For my post this week, I ventured into the seedy underbelly of the Internet known as Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. To make a very long story short, IRC was started way back in the 80s to fulfill one programmer’s need for synchronous communication. Since then, it has endured expansion, revision, regulation, schisms, splits and more to become the most sprawling, poorly documented and yet one of the most widely-used sections on the net. (For those of you, like me, who enjoy reading on the history of the Internet, here is a little more from Wikipedia.)
As I have said by now, IRC is a synchronous communication space. People connect via their computers to IRC servers and the join particular themed chat rooms known as “channels.” On my adventure, I connected to the EFnet servers (which has a rightful claim to be a descendent of the original IRC networks). After browsing through the listing, I elected to join #bioshock, a moderately busy channel dedicated to discussing the eponymous recently released computer game.
Based solely on the topic of the channel, my impression of the chat’s participants was immediately skewed towards an exaggerated, hyperpersonal characterization. I imagined a room full of (fellow) nerds sitting around bantering about the latest popular game release, with a name and topic only a nerd could love.
The chat was already scrolling at a furious pace when I finally managed to connect. Being that I was a complete outsider, I decided to try and track one target’s interactions amongst the five or six active participants. Although the channel listed over 100 active participants, the majority, including myself, did not say anything. This is important because I feel that the number of silent “lurkers” in the channel may have had an effect on my perception of the discussion’s rhetoric. Instead of interpreting the somewhat heated arguments as friendly or personal debates, the participants seemed to me to be jockeying for support of the other people in the channel. This “demagogue” trait definitely gave me a more negative perception of the participants that I might otherwise have had.
The argument (about, ironically, whether it was more semantically correct to call a particular action “hacking” or “bypassing security”), which I observed for about two hours, seemed to coalesce around two distinct leaders, whom I will call “user x” and “user y.” (The names have been changed to protect the innocent.) Both seemed to be extraordinarily extroverted, although this may have been a hyperpersonal assumption on my part due to the relative inactivity of the other channel members. Also, they seemed to be highly neurotic, choosing every time to expound on each other's negatives in order to kindle the flame war. By association, they appeared to be low on agreeableness, although they were supported by other chatters that agreed with their position. Perhaps this indicates some level of agreeableness that I could not see as an outside observer. They appeared to be very open and lacking in conscientiousness; the language was incredibly foul and horribly insulting to the point where I'm certain almost nobody would use it outside of the Internet.
These two users’ communications certainly seemed to confirm the hyperpersonal model. Every time one of them would say something, the other would pick out a small detail from the message and expound on it, drawing characterizations of one another with progressively increasing distortion. Eventually, these hyperpersonal impressions that user x and user y had of one another caused the whole discussion to devolve into insult hurling and to lose any productive meaning. One would have been hard-pressed to predict any other outcome under those circumstances. The fact that both sides could not see past the straw men built on selected traits in their opponents both confirms the hyperpersonal model and spells demise for any similarly-situated discussions.
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3 comments:
As someone who can understand an interest in web history, I can appreciate IRC's use in an almost historical context. Since IRC is one of the older forms of synchronous communication online, I feel that probably affects the type of person who would use that medium. Most casual internet users have probably never even heard of it.
In spaces like this, users can feel a sort of technological elitism, and it probably lends itself to discussions of tech topics such as new video games. What is interesting to me is that we make this association with other mediums as well. For instance, we still associate Facebook with very informal, social discussions. Casual misspellings and coarse language are standard on these mediums. On professional forums or more formal websites, this would be looked down upon much more. MySpace users are often expected to be more artistic and likely to want to discuss music. All of these sites have recently tried to change their images, so that they can appeal to a larger audience. Ultimately, the more users they can attract, the more money they can bring in from advertisements.
Actually, to start off with, with a contemporary, innovative game like Bioshock, it's likely that you'll see the hardcore, programmers, casual gamers, and 13 year olds, which you likely encountered. There aren’t many communities on IRC that find a sort of camaraderie in a flame war, and it’s unlikely that was one of them.
As for the IRC channel, I wouldn’t bet on the fact that the mentioned “participants” were “jockeying for support” since many lurkers are often AFK, or away-from-keyboard. Many channels consider these inactive users to be a sign of support, a way to say “Hey, our channel is better than your channel because it has 23214121 people, even though that most of them never say anything and even if 1/10 of them talked, the channel would be swamped.” Those who actually talk probably consider their conversation semi-private, like talking in the middle of the street, a conversation meant for a few, but heard by many. Pity, since most people talking out in public wouldn’t act so rudely, especially to strangers.
The mentality of users on IRC is very similar to the mentality of those who play MMO's. I have found that the more experienced users in these online spaces tend to look down upon the less experienced people(noobs in internet slang). The phrase used by Michael in one of the previous comments, technological elitism, is a perfect description of this sort of behavior. People in these online spaces tend to become very defensive when their point of view is challenged. The mentality that develops is that those who disagree with you are implying some lack of knowledge or skill on your part. Most of the time this isn't the case as there are many ways to go about doing the same thing. More than one person can be right. I do agree with the observation in Chris' original post that the more experienced users will try to rally followers to support their point of view. I find it interesting that people in certain game and chat spaces see the need to prove that they are more knowledgeable, skilled, or experienced, than other users.
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