No Sexytime For You

I had never been in a chat room before doing this exercise, so I, like many of the rest of the class, just did a google search for chat rooms. Not feeling like downloading any new applications or registering for anything, I just joined a general chat on AIM. Upon entering, it just seemed like a barrage of bad language, poor grammar, and incoherent thought. Not wanting to stay in this ridiculous room anymore, I asked if anyone wanted a serious private chat.

The first person that responded was just looking for some “sexytime.” I didn’t want any of that, so I left and asked the same chat room the same question again. This time around, I got a regular person: “mxp123”. I got the standard a/s/l questioning, but a response of “who cares?” seemed to satisfy mxp. The beginning of our conversations was a little awkward and weird. There were longer pauses than expected and a lot of generic small talk. It didn’t seem like mxp really had a cold personality, just that neither one of us really had anything important to say.

Wanting to find something that could be meaningful to the both of us, or at least stimulate some sort of conversation, I asked mxp if he was in school. I was happy to hear that he was a freshman at Purdue. We talked for a while about college and what we liked and disliked about it. It was whilst talking about college that I noticed that not only was mxp beginning to show signs of acting within the hyperpersonal model, but so was I. When we were both discussing various goals and fears we had about the future, I realized that I was saying things that I never tell people in real life. I definitely was not giving the full breadth of my emotions, but rather focusing in on a specific aspect, and while I don’t know for sure, I think mxp was doing the same. I think the ability to enter into a hyperpersonal modeled personality was actually very nice. It felt cathartic to me to vent my feelings to some random person in cyberspace that I knew I would never meet in real life. For all the shortcomings of CMC, I think that this aspect may actually be an advantage, provided it is something you are looking for.

Online Impression Formation

It took some thought for me to decide which online space I should visit for this assignment. I have used the Internet for a while now and have used many of it's communication technologies at one time or another. Ultimately, I decided on a web based chat on a topic that I know nothing about, skating. After some initial difficulty, I found a room that had other chatters in it but was not over full.

Inside was a cacophony of voices all shouting at each other, mainly on the topics of whether one of them was the cutest or coolest and whether the white people in the chat room had to right to say the word “nigga”. Eager to participate, I joined in on both discussions. However, it took a decent amount of time for one of them to respond to my comments.
There are two reasons for this, I believe. One is that even though there was a bunch of text scrolling by, none of the comments were very substantive. Thus most of the chatters didn't pay attention to others comments at all and simply focused on crafting their own comments. This explanation is most in line with the Cues Filters Out (CFO) perspective's hypothesis that the less cues that are available, the more likely people are to focus on themselves. However, there is a problem with this; there were many cues scrolling by all time, it's just that no one was paying attention to them. The lack of substance in the comments accounts for this discrepancy.

The second reason that my comments were ignored is that my style of typing was markedly different from the other chatters. I wrote in full sentences, used capitalization and punctuation and did my best to spell everything correctly. The other chatters only capitalized for emphasis, rarely used punctuation and used many standard spelling short cuts. These obvious differences in presentation lead many chatters to initially ignore me, then later chat with me but without addressing the substance of my comments. I believe the Social Identity/Deindividualization theory best accounts for this behavior. The style in which I presented my comments put me in a different group from the rest of the chatters so that when they finally did respond to me, they responded to me as an outsider and not part of their group identity.

My experience reflects the Hyperpersonal model only in terms of selective self presentation. Of course, I do not know what my fellow chatters are like in real life but I have a suspicion that they do not act nearly as tough in the real world as they did in the chatroom. I did not observe any of the other aspects of this model, however its possible that in another online space where more substantive conversation is available the hyperpersonal model will better explain the interactions.

Impression Formation In a CMC Exchange

The psychological space I entered was an instant messaging exchange that lasted about thirty minutes with a person I met in an informal online gaming session. This person is a male college sophomore around the age of 20, presumably white. His social type can be deduced from his job or role, which he described as a student in software engineering at Penn State University, from which I can infer that he probably comes from a middle or upper-middle class family, that he is relatively smart or good at studying, that he is future-minded, and that he probably doesn’t get into any serious criminal trouble.

We began to talk about school, about our majors, about our mutual antipathy for math, about our future career goals and what we did over the summer. During the conversation, I was thinking that he was a very warm person and that talking to him about various topics was quite easy. However, after the conversation ended, I had re-read what he had said during the exchange and I realized that his remarks were mostly very neutral and concise, only really answering the questions that I was asking him, without trying very hard to embellish his responses with much detail. Looking back, it appears that he was not actually being as warm as I had originally thought in the impression I formed of him during the conversation, which leads to the possibility that I was over-attributing the warmth of his responses as a result of the CMC medium, which adheres to Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model.

I will now describe my impression in terms of the Big 5 Traits: I did not feel that my conversational partner was exhibiting any sort of neurosis, but was rather quite calm and collected. While speaking to him, he seemed to be extroverted, but again, after re-reading the conversation, his terse, neutral responses indicated a less extroverted personality that I had originally thought. He showed openness only to the extent that he would answer the questions that I was asking, without letting slip any substantial extraneous detail that might have initiated more in-depth conversation. Due to the limited amount of information he was giving me, the breadth of my impression suffered as a result. I was only able to form an impression based on his answers to my questions, which supports the SIP model (and therefore the Hyperpersonal Model, process #2) in that there was a developmental aspect – that the transmission of information took much longer than it would have in F2F communication. The ability to exchange social info based on adapted cues, as the SIP model suggests, was apparent in my impression. He was, however, very agreeable in that he tended to react positively to most of my comments. His degree of conscientiousness is difficult to gauge because he seemed to openly answer whatever I was asking him, however, he refrained from expanding on his answers too much, which seemed to suggest that he was carefully selecting the information he wanted to share with me. The observation that my conversational partner was exhibiting selective self-presentation seems to, again, agree with the Hyperpersonal Model.

My experience did not agree with the CFO theory. I sensed neither an underdeveloped or negative impression formation, but rather a more intense impression of certain characteristics, as I explained above. My impression was more in line with the Hyperpersonal Model and the SIP Theory mainly because it was less detailed with respect to breadth, yet more intense or exaggerated. My impression also matched many of the characteristics of the Hyperpersonal Model, such as exhibiting over-attribution processes, selective self-presentation, and a developmental aspect.

Assignment 2: Twitterific

When I started this assignment I wanted to find a subject that I had absolutely zero pre-conceived notions about. This was hard because most online psychological spaces already have stereotypes attached to them (if not widely held, then at least in my own head) so I looked to a relatively new online space called Twitter. A mini-blog on steroids might be an appropriate description of what Twitter is; more commonly it’s referred to as simply mini-blogging, or an ongoing stream of short status updates that someone posts on their simplistic personal page via a number of possible avenues including SMS text messaging, instant messaging, Facebook, or posting directly on the Twitter website. As yet, Twitter does not have a stereotypical audience (at least in my mind) so I was not filled with any expectations of what kind of people I might find. Twitter’s homepage shows a stream of the latest updated streams, so I simply chose one of those users and read every post in that user’s stream on the top page (approximately 20 posts).

Right off the bat when I loaded this user’s page I got a good amount of information about him including his name (I won’t publish his entire name), his location (Santa Monica, CA), and a picture of him. The combination of his name and his picture gave me a good amount of information including his sex, race and approximate age; he is a Caucasian male that I’d estimate to be in his mid-to-late 20’s. Beyond that I took from his name that he was of Dutch ancestry because his last name started with the prefix “Van.” There was also a link to a myspace page, but I chose not to visit it in order to keep my impressions focused on his Twitter stream.

Most of the posts in his stream fall into the following categories: Three posts related to technology, three posts related to sports, three posts proposing times and locations of get-togethers, three posts related to pubs/bars/drinks and two posts about concerts. Besides the information I’ve already gotten from the page (approximate age, sex, location, race), I can now begin to analyze him in terms of the Big 5 Traits. He doesn’t seem very neurotic, but rather very much down to earth. He is very extraverted and open, which I can tell by the social nature of a number of his posts, and the fact that he is willing to make them public. I cannot quite judge his agreeableness because I have not witnessed enough interaction with other people, but I would tend to use the over-attribution process to apply my favorable attitude towards him and assume that he is agreeable. Finally, I cannot comment on his conscientiousness because I do not see any moral dilemmas in his posts. I would also categorize him overall as a pretty warm person, as none of his posts are negative in any way.

I analyzed his posts further and came to conclusions about him, continuing to use the over-attribution process of the Hyperpersonal model. I take his overall cheerful attitude as almost too cheerful, combined with a few slightly effeminate remarks, and get the impression that he is a very effeminate person. However I then remembered his sports and technology remarks and quickly dismissed the idea that he is an overly effeminate male. One of his posts pertained to a new computer and another to driving a convertible, which led me to infer that he had a healthy income source. I also would characterize him with a healthy social life and a healthy interest in music. Overall the amount of information that he gave in twenty sentences led me to draw a huge number of conclusions, all using the Hyperpersonal model, and I ultimately took the eclectic collection of posts and conclude that he is a pretty average and well-rounded person. (Not the result I expected from this exercise)

Assignment 2: (Living?) Second Life

I have never conversed in a chat room before, but I’m sure a chat room conversation would not be far from my expectations, so I decided to move way outside my comfort zone and join the meta-world, Second Life. I was instructed to choose a first name (which was an open form field) and a last name (from a drop down list). I was sent to Orientation Island, along with a few other newbies that had just joined the game as well. As I entered the immersive 3d world of Second Life, my identity was instantly switched from “Alon Sharbani” to “Sher Burger”. Instead of appearing as a 5’10” guy with black hair and a medium build (my true self), I was represented by the avatar I chose, who has blond hair and seems to be about 6’4”. It took me a little time to gain basic control of my body, but eventually I got the hang of it and was able to carry out a conversation with a few people. The conversations were text based, and resembled instant messages, but were accompanied by a full 3d view in the background. (see image).

The first person I tried to talk to was completely naked, and thus looked like almost everyone else on Orientation Island. When I approached her and started a conversation she responded to me very abruptly and inconsistently, indicative of an unconscientious and cold personality. She soon left the scene by teleporting to, I assume, another island.

I then walked into this fellow named tylerkordalis Ultsch who was a very well dressed. He was wearing a suave black suit and nice shoes. He was certainly the odd one out on Orientation Island. He informed me that he had spent over 30 hours on Second Life. He was in the process of upgrading his avatar’s features. He has two girlfriends, both of which do not know the other exists. He even offered to find me a girl. He seemed very conscientious in that he was very proud that he had two “very hot” girlfriends. He even remembered and disclosed how many hours it took him to get each girl, one took three hours, and the other took five hours. He responded to all of my questions in much detail as well, indicative of intense extroversion. However, this detail did not have breadth but was focused. From our first conversation I do not think tylerkordalis is particularly neurotic, open, or agreeable. A second conversation would be necessary to verify the intensity of that impression. He seemed to be in a very comfortable and relaxed state and all in all, he played the part of his suave avatar.

My impression was in line with the hyperpersonal model. I probably over-attributed certain traits, especially conscientiousness, because the person’s avatar (visual appearance) augmented and bolstered my text-based impression that he was conscientious. I also think that selective self-presentation played a huge role in impression formation tylerkordalis didn’t talk about any of his problems, only the “great” things that he has done in Second Life. I also doubt someone that takes pride in having 2 virtual girlfriends looks much like tylerkordalis’ avatar. Nonetheless, his appearance was unmistakably specific and convincing at some level.

*A note on the bottom of my screen reads "Second Life is now fully voice enabled." If I attempted to carry out the conversations with a microfone and speakers, the outcome would have been closer to that of an FtF impression, because I would have been able to judge voice inflexions and the conversation would have greater bandwidth, more cues, and therefore more social presence. Though gestures are a possibility on Second Life, unfortunately none of the people I talked to bothered to use them.

Online Impression Formation

Initially, I wasn’t quite sure how to approach this week’s assignment, since the internet and the definition of a psychological space are both very broad. I knew I wanted to interact with people, instead of passively observing peoples’ blogs or posts; interaction plays a key role in developing impressions. The first idea that came to me was to enter a chat room and meet a completely random person; however, this would not allow me to actually meet the person in real life. This became another priority—meeting someone FtF after interacting with them in CMC would allow for comparison between the two worlds. It would also allow me to actually differentiate between the Hyperpersonal model and the CFO model. The main difference between these models is the intensity of impressions. If I were to just interact with a person online, and formed an extremely intense impression of him/her, this would not justify either model. It could mean that the Hyperpersonal model, is in fact, correct, or it could also mean that I happened to come across a very extreme person, which would not rule out the CFO model. Then I thought of meeting someone on Facebook or MySpace that went to Cornell, so I could actually meet them, but these social networks would give away too much information, and there would not be much to learn about them through the interaction. I resorted to emailing a random person on a general Cornell mailing list server, without telling them that this was for a class (in order to prevent excessive selective self-presentation because if I told him I was going to be writing about him, he would have tried harder to impress me). Surprisingly, I received a response and continued interacting with this person through email. After emailing this person a couple of times, I also had the opportunity of chatting with this person through a synchronous space, AIM, as well as meet him Face-to-Face twice.
My first impression of Alex (not his real name, but for the sake of not having to type “him” hundreds of times…) was that he showed a great deal of agreeableness. After all, he kept interacting with me for no particular reason, which showed that he was honest and friendly. As my almost 2 hour conversation on AIM continued, this impression heightened throughout the conversion. He was very compassionate and cooperative throughout the conversion:

ev***** (4:41:16 PM): Yeah, I can't wait to meet you too.
ev***** (4:43:38 PM): I also cannot help but think that we would be enjoying laughing in person
ev***** (4:43:57 PM): because of all of the sincere smiles that go along with laughter.

Another very apparent impression that I formed was that Alex was extremely conscientious. He seemed to be very organized and goal-oriented—I concluded this when he told me exactly what he wanted to do with his life. Also his strict, formal writing style throughout the conversation showed me that he had self-discipline.

I also felt that Alex was very extraverted, because there was not really any pause in our conversations for two hours. This doesn’t really show that he was extraverted, but it gave me a sense that he was outgoing and enjoyed the company of people very much.

It was hard to judge Alex’s neuroticism, since both of us enjoyed talking about positive issues. There were also no outbursts of anger, or sudden moments of depression. However, he did constantly complain about his high school (because it was originally designed to be a prison, not an education facility) and hometown. From this, I concluded that his neuroticism was generally high.

Interestingly at this point, I had no basis for judging his openness because we did not mention our appreciation for art, religious ideals, political views, thought process, etc.

As you can probably tell, most of these impressions are fairly extreme or intense, which supports the Hyperpersonal model. After meeting with Alex in real life, my impressions became less intense, which further supports the Hyperpersonal model.

Alex was not as compassionate or agreeable as I made him out to be. He was still friendly but just not as friendly as I thought. He also became less conscientious, as he acted more spontaneous and really did not plan out his day. Alex was also clumsier and not aware of his surroundings. He was also less extraverted, as he was not very energetic or outgoing. The same can be said about his neuroticism. After meeting Alex face-to-face, he seemed more normal person than I thought he would be.

However, I still could not judge his openness after emailing him, conversing through AIM, and meeting him FtF.

After meeting him in real life, we still kept in contact, and he finally showed a signs of openness. He showed that he had an appreciation for music and art, which is correlated with openness. He also proved that he had an abstract way of thinking:

ev***** (1:38:47 PM):It [pauses in conversations] is not as awkward online
…
ev***** (1:40:10 PM):I think that it [online conversations] is less awkward for other reasons. Awkwardness in speech is more associated with uncertainty about how to change your facial expression, where to walk, etc.
ev***** (1:40:15 PM):but you are the expert on this
ELLIS WENG (4:40:30 PM):omg the prof said the exact same thing in class… ev***** (1:40:43 PM):Really?
ev***** (1:40:59 PM):I swear I have only thought about this on my own, and I have not taken a class.

After I finally told him about this class, he was open to the ideas and began to formulate his own ideas about this subject (He managed to come up with the concept of reallocation of cognitive resources, while using the same exact examples as Prof. Hancock). He did not simply accept everything I told him about this subject. He challenged some of my ideas, while accepting criticism. He also showed that he was curious; he was open.

After interaction with Alex in a CMC environment I realized that my impressions were much more intense than the impressions that I formed when I finally met him—this supports the Hyperpersonal model. Through my interaction I also realized that certain aspects of the Hyperpersonal model were followed: over-attribution process, developmental aspect, selective self-presentation, and reallocation of cognitive resources.

The over-attribution process occurred when I used the lack of cues to formulate opinions about Alex’s extroversion and neuroticism, which turned out more intense than they should have. The developmental aspect was evident when I finally learned, after conversing with him several times through AIM, that he was open. It also became obvious that he was using most of his cognitive resources to present himself in a more positive way; he emphasized his agreeableness and conscientiousness when we were interacting in CMC.

20 and Single!!

In my opinion, the pinnacle of synchronous online interaction is via instant messaging, video chatting, and chat rooms. Thus, I decided that I wanted to do a little chat room experiment; I decided to log into the 20 Singles chat room sponsored by AIM.com. I would like to tell you all what the actual chat room was like, but literally the second I entered it, (under a fake screen name: sweetipie38242), I was bombarded with three private chat requests. I barely had time to accept one of them when I received five more. I attempted to accept them all and begin to chat with each, I kept getting more requests. I had no less than fourteen requests when I decided to log off and log back on to try to form a game plan. I decided to only accept the first two requests I got. When I logged back in, mlsxsl86 and hog4life75 sent me private chat requests, and I obliged.

My story is as follows: I’m a 22 year old named Chrissy. I just graduated from New York University. I am now working at an advertising agency in New York City.

Hog4life75 was the typical “a/s/l”, what do you look like, what are you wearing, are you a virgin, what’s your favorite position, kind of guy.

hog4life75 (9:35:45 PM): so any revealing pics?

hog4life75 (9:37:12 PM): had to ask

Hog4life75 personified the type of guys I imagined would be in these chat rooms; sex-crazed, sketchy, obnoxious guys who have way too much time on their hands.

Mlsxsl86 was definitely not what I was expecting him to be, probably partly because I was simultaneously conversing with Hog4life75. I might have been predisposed to expect Mlsxs186 to be a jerk as well. Despite my initial inclination, I had a very pleasant, normal conversation with Mlsxs186. He had a good sense of humor, and was very polite and nice (especially compared to Hog4life75).

mlsxsl86 (9:22:45 PM): what u like to do for fun

sweetipie38242 (9:22:59 PM): clubs, party, hang out with friends, movies, reading, dancing

sweetipie38242 (9:23:03 PM): you?

mlsxsl86 (9:23:15 PM): friends sports meet new people bars drinks beach

mlsxsl86 (9:23:58 PM): u go to school?

He seemed to be genuinely interested in my life, which was defintely a nice contrast to Hog4life75’s idea of a conversation. He asked me questions beyond what my bra size was.

I would have to use the hypersonal model to analyze my impressions of both men. I think that I over-attributed Hog4life75’s comments towards me to being such a jerk. While I have no idea about the way this guy is in person, he might not be such a degrading person face to face. His comments certainly lead me to believe that he is a chauvanistic individual. With Mlsxsl86, I over-attributed his polite comments to him being a nice individual. He might have just been putting on an act. With computer mediated communication, it was difficult to tell what kind of person I was truly talking to. Everything that I concluded was based on reduced social context clues, so while I did have potential insight to each guy’s personality, I don’t believe it was as rich as a face to face interaction might have been.

Assignment #2- Dream Chat room

My experience in a chat room under the subject matter of dreams has definitely been the most interesting weird and funny encounter I had all week. There was a couple of people in the room, but only one really spoke directly to me, sharuk. I learned that he was from India, about 20 years old, and was studying BCA, which after numerous attempts of asking what that meant, he explained that it was a bachelor in Computer Applications. He seems kind of annoyed that I did not know what BCA meant but he quickly jumped into the ASL ( age/ sex/ location) inquery to get information about myself. Before giving him an anonymous name, Maria, I made sure to get his name, which was Anul. His english was not very good because he tried to explain how "pipil" called him Armstrong, and then corrected himself to say that "pupil" called him Armstrong. I made sure to not get into details about my life. I tried to get back on the topic of dreams, but he abruptly stated that he dreamt about the future and then asked if i was an astrologist. I was a little weired out but i wanted to see where he was going with this. He failed to continue on the topic but delved into finding out my studies. I was not able to clarify if he was actually in India now or he is just from there because he keep avoiding my questions and went on to say weird things like


sharuk (guest): hey can i say ur name lov
sharuk (guest): am saying that to protect

at which I decided to leave it at that and sign out. I don't know what he meant by that but I was hoping that it was his English barrier that made him sound creepy. He generally seemed like a nice guy being that he was wiling to talk and he did not ask me any real perverted questions. My encounter followed along the both the CFO model because under the short time I was talking to him I did not get enough information to really develop an impression about him. In addition , with the barrier of CMC, he did not open up enough to me. Nevertheless, along the Hypersonal model, whatever information I did learn about him, I did hold on to it and try to figure him out.

Blog #2: My new chat room buddy

A chat room is a very scary place. It took me several attempts before 1. I found a room where people were actually chatting. 2. I got people to talk to me. 3. Found people who would talk to me in non-inappropriate ways.

I first started my chat room experience by entering a number of different internet chat rooms trying to find one where people were actively interacting and having conversations. I started out by putting my username in for each of these chat rooms as “cubsfan2007,” not wanting to give away too much information about my age or sex. However, I found that this name did not engage many people into conversation, so I went for another approach. I settled on using the site free-chat-rooms.net. I quickly noticed that anyone entering the chat room with an obvious girl’s name would get an enormous number of responses from people, so I tried to go for that approach. Since my name is pretty rare and not many people would know it, I decided to use my roommate’s first name, Heidi. So having changed my username to “heidi,” I re-entered the chat room and once again said “hey everyone.” Unlike last time when I received no responses, I was immediately bombarded by 20 or 30 private chat requests. After shifting out the rather vulgar ones, I started chatting with a few people.

After a few rounds of accepting requests, I got into a conversation that I found interesting. In fact, as I write this, I am continuing my conversation with this person. In terms of the Big 5, I was very impressed by how well I got along with this person. I couldn’t really judge his levels of extroversion or neuroticism. They really are much more difficult to assess in CMC rather than in Face to Face. However, the person did seem very agreeable. We discussed sports, world issues, where we were from, what we did for a living, amongst other things. I should also mention that I was masking as a 22 year old, first year law student living in Chicago. His internet persona portrayed him as a genuinely nice guy. I found out he had been in Iraq for the past 13 months and he was going to start school soon. He was very open about his likes and dislikes and what had happened in his life. His being in Iraq and willingness to discuss things like global warming and the death penalty also gave the impression that he was very conscientious. I found myself starting to feel bad that I was so thoroughly deceiving him. Then I realized that the Hyperpersonal model had played its part and taken a hold of me.

After talking to this guy for about a half an hour, I felt a bond close enough that I felt bad lying to him. It was an extreme example of how the Hyperpersonal model, while not having as much breadth, is so much more intense. I was guilty of overattributing the few cues I had about “Aazrback” to create a much more real and whole person. The little that I knew about Joe, which is what he told me his name was, was so exaggerated I felt like I could infer so much more from it. It caught me off guard that I latched on to the Hyperpersonal model so wholly. It creeped me out a little how much I could be affected by it, but I guess that was what this assignment was supposed to show.

Assignment 1: CheeseBalls

I decided the best place for me to meet someone new was a chat room. I haven’t been in a real chat room since middle school and it would provide me with the opportunity to interact with many people. Chat rooms are basically synchronous chats meaning I could carry on a fluent conversation. There is usually no persistence and I could be as anonymous as I wanted to be. I simply Googled ‘chat rooms’ until I found a chat room titled “students” from ICQ. I joined the chat and greeted everyone in the room. I immediately received a response from CheeseBalls. I took this as a sign that he/she would chat with me so I sent him/her a message for a private chat and he/she accepted.

Since we were in the “students” chat, I asked CheeseBalls where he/she went to school. I learned he/she is 20 years old, goes to college in NYC and is studying Japanese. I don’t know what race he/she is, but I know he/she is not Japanese because I asked. The entire chat I never asked what sex CheeseBalls was, mostly because I wanted to see if he/she gave away any clues. While I still don’t know for sure if CheeseBalls was male or female, I believe that he was male based on his interests so I will refer to CheeseBalls as male from now on.

CheeseBalls was very open with me, especially as we discovered common interests. We both enjoy N64 video games and playing Frisbee. Throughout the conversation he was very friendly and outgoing. He seemed confident and relaxed. I would classify him as having “warm” traits.

Of course this assessment is based only on our online chat so there were some channels missing that are present in face-to-face communication. There were no vocal cues and tone was sometimes hard to pick up on. In some cases, tone can be understood online by changing case or adding italics or bold, but our conversation had none of these cues. I was only able to observer CheeseBalls online, but I did view him both in the general chat room and in our private conversation. In the general chat he was very friendly to everyone which was also reflected in our private chat.

My impressions of CheeseBalls are most closely explained in the Hyperpersonal Theory. Anything he said left a strong impression in my mind. For example, in the chat room, watching him greet everyone who joined immediately made me conclude he was a very friendly and outgoing person. I didn’t experience neutral or undeveloped impressions like the CFO theory suggests. It would be interesting to see what CheeseBalls is like in real life to see if my strong impressions match with his true personality.

assignment 2: perverts and introverts

As I have never used a chat room before, I figured the best place to find one would be to Google chat rooms. What came up for me was a website called www.chat-avenue.com, and I was told to enter a personal username. When I got to the chat room, I simply typed (in pink font) "IM me if you want to chat".
Within seconds, I received a flurry of friendly IM's from screen names such as "Kenny" "bigman480" and "surferdude6969" all asking me the same important question:

"Kenny: asl?"

"19/f/ny," I replied, honestly.

Most of them replied with a reciprocal answer. I found it a strange coincidence that every single guy who IMed me happened to only be one or two years older than me, never any younger. I didn't believe that could be possible, and I think this could be selective self presentation. I weeded out many of the guys who started talking to me as more often than not, their next question after asking what color my hair and eyes were, went along the lines of "wanna cyber?". Because I was typing in pink font and labeled myself as a 19 year old blonde girl (really I have brown hair), the other guys in the chat room automatically assumed that I was flirty, cute and ready for a crazy online time even though they knew nothing about my personality or what I really look like. This goes along well with the social information processing method, which is where chatters adapt cues into the visual channel (in this case, my pink font) which must be typed and read, and then categorize somebody socially based upon the limited cues
.
Eventually I began talking more with a chatter with the handle of wolfwood230; he was the only one who wasn't looking for something inappropriate.

wolfwood230: do you ever get lonely?

While this probably wasn't the most upbeat conversation starter, I felt bad for him and wanted to hear what he had to say. Wolfwood 230 explained to me that he was a junior at UChicago and hadn't managed to make very many friends. He lamented that he spent most of his time surfing the internet and going into chat rooms for company, as he couldn't find any in real life. I suggested to him that he join some clubs in school; and he said he was considering joining the Christian Fellowship. We continued to talk about shallow stuff such as our majors, not particularly much breadth in the conversation. Yet the initial part of the conversation, where he started off by asking if I was lonely and then spent some time talking about his social troubles, was very intense. Because wolfwood couldn't see my face and knew he would never meet me in real life, he probably felt as if he could say what he wanted to and be more himself. He could ask me questions he (probably) wouldn’t normally he would meet in a face to face interaction because he did not have to worry about rejection. If I decided that I did not want to talk to him anymore, he could just go back in to the chat room and find somebody else to meet. This also represents the hyperpersonal model to me as: much intensity without much breadth.

Assignment #2 - Chat rooms, Indie musicians, misunderstandings, oh my!

I have never felt completely comfortable with chat rooms. The chaotic exchange of brief conversations and the rampant disregard to basic rules of grammar seem to create a hostile environment that is coldly impersonal and hotly unpredictable. Fortunately, a friend of mine runs a private chat room which is part of a large music community mainly for Indie (Independent) musicians, and he granted me temporary access to chat with some of the musicians.

For the chat room I chose an innocuous and gender-neutral handle “BC.” I was initially greeted and then promptly ignored, unsurprising since I am not an Indie musician and thus “outside of the crowd.” Fortunately one person, who chats under the name “Rank,” was friendly enough to initiate a private conversation with me, and we took off fairly well from there.

My first impression of Rank is an air of openness. His band is heavily influenced by punk rock and hardcore/metal bands, so it is unsurprising that he takes a very liberal view on many issues ranging from religion to politics. However, his spelling and grammar skills are far from stellar, and like many chat room users some of his sentences were at times incoherent. (e.g. “Rank: I shudnt say u know but i guess so, its yaeh...ok”) At first I visualized a fourteen year old punk rocker that enthusiastically supports legalizing marijuana and banning religion from the world. However, that first impression was quickly squashed after he told me that he is in fact married, has a newborn daughter, and has recently taken a light interest in his family’s religion, Judaism. In about one hour or so of text conversation, my view of Rank evolved from a stereotypical punk rocker to a mix of Freemason, father, chef, and pretty good bloke in general. Although I doubted his claims at first, he managed to show a good breath of knowledge when we discussed Masonic history and Judeo-Christian subjects, demonstrating that he is fairly knowledgeable and mature.

I believe that my experience is an excellent supportive example for the Hyperpersonal Model. The over-attrition aspect is quite evident as I formed a stereotypical view in my mind as soon as I stepped into the chat room – that is, Indie musicians tend to be liberal, hippy-esque, young, etc. The rather lack of elegance and eloquence in Rank’s sentences initially reinforced my belief that he is younger than I and gave an air of idealistic fervor found often in teenagers. Slowly, however, the developmental stage rolled in and as I received more “cues” or information about his personality/life, I was able to form a completely different view – a much more mature, fatherly, and independent image, albeit still fairly idealistic.

On my side, I did my best to give a positive presence. Rank treated me like a close friend soon after we engaged in conversation, telling me all about his family and career, and I felt I should return the warmth. I was thoroughly supportive of many of his views, and I tried my best to show interest. The behavioral confirmation, or feedback, was glowingly evident between us. I acted very friendly and supportive because he talked to me like to a close friend, and he in turn tried to spell better and converse in a more mature/focused manner after I showed interest in him being a Freemason and chef.

Overall I was rather impressed by the experience and I am glad that I have possibly made a good friend over the Internet in under an hour. Although I was glad that we never had the typical chat introduction in chat rooms (“a/s/l?”), I was slightly dismayed when Rank said “nice talking to u babe, u are an interesting girl but I’m taken haha” just before leaving the chat room. I did not in our conversation refer to my gender (male, in case the reader does not know). I did however compliment him by saying that his wife is lucky to have him, and I suppose my elementary grasp of the use of the chat room, coupled with my nearly OCD-like attention to spelling and syntax might have formed a feminine image in his mind. This misunderstanding is a good example of the inadequacy of CMC communication, and it also shows that over the Internet people may take various cues in completely different ways and form impressions that, while not unreasonable, are in fact totally inaccurate.

Huge sports fan...perhaps??

I entered this assignment with a bit of hesitation and nervousness, being that it was my first online chatting experience and had no idea of what to expect. The chat room I entered was at familychat.com which I found though a general Google search; and after entering my age (21) I was directed to the adult chat room. Upon entering I was immediately greeted by a few active participants, one of whom had the nickname DeeMan. From the beginning I picked up on many of the numerous cues we discussed in class, which led me to develop an impression and some assumptions about what DeeMan was like in reality.

First of all, the nickname (DeeMan) the iconic symbol (a football) quickly demonstrated that the person I was chatting with was a male. His verbal cues led me form some passive impression formations. For example, I believe that DeeMan was a sports fan (specifically a football fan) and that perhaps he even played a defensive position for a team somewhere- hence the “Dee” part in his nickname. DeeMan used some of his own tactics to form an impression about me as well. By engaging in interactive strategies like ASL (a.k.a, Age/ Sex/Location) he learned more about where I was from, and later why I was there (being a student). The questions I asked him in our dialogue assisted me in categorizing him socially. For example when I asked him where he attended college he informed me he went to the University of Texas, which was near where he grew up. Leading me to believe he was a “southerner,” and had a good education under his belt. Many of our questions during our chat were interpersonal probes which allowed us to selectively choose what we wanted to share about ourselves.

In regards to personality categories, DeeMan most outwardly demonstrated extraversion and openness. He was the first to greet me in the chat room, gave me a short introduction to the topic of discussion, and throughout asked me my opinion about the few topics we discussed. He went out his way to get me to participate. By far he was the ring leader in the group, making sure that the conversation kept going. He was never hesitant to answer my questions either, which is why I would have categorized him as open. Additionally I gained the impression that overall he was a warm and friendly, but not too emotional of a man.

After evaluating the conversation and impressions gained from DeeMan, I realized that the Hyperpersonal model best fits the way I gained my impressions. The few cues I did have, most of them initially being verbal, led me to make huge generalizations about this individual. For example I thought he was the “sports fan, who is a typical male because he especially loves football.” Additionally, the little information I gained about DeeMan made me feel as if I knew him for a while and at the end of our conversation I had a really good impression of the guy. I believe that I over-attributed the few cues I did know about him which made him seem almost familiar, and the reason I thought mostly positive things about him was due to his selective self presentation.

Assignment Two: Impression Formation.

I was excited about this week’s assignment, as I thought it would be an exciting experience to try online impression formation firsthand after last week’s lecture. Upon entering a chatroom, I received chat requests from four users, with whom I chatted for a considerable period of time. I will limit my discussion to my interactions with one particular chatroom member, a twenty-year-old Italian male medical student.

Although I talked to this individual for almost an hour, I struggled to form any impression of him without any nonverbal or visual cues. Furthermore, I noticed that I constantly asked him questions, in an attempt to obtain a better grasp on his personality, rather than responding to his comments or talking about my own experience. Overall, any impressions that I did manage to form of him were neutral or slightly positive. He used emoticons frequently throughout the conversation, which lead me to believe he is friendly and agreeable, however, it was difficult to gauge his level of extraversion, or even whether or not we would be friendly in a face to face setting. Out of all of the “big five” personality traits, I feel most confident in assessing his openness; I interpreted his interest in my life in the US to mean that he is receptive to new ideas and cultures. As far as his neuroticism and conscientiousness, I cannot comment either way.

My experience conforms most closely to the CFO perspective, as my impressions lacked both intensity and breadth. My impressions were fairly neutral, and I found it difficult to form them on more than one or two dimensions. As Hancock and Dunham predicts, it was especially difficult to form impressions regarding extraversion and neuroticism, to which nonverbal cues are critical. Of the two CFO theories, the Social Presence Theory seems most relevant, as the decreased social presence of my partner led to impoverished impression formation. I didn’t find the Reduced Social Context Cues Theory relevant, in that I was no more likely to focus on myself than when conversing face-to-face.

My experience contradicted the SIP theory in that I was unable to adapt to channel over time in order to reach nearly the same level of social information exchange as I would face-to-face. In fact, my impression did not vary significantly within the hour-long timeframe. In addition, my experience ran contrary to the Hyperpersonal model, which shares some elements with the SIP model. Not only did I not form exaggerated impressions, but I also didn’t engage in selective self-perception, which is integral to the theory. I felt no desire to self-select what to present, perhaps because I didn’t feel emotionally invested in how my partner perceived me.

Assignment 2: LiveJournal

Hey all, I was too uncertain about chat rooms to do my observation in one. So, I chose the much less threatening task of stalking strangers’ LiveJournal entries. I was somewhat surprised that many people post their blogs publicly on this site, so I had a wide variety to choose from. I read through several LiveJournals and decided against them since I didn’t feel like I had really formed a strong impression of any of the people. Perhaps this is some evidence for the CFO theory, applying more to this one sided interaction via blogs, than to synchronous two-way communication with IM.
Eventually, I stumbled upon the blog of “crazy_shane.” I immediately determined that he was a male artist, specifically creating prints for posters and t-shirts. He had posted some pictures of his artwork, which struck me as another interesting way to form an impression of a person. Since this particular person wrote more freely about himself than many of the other blogs I read, I would say he is fairly open. The most recent post mentioned a busy weekend, going to a concert with a friend, watching a movie with friends, this lead me to believe that he was probably relatively extroverted since he obviously doesn’t just sit around alone. In a later entry he seemed quite conscientious. He posted two simple lists describing his own understanding of himself and then setting goals for change:

“I am not...
going to Europe
working at superbig
being creative enough
using my time efficiently

I am...
Looking for a great job
Doing a little freelance
Saving money to move out
Getting in shape.
I've got many a big battle ahead of me. I need to find a decent job, move out, and start my life. I need to continue working my ass off to get in shape, so far, I have lost zero weight, but now I can run 3 miles in 30 minutes…so I'm definitely in the right direction. I need to make some new friends and do more things…” This post made him seem open to change and also portrayed that he was perhaps trying to remind himself of his personal goals. Even though his screen name is “crazy_shane” he didn’t seem to display any neurotic tendencies.
One feature of his blog was the “Current Music” note, and in several of his posts he wrote that he was listening to NPR. This led me to believe that he must be of a more liberal persuasion and probably more educated than some of the other bloggers. This seemed to fit with my view of him as an ‘artsy’ person. I realize that I assumed a lot by gaining this impression, both about Shane and about NPR listeners.
My impressions of Shane seemed to support the Hyperpersonal theory. Since I only had a limited amount of information about Shane himself, I filled in the gaps using what I knew about other artists and people with similar taste in music and presumed him to be very open, artsy, and liberal. Therefore, he did become something of a stereotype to me, but his list of goals gave me a more personalized picture of this stranger.

Assignment #2 Impression Formation

Tonight I delved into the world of chat rooms. At first it was a bit overwhelming trying to find out where to go, it was of course harder than I imagined to find one. However I ended up on teenspot.com and entering the “Hangout” chat room. I picked this one because it seemed relaxed by the title and it had only a few people. I thought it would be easier to get to know someone the less people there were; keep things simple. Upon entering immediately I was asked if I was a girl. Then I was asked by the same boy, pattex, what my asl was. Confused by the terminology I just asked and found out it was my info, more specifically my name and age. Immediately following pattex invited me to a person-to-person chat. This is where we really started to talk one on one in the CMC environment. From the first few minutes I felt an immediate rush of questions, there was no reservation in asking questions such as name, age, interests, and social types.

At first I was turned off by pattex because he was too forceful in the conversation and it was uncomfortable for me. He came off as cold because of this. Then once we started talking he wanted to know more about me and this personality seemed warmer. As far as the 5 big traits; neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness I only really got a good idea of his openness. All of the other traits I felt like I didn’t have a basis to judge from. His openness however in the beginning came off as cold but later I think I adjusted my expectations from FtF conversation to more CMC style. I think this observation is directly related to the CFO (cues filtered out) perspective that states “lack of cues in CMC should lead to neutral, negative, developed impressions.” This is dead on to my experience because I really couldn’t get a good idea of what kind of person this was because the conversation was so removed feeling from a FtF first impression of meeting someone. I don’t think that he spoke in the same way he would have if we had met in person.

Overall, I feel as thought since I was going into a space where I had never been and knew no one that the conversation was very different in CMC form than it would have been FtF however, I think that when I talk to someone online who I have met in person, even if only to a small extent, I can get a much better impression from CMC. I think this is because even the smallest amount of an introduction gives the conversation somewhere to start from without resorting to the blunt and cold standard questions.

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.

Online Stalkers....

I have always heard those scary stories about those creepy online addicts who stalk profiles and start conversations with random people they have never met before. Today, I was one of those stalkers. I decided to search AIM profiles until I found someone who seemed appealing to talk to. After searching many profiles, I finally came across a person's page whose 'interests' and 'about me' caught my attention. He had spent a lot of time updating his profile, so I automatically judged him to be a friendly on-line chatter. We began talking and did not seem too worried about the fact that we had never met in person (I on the other hand found it very strange to be talking to him without even knowing his name).

My conversation was a good example of the hyperpersonal model because I over-attributed my first impressions and generalized many of his statements . He had a picture of an animated guitar in his AIM screen and used emoticons frequently. He mentioned that he was from Texas and followed sports at UT. He also told me he was a double major at a university in Texas and one day wanted to be a pro golfer. From these small details, I concluded that he was a very warm, out-going person who was a good student, with goals and ambitions, was into music and enjoyed a variety of different sports.

It was very interesting to see how easy it is to judge a person based on an online conversation. Reflecting back on the conversation, especially with some of the knowledge I have already gained from this class, I realize that based on the chat I had with this male, I really don't know very much at all about him. I may know specific details about him, which may or may not be true, but I really don't know much about his personality or character. I understand more after completing this assignment the dangers associated with judging and stereotyping others based on online conversations.

Assignment #2: Online Impression Formation

The online space I explored for this analysis is a synchronous chatroom on Meebo.com, an in-browser instant messaging program which supports multiple IM services including Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ and even Googletalk (en.Wikipedia.org). I entered this "experiment" with some reluctance because as I had revealed in my last entry, I've had some questionable experiences with chatrooms as a teenager. However, the chatroom identified as "20 and over" was small with no more than 8 people, and I assumed it would stay this way so I would keep my interactions within the chatroom (i.e. I would not instigate private conversation by "whispering" to the other participants).

I began my participation in the chatroom by using the name collegegirl, which provided a generic, but specific-enough cue about myself for other users of the chat. I was not surprised to see that the majority of users did not include a "real" name in their username. mrpenguin, unchangingwoman, dunebug, and the most popular, variations of guest_ _ _ _ (4 random numbers) are some examples of usernames I remembered. When I entered the chatroom, the conversation that was taking place allowed me to assume that some of them had been talking for a while, or at least talked to each other before. Mrpenguin responded with evident happiness when one user came into the room: "Yay, my little baby is back! Let me give you a :hug:" They acknowledged by presence in the room when I said hello; it was interesting to notice that they did not just continue on with their conversations when I entered, but it was really as if I entered a physical room and they acknowledged me because they just could not deny my presence. I asked them simple questions, how old they were, where they were from, what they were doing at the time. The majority responded with some interest; one user asked me where I was from and I responded "I'm from the east coast," and another user replied "YEA, EAST COAST!"

I assumed too quickly when I thought I wouldn't have to "whisper" to anyone or instigate private chat, because soon enough I was receiving whispers left and right. The infamous "a/s/l" question came up ALL the time in one form or another. I wasn't given substantial cues from many of the users; their usernames were either guest_ _ _ _ or the conversation died after I gave very limited, short responses to their questions. There was one very interesting and even a little concerning user I spoke to during this session, whose conversation I will elaborate on for this analysis.

His username was mk66 and he was one of the first to "whisper" to me. He introduced himself as Matt, so I assumed his status as a male. He came across as a warm, responsive person, answering my questions with interest and adding emoticons (mostly :) ). I was content to have found a person in the chatroom who was not really concerned with my stats (by asking questions like "how do you look" or "what are you wearing"), so I reciprocated with similar warm responses. However, I came to realize as I continued to talk to him that he was actually giving me a lot MORE information that I had asked for. One example I overlooked in the beginning of the conversation was when we were talking about sports. He shared that he enjoys bowling, and that he was a good bowler, too. I am also an avid bowler and I responded by telling him I enjoy bowling and volleyball tremendously. He then responds "my kind of girl. :)/i'm 6 4/160 lbs/my friend asked me to be his teammate." I clearly did not ask for his personal information, but he was compelled to tell me more than he needed. He then acted out of character (i.e. the character I assumed him to have based on very few and now realized as unreliable cues) and gave me his myspace address to check out a picture of him. I was a little bothered, but that was only the start of many disconcerting cues that made me form an extremely negative impression of him. He then began to share his VERY negative experiences of his past, that he lived with drug dealers, and got shot, and was bullied by other guys. He shared that he continues to be made fun of by guys, which is why he enjoys talking to girls (“they are more sensitive”). His decision to share this with me allowed me to assume that he wanted me to know that he enjoys talking to me. The biggest negative indication was one statement: “My friend called me right before I was going to hang myself/she literally saved me.” It took me a long time to respond to something that I consider something too serious and private to share with someone you’ve never met. Conversation slowed down exponentially, and he left a little while after, although he expressed his desire to speak to me again.

The development of my impression fit the Hyperpersonal theory, which caters to the extremes of positive and negative impressions. Over attribution processes and selective self-presentation played a major role in the development of my impression of Matt. I over attributed his interest in sports to an agreeable, likeable personality and responded with even more interest, which indicated to him that he could open up to me. His selective self-presentation allowed me to feel safe talking with him, but I realized at the end of the conversation that I had opened up too early to him based on his cues. I also over attributed his consciousness to other guys’ inappropriate behaviors online to a considerate person, and then was shocked to find out that he chose to share with me such personal information with me that made me feel very uncomfortable.

The hyperpersonal theory manifested itself in a very extreme manner in this encounter. I am still a little shocked that my experience was so extreme, but I assure you I DID NOT make this up. I don't think I'd want to make up such a thing. My only question is, will I ever come across this guy again, and what should I do if I do?

Assignment 2: Online Impression Formation

I had intended to analyze a “Wall to Wall” post between two Facebook users, but eventually my research expanded into several other aspects of Facebook, including its design and features. I also discovered how Facebook as a psychological space influences impression formation and Computer Mediated Communication. One easily viewable feature is the “Wall to Wall” link below each wall post. This allows one to view “conversations” between two Facebook users. Conversations that used to take place in real time (“synchronous”) now take days, similar to “telephone tag,” because only a few sentences at a time are exchanged. Facebook has facilitated asynchronous communication through its “Wall” feature. I would argue that this type of asynchronous communication allows for shorter, less detailed conversations, but enables one to “converse” with far more people. This trend away from face-to-face conversations and “instant” message conversations and towards quick, sporadic wall postings does not lead to more depth or a greater impression formation (as SIP would say). Instead, it leads to an easier time managing “acquaintances” and a more difficult time maintaining close friendships or relationships.

Facebook’s public nature also places some constraints on its content and impression formation. Now that Facebook is open to non-college students, it is publicly accessible by one’s employers, athletic coaches, and potential employers. This affects many decisions to post certain photos or mention certain personality traits and interests in one’s Facebook profile. Facebook provides a unique psychological space where impressions form differently than in other CMC or FTF environments. I first analyzed the “Profile” sections of several Facebook “friends.” While the profile section provides an adequate start to understanding a person’s interests and favorite activities, it did not provide a complete or even semi-accurate picture of my friends. The Profile section was often not updated recently. My test subjects’ tastes had often changed before they updated their profile. My experience with Facebook most aligns with the Hyperpersonal theory because the Profile Section encourages selective self-presentation, whereby we only reveal our most favorable personality traits through our Facebook pages. I would argue that SIP does not adequately represent the Facebook psychological space because “Profiles” do not give adequate views of a person. Fortunately, I used the impressions I had formed during FTF communication to guide my analysis of their Facebook pages; FTF remained the most accurate impression formation medium, while Facebook allowed me to “keep in touch” with many of my acquaintances through quick, asynchronous communication every now and then.

Assignment 2

Finding a chat room that isn’t saturated with requests to “share pics” or “chat with hot 17/m” is like finding a college student who doesn’t use Facebook. However, with a little perseverance, I managed to find a fairly innocuous chat room in which to make a new e-friend. In MySpace’s Alternative Music room, I watched as people with fashionably cryptic usernames chatted about nothing very important. When the conversation turned to siblings, I added that I was an only child. One girl commented that she was also an only child, noting that we were “ossm.” I seized the opportunity to get to know this fellow sibling-free alternative music listener and asked who her favorite bands were, sparking a conversation. By virtue of her pink font and presence in this particular chat room, I guessed that she was probably in high school. My guess was confirmed when I looked at her profile, which told me that she was a 16-year-old from the United Kingdom.

After chatting with this girl for about twenty minutes and simultaneously scanning her profile, which contained pictures and lists of her favorite things, I thought I had a pretty good grip on her personality. Through selective self-presentation she projected the image of an intelligent, entertainment-savvy adolescent prone to brooding. While her peers might have seen a hip girl who knew something they didn’t, her numerous photographic self-portraits and efforts to shirk conformity in all the usual ways struck me as pretentious. I didn’t hold this against her, though; we’ve all been sixteen and she seemed like a nice person.

Through chatting with her, I felt I had good reason to think she was agreeable, conscientious, and a bit introverted, which leads me to believe that I might not have found her attempts to appear superficially edgy quite as salient had we interacted face-to-face. Here, the hyperpersonal model scores a point; her selective self-presentation led me to form a more intense impression of her personality than I would have in a “real world” context, even though this intense impression was tempered by my own recognition of it possibly being an unfair assessment. The hyperpersonal model also accounts for how easily I pigeonholed her. Without enough first-hand interaction from which to glean information about her as an individual, I lumped my new friend into a category I formed sometime in high school. Since I had friends who presented themselves online in similar ways when we were sixteen, I assumed that she shared certain features with them, including mild neuroticism and a fairly high degree of openness. The hyperpersonal model calls this tendency to stereotype “overattribution processes.” I think behavioral confirmation, another feature of the hyperpersonal model, was also an important aspect of my interaction. Because I showed appreciation for her taste in music, she may have unconsciously presented a slightly more confident version of herself, helping to perpetuate my impression of her as a discerning listener. As for the developmental aspect of the hyperpersonal model, I think I would have been able to form a more comprehensive view of her personality if we chatted longer and more often. However, I think the breadth of my representation was enhanced by her profile, which the hyperpersonal model does not seem to account for. Though I have no way of knowing whether my impressions would have been dulled in a face-to-face interaction, there is reason to believe that the factors which make up the hyperpersonal model would lead to a more extreme online assessment of her personality. Overall, my impression of alternative music girl seems to be most consistent with this model’s predictions.

2 O.C.E.A.N.

For this week’s exercise, I decided to enter the Internet world of MySpace and observe a user’s profile. Of course, the first things I look at on their page are age, gender, and location (to determine race). The user is a 19-year old male from Pensacola, Florida (an American from the South). In the back of my mind, I picture a young Caucasian male in his pickup truck with a confederate flag license plate. The quote on his page reads "I’m the DD........Drunk Driver", and I immediately form a negative impression, imagining an irresponsible teen.

Then, I move on to the bulk of his profile, filled with video clips and surveys, to formulate an impression. The responses to the survey are short and basic, but he is sharing some personal information –leading me to believe that he is somewhat open. I got the impression that he was immature because some of the responses are childish (“yukky”, or “I like hitting things on my head”). However, I think he is slightly conscientious when he jokes around about weight and fat jokes. With regard to neuroticism, I believe it is difficult to determine through this media, judging by the array of Florida Gator décor on his page, he might be obsessed, but it is inconclusive. It was also hard to determine if he was extraverted or agreeable. These results are relatively similar to the findings in Handcock & Dunham (2001). The colors he chose for his page were bright, and gave off a welcoming vibe while portraying a warm personality, as opposed to the coldness associated with the Internet.

I think that both the Hyperpersonal and the Cues Filtered Out theories contributed to my overall impression of the user. I based my impressions off of limited cues (the brief survey and information) and ended up generalizing to form an overall negative impression. I know that this impression is undeveloped because the cues provided were limited to what I could find on his page. I made a stereotypical generalization based on those few facts, which concur with the Hyperpersonal model. Then I see that he is part of the “Redneck yacht club” group and it confirms my generalization. From the little information gathered, I concluded that he was in irresponsible and childish - an overall negative impression.

------------------------------------------------

Comments:

http://comm245brown.blogspot.com/2007/09/my-new-chat-room-buddy.html

http://comm245brown.blogspot.com/2007/09/dissed-by-sox-girl.html

Chat Rooms are Creepy

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.

A teen chat

I googled chat rooms and at random picked freejavachat.com. I was more interested in observing than interacting, so I picked a room with a title suggesting that it was for teenagers, and didn't have a topic of discussion, just general chat. I also chose to limit the time I would spend observing my target to 5-10 minutes to see how drastically it would affect my impression.

I watched the chat progress for only a short time before one person stood out to me, I'll refer to him as L. On this site, you are assigned a nickname "Visitor_(some number)" until you change it yourself. L had a unique name, but one person in the room did not. L took it upon himself to preach to this visitor, telling him that he should pick a new name. Without prompting, L told the room the he had been going as "L" for years now. Once the visitor changed his name (admittedly, he changed it to something ridiculous), L engaged in a fairly normal conversation about the different countries of the world and their relative sizes. He also did not engage in a common practice of typing out descriptions of physical actions for humor, ie. "A slaps B in the face", when a few other people were goofing around with it.

From this short observation, I made several assumptions about L. I believe that he spends a lot of time in chat rooms, is probably over 20 years old, is male, and goes into chat rooms to engage in meaningful conversations. With my mental impression of L that I formed in a very short time, I don't feel that I'm able to describe his strengths in the big 5 traits with any sort of confidence. The observation gave me much stronger impressions about his physical attributes than his personality.

The intentional limitation of the time I observed L makes it hard for me to say with any conviction whether Social Information Processing applied to my experience. All I can say is that I observed L for a short time, and do not feel confident that I know his personality at all. This is in accordance with SIP because it says that in CMC more time is needed to exchange social information.

My encounter seemed to concur with CFO in the sense that the lack of cues prevented me from knowing anything about L's personality. I also know nothing about his likes, interests, personal life. Even though I watched him interact with several people, I feel that my impression of him is very shaky.

The hyperpersonal model didn't seem to fit my experience. I did not over-attribute L's personality traits. Perhaps this is because I didn't observe him long enough to see any threads to grab hold of, but it is also possible that I never would have found them. The developmental aspect of the HP model concurs with SIP, so on this point, I agree with the HP model. I didn't experience the other three criteria of the HP model. This could have been because of the limited time, or my particular subject's lack of self-disclosure.

Making Friends in the Dungeon: Assignment #2

Facebook and Myspace are nothing new to me. I have read hundreds of LiveJournals, pretended to be interested in a number of online dating services. However, there has always been something missing in my daily diet of online interaction. And now, finally I know what that something missing is: the chat room. The bliss of the synchronous communication between e-strangers is something to be embraced by all users of the Internet. And with topical chats ranging from "Cocker Spaniel Enthusiasts" to "Kenny G Fans United" the possibilities certainly are endless!

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...