What can Brown do for you? (Assignment 2)

Sorry—the title. I couldn’t help myself.

For this assignment, I decided to check out the old IRC networks that used to dominate the chat scene before AOL, Yahoo, and MSN arrived. Using a default configuration and under the alias “SillyRabbit”, I connected to the EFNet IRC server, which calls itself “the oldest and one of the largest IRC networks in the world.” I reasoned that it would be fertile ground, with plenty of chatters willing to interact. What I found was an assortment of channels dedicated to pirated media, pornography, and small web hosting services. Eventually, I wandered into “#thelounge,” and struck up a conversation with ‘roBERNIE.’

Our conversation covered a number of issues, including the US Open and our favorite tennis players, where we each live (he’s from Australia), the differences between American football and Australian football (or rugby) and briefly European soccer. We also spoke in depth on the drinking trends are various sports venues, but were cut off by others entering the conversation and my unfortunate disconnection from the IRC server, due to connection problems.

My first impression of roBERNIE was derived from simple observations and not from our conversation. First, it is a masculine name which led me to assume that he is a ‘he’ – I later confirmed this by asking him ‘what he thought’ about so-and-so. He was also one of the very few users in the channel, including myself, who did not have operator (@) authorization, which is an IRC function that allows certain users the ability to remove, or kick, anyone else and to exercise a number of other administrative abilities in the chat room. So, right off the bat, I knew that we were both strangers to this place. And finally, he was the one attempting to initiate conversation with others, by opening with “ne 1 from aus?”

For a while, we were the only two chatting in a room that held roughly 80 people. Throughout the conversation, he would truncate his text (anyone=ne1, you=u, mates=m8s, etc), use acronyms, and insert and overwhelming amount of cuss words (which may be an Australian thing—I “dunna”). My natural inclination was to see him as either uneducated, lazy with the keyboard, or fearful of appearing too ‘try hard.’ I soon learned that he was tennis fan, though, which helps, and that he too has a general dislike for the Australian all-courter, Lleyton Hewitt.

My impression of roBERNIE is more in line with the Hyperpersonal theory than with CFO. I found that simply because of a lack of FtF communication and nonverbal cues, I was more motivated to develop an impression of the person I was dealing with, however inaccurate. I also found that as more time passed, my mental image of roBERNIE became much more rich, detailed, and led me to re-evaluate some of my initial assumptions--evidence of SIP.