However, one must embark on their chat room experience with a certain level of apprehension. I have seen many an episode of "To Catch a Predator" (perhaps the reason I had never been to a chat room before), and did not wish to be approached by a married 47 year-old man looking for love in all the wrong places. Thus, I sought to join a chat room I felt would be a little more intellectually stimulating and a little less sexually charged. The result? I Google-searched "Magic cards" and a chattin' I went.
I have to admit, I'm not really sure what Magic: The Gathering is, or what the game entails (is it a game?), but I figured it would be unlike anything I had previously experienced on the Internet, to say the least. After registering on the given website, I entered the live chat with the most participants, and began my computer-mediated-communication.
While I had originally believed simply observing the chat would be sufficient to form an impression of a participant, I quickly learned that this was not the case. Within this RPG Live chat (which I was later told stands for Role Playing Game), there are many uncommon phrases and practices to be understood in order to even comprehend the conversations. For example, the chat allowed for users to type actions which would appear separate from their words. In a particularly entertaining exchange, two participants depart the chat room in a rather dramatic fashion:
Xiathanual: sighs
drakeZXI: glances to Xitha “sory hun… I can’t sit around here all day… I’ve got other things to do..”
Xiathanual: nods, I suppose your right
drakeZXI: hugs her softly before disappearing from the room…
Xiathanual: gets up, stretches her wings and waves to everyone before flying off
Wings? Flying off? Was I missing something? Thankfully, Foxhengayokai who had immediately greeted me upon entering the chat answered all of my many, many questions. It turned out I was in a Dungeons & Dragons chat in which users frequently go back and forth between IC (in character, not Ithaca College) and OOC (out of character), which explains the flying reference. Many other fun facts about "D&D" were shared during our conversation, but I will let them remain mysteries for those of you who are yet to stumble upon such a chat. I highly recommend it.
Throughout my conversation with Foxhengayokai, my impression of this gamer became increasingly strong. First of all, since I joined the chat knowing the participants were online-gaming enthusiasts, I applied the stereotype that they would be fairly well-adverse at online interaction. Also, considering he was the only person to greet me when I entered the chat, and the speed at which he did so, I immediately considered Foxhengayokai to be an extraverted, warm person. Furthermore, Foxhengayokai seemed more than happy to answer my questions about the gaming world, achieving a level of control by enlightening me about a topic I had known nothing about.
Overall, my impression of Foxhengayokai was ultimately fitting with the Hyperpersonal Model. While I was privy to very little information about the person on the other end of the chat, I still came away with a very strong, positive impression of his personality. Similarly, in keeping with the SIDE theory, despite the limited amount of material shared with me, I was still able to fill in the blanks, in some ways exaggerating my impression.
Of course, the fact that my conversation with Foxhengayokai took place in a Dungeons and Dragons chat room did not escape my attention in forming an online impression of him. However, since he never once referred to spreading his wings and flying away, the gamer aspect of his persona was not nearly as pervasive as I had originally assumed all the chat room participants would be.
Foxhengayokai holds a special place in my heart. I had entered the D&D chat naive and alone, and left it knowing way more about the online gaming world than I could have imagined. All in all, I'd say I've sort of made an e-friend. Although, according to Foxhengayokai, its a good thing he wasn't playing one of his evil characters...
1 comment:
Hello Marli
I heard you refer to this experience in class today, and I was glad to see your post and read more about it. In my Second Life adventure, I met tylerkordalis Ultsch, who seems to be analogous to your Foxhengayokai. Your post made me think about tylerkordalis in a new way. Before my conversation with anyone in Second Life, I assumed they were all very adept at conversing online, and before my conversation with tylerkordalis I saw his avatar, which made him seem like an intense virtual dweller. SIDE would apply in this case since I assumed that such a well dressed user would be very passionate about virtual living, and he certainly played that role in conversation.
I am also interested in exploring the DD interface because it seems like typing the actions, rather than selecting them from a drop down list on Second Life, could be more realistic in that the delivered effect is more immediate and thus closer to that of FtF interaction.
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