonal model. For the first guy, I definitely over-attributed him to being friendly but with the second guy I over-attributed him to being creepy. I did not have much to work with but everything I knew about them pointed to these conclusions. In both conversations, I wanted generalize the people I was talking to as college students but there was no way of knowing who would be in the chat rooms. For the developmental aspect, the two people I talked to switched from initial to final impression. At first I thought the friendly guy was creepy and the creepy guy was friendly but as I talked to them, I got a better impression of who they were. As for selective self-presentation, I was presenting myself as a 22 year old girl, but I have no idea if they were telling the truth. With the second guy, some of the things he said seemed so creepy and blunt that I almost have trouble believing that he wasn't being completely open.
In short, chat rooms are creepy and I'm not going back on.
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2 comments:
Josh, your second encounter is a great example of how the fundamental attribution error polarizes our opinions through the hyperpersonal theory. You determined the pest exterminator was creepy because he focused on his son's virginity. While this would creep me out as well, we are both attributing this statement to his lack of conscientiousness. Although highly unlikely, it may be normal for pest exterminators from Vermont to talk about their children's virginity. He may be conscientious in all other respects except this one example of talking about virginity.
The normal conversation about his career is ignored the second we learn of his odd tendency to talk about his son. This illustrates a new side of the reallocation of mental resources component. With such little information about the person, the mind's attention jumps to the most unique and interesting aspect of the conversation while ignoring the other parts.
I really liked your blog post. Not only was it interesting that you talked about your experience talking to more than one person, but you also talked about the developmental aspect in that your impressions changed over the length of the conversation.
I also found your experience interesting because I too found that many people I talked to wanted us to interact beyond the confines of the chatroom whether it was talking on aim, adding each other to our buddy lists, sending pictures, etc.
One thing that would have been interesting would have been to talk about whether you had a tendency to selective self present when talking to these individuals. I imagine you did, and were more open to revealing information about yourself with the first guy rather than second.
Overall it was a great post.
-Danielle Rosenthal
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