Assignment 3, Option 1: Deceptively Deceptive Deception

For this assignment, I decided that deception was definitely the more interesting option, and so with some anticipation and little trepidation I logged into a generic chat room and gave myself a generic female name, "Linda," (a reference to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series, but that's unimportant).

True to my expectations, I didn't have to wait long for attention to come my way. Almost immediately I was contacted via one-on-one "whispering" by someone calling himself "Beelzeboss666." Recognizing this name as one of my favorite Tenacious D songs (minus the number), my interest was piqued, and thus began the great deception.

I did pay very close attention to my impression management during this exercise, but even while doing this I was able to form some impressions of my own about my chat partner, which I feel are worth mentioning. First, from his name, I inferred that he was also a Tenacious D fan, which would in all likelihood make him a teenager. This assumption was supported by his use of the Internet slang I so adamantly avoid: things like "lol," substitution of "u" for "you," and so forth.

The rapidity with which he contacted "Linda" one-on-one gave me some more to work with: I was able to infer that Beelzeboss666 probably isn't the most successful person in the world when it comes to relationships and must find it a lot more comfortable to approach girls online than in person. One thing important to note is that I formed all these impressions in under a minute. They would definitely fall under the hyperpersonal model, an example of the overattribution process. Based on absurdly little information and lots of extrapolation, I had formulated a more or less concrete idea of exactly who Beelzeboss666 was. Why this is important comes later.

Now we come to my impression management. I was pretty careful to make sure I came across as genuinely female. Of course the first thing he asked me was the interpersonal probe "a/s/l?" and I responded quickly and directly - in Chapter 3 of Wallace, she states that evasive or indirect answers can arouse suspicion concerning the authenticity of an online persona.

Wallace also states that the prevailing mindset is that women are more emotional than men, so another of my tactics was to respond to Beelzeboss' comments much more animatedly than I normally would have: I made liberal use of exclamation points and interrobangs ("?!" << that thing) and pretended to be genuinely interested in what he had to say. My own morals drew the line at emoticons, however, and I still couldn't bring myself to make smiley faces; but I had told Beelzeboss that I was a college student (and he told me, as I expected, that he was in high school), so there is a chance he merely thought I had outgrown them, that they weren't "in" at institutes of higher learning.

Essentially, I managed the impression I was giving Beelzeboss by making sure very little of my "real" self was visible, acting in ways I normally wouldn't in order to increase the believability of my deception. My self-presentational tactics thus included both self-description (mainly in the form of responses to Beelzeboss' interpersonal probes; I offered little information on my own) and attitude expressions (as described above, with my acting more "female" by means of my utilization of a different chatting style). I feel they were effective in conveying what I was trying to convey, since at no point did Beelzeboss666 overtly question my "femininity."

Obviously, the fact that we were in a chat room, a form of computer mediated communication, affected the self-presentational tactics I was able to use; nonverbal behavior, for instance, is difficult to imitate online (especially since, as I mentioned, I hate emoticons), but there is no doubt in my mind that the impression I formed of Beelzeboss666 was just as instrumental in determining for me how to manage the impression I was making. Having a relatively clear idea of whom I was talking to helped me to decide what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. Had I concluded that Beelzeboss was, say, middle-aged, I would have taken a very different approach and tried to make "Linda" appear more mature; my chatting style would have changed drastically.

All things considered, this was an interesting experience, although I don't think I'll be doing it very often. It seems...a little wrong, on some level.