I apologize to anyone that this might offend, but I figured I should let everyone know what a tragic experience I encountered in the psychological space I chose.
For this assignment I chose to observe, as well as, interact in an online chat room. Since chat rooms are of sort of a foreign language to me, I wasn't quite sure where to start so I did what any other person would do. I search "chat room" on Google.com and entered the first one it came up with. The chat service was run by Optichat.com, and I selected the room titled "20 Somethings" in hope of chatting with individuals relative to my age.
For the first 15 minutes or so, I simply observed the memebers of the room chatting away with one another. I found it rather hard to follow all the of the messages quickly scrolling up the screen, but eventually I got used to it. It was soon after that, that I encountered a rather shocking experience. One of the members of the room "whispered" to me (spoke to me privately). This indivdual went by the name of N*****KILLER. I immediately found this to be both appalling, as well as, extremely ignorant and wanted nothing to do with this person, but I was intrigued to see why a person would use choose such a name like this when communicating with strangers. I asked this individual why he chose such a name and where he/she got off thinking that it was acceptable. The individuals reasonings consisted of how it was "funny and cool," and he/she also explained that they believed that "slavery was cool and should be brought back." Throughout our conversation I explained to this individual many times that the only people that think like this nowadays are uneducated and ignorant, and also that it definitely wasn't funny by any standard. After hearing some of the individual's answers an impression was easy to form. I imagined the person to be a younger male, possibly from the south, and to be quite uneducated. I also analyzed this person on the basis of the Big 5 Traits.
Neuroticism- I found this individual to be quite neurotic, considering the fact that they see an entire race of people as threatening, so much so that they have to use derogatory slang in their screen name. I was almost sure that this person is very self-concious and actually a coward in "reality" due to the fact that they have to express themself like this in an online environment.
Openness- It was quite blatant that this individual is extremely "closed" due to the fact that their statements are out of pure ignorance.
Extraversion- I found this person to be introversive. I can't see thoughts like this allowing an individual to have a large group of friends in todays world, as well as, the face that he/she chose to sit home on the computer and talk to me about this appalling topic rather than be outside with friends somewhere.
Agreeableness- I found this individual to score rather low on the ageeableness scale. His/her views are completely opposite of those of social norms, and the individual even tried to tell me that I was wrong and "not cool" for not appreciating his/her screen name.
Conscientiousness- It almost seemed apparent to me that this individual completely lacked a conscience. He/she obviously didn't think to carefully (or at all) before they acted and had a total disregard for others around them.
Once I formed my impression, I looked into the individual's profile (which they were dumb enough to make while using a name like this) and found out that this person was 16 year old Jon, from Virginia. So, I wasn't to far off from my initial judgement (that is if the profile is true). But I feel that my impression of "Jon" was formed more along the line of the Hyperpersonal model. I believe this because the Hyperpersonal model says impressions will be more extreme either in a positive or negative way, and right of the bat my impresson of Jon was extremely negative. I definitely used the "overattribution process" to form my exagerrated impresson of Jon because I picked up that he was a younger kid from the way he typed and some of the language and grammar he used. Also, I'm almost positive Jon used the "behavioral confirmation" because he knew what I thought of him, so he continued to act in a way that just allowed my impression of him as a racist to grow stronger. I believe that only part of the Hyperpersonal model that wasn't present was the "developmental aspect," and this was so because time wasn't exactly an issue because it didn't take me long at all to form my impression of Jon.
For my first time in a chat room I encountered a quite unfortunate experience and although I'm sure there are more people out there like Jon, I just wish there was something that could be done about it. Once again, I apologize to anyone that this might have offended.
~Will
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I just want to say that I understand a lot of things he was saying were probably extremely horrid and difficult to read, let alone continuing to do so. However, I kinda get the impression that it was just some punk kid who was saying stuff just to rile you up. It was clear that you yourself were not open to his ideas. The fact that he could not support his own arguments soundly and only with "cause its funny" and that his typing was poor is also evidence that it was just some bored kid. What I think he got more delight out of was not being a proponent of white supremacy but of making you upset, which you definitely became. He was definately selective in what he chose to show you, and I think he would get his ass kicked if he acted like that in the real world.
Hey Will,
That sounds like a really uncomfortable experience. Last week I wrote about how much of my life depends on people who use the Internet for good, and it's always kind of a shock to run into people who aren't as kind.
I have to say, though, I got the same impression as Yim Lin: I think sometimes anonymity, or even just geographical separation, lets people play roles that they'd never play in face-to-face conversation. I think it's likely that this kid was trying to have some fun or come up with a story for his similarly-immature friends. What do you think, Will?
Post a Comment