To find a chat room for synchronous chat, I googled “chat rooms” and found http://www.chat-avenue.com. This site has many different chat rooms for all types of people, ranging from sports chat to gay chat to college chat. Looking for someone I could relate to, I entered Music Chat. It prompted me to create a nickname, so I chose “heythere” as my alias so no one could tell my age, sex, or location without asking. The lines of dialogue between the chatters do not flow evenly and appear to be repeating as well, making it very difficult to follow the conversation. A couple of users are automated “bots”, advertising their webcams and single’s websites. A few users dominated the entire chat room with crude language and inappropriate topics, so I looked for someone to talk to in a private chat. I tried to initiate many private chats, but few users were receptive and ignored many of my requests. Finally I found Coke 1 who spoke with me about musical tastes.
Coke 1’s paralanguage, including his use of capitalization and full sentences in our synchronous chat, indicated a level of formality and maturity. We spoke about our musical tastes before exchanging A/S/L information. Because he liked rap and metal genres, I was able to make guesses about his opinions on a number of other issues. Coke 1 was not sure if he wanted to go to college, so he is extremely different from anyone I have encountered at Cornell.
In terms of the Big 5 Traits, Coke 1 seemed very agreeable because he said he wanted to try sampling artists from my musical tastes. He was open to new ideas, but also sometimes seemed neurotic because he expressed negativity towards his hometown. I do not feel I can rate him in terms of extraversion or conscientiousness, as is predicted by the research in Hancock and Dunham. Because I only had one interaction with him, the breadth of qualities I can rate him on is severely limited.
As is predicted by the hyperpersonal model, I feel intensely about the personality traits I could perceive. Due to reduced cues and over-attribution processes, I have stereotyped Coke 1 based on his musical tastes and level of education. His use of paralanguage was a form of selective self-presentation. As is predicted by the hypotheses of the hyperpersonal model, the breadth of personality characteristics of Coke 1 is smaller, but the intensity of the characteristics is greater.
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2 comments:
I am envious that you found someone who was not creepy to chat with. Coke 1 doesnt seem to fit the profile of many chat room users who have..impure motivations. I think its interesting that the initial conversation was about musical tastes rather than the typical.. ASL location question. Unfortunately the chat room i wound up in did have an overwhelmingly sexual undertone, but I think i managed to chat with someone minimally creepy. My impressions were very similar to those of coke1, and i too feel that the language someone uses is extremely telling of their personality. Especcially in a synchronous chat, correct grammar and capitalization is rare and kind of impressive. I also felt strongly about the user i chatted with, and my experience exemplified the hyperpersonal model as well. I think it is too tempting not to selectively self-represent yourself, particularly if you know the conversation is going to be brief. The idea that the person you are conversing with will never hear, see, or have the advantage of learning about you over time, can easily lead you to be deceptive. It is interesting to think about what the people we chatted with are like in real life, because we will never really know.
Caryn,
I really like your idea of choosing an androgynous screenname. In retrospect, I wish I had been as wise before entering chatrooms. It took me forever to find a normal person to talk to who wasn't interested in what is termed "sexy time". I wonder how Coke1's impression of you or way of talking to you changed as he figured out more information about you. I'm surprised he asked you about music before A/S/L, as most people greet with it. I agree that proper punctuation and grammar makes the person appear formal and mature. I found it annoying that most people used internet slang and shortcuts. It makes me feel like a) they are lazy, b) they are uneducated, or c) they are young or trying to appear young. I would have liked to read more about your observations of coke1, but good job overall!
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