Self Selective Coolness

I have always been a fan of instant messaging, especially with the ability to have a semi-synchronous conversation, with the leeway of taking the time to think about what you want to say. However, I am not a very big fan of anonymity, and thus only talk to people I know. This homework assignment made me very uncomfortable at first, because I really did not want to be in a situation of having to talk to a stranger. However, after finally finding someone who was willing to have a real conversation, rather than do what most other chatters are looking for at 1 am…I really enjoyed myself. I talked to Joey, a seventeen year old from North Carolina. As we talked, our conversation turned into a discussion of the differences of the South and the North.
Joey was very open during the conversation, telling me as much as possible about his town in the deep South. At first I did not find him to be very agreeable. He kept pressuring me to go into an MSN chat (we started off in a private chat from a chatroom) and then kept trying to convince me to send a picture. At first I thought he was neurotic with all his demands, and I feared he would refuse to continue the conversation if I did not send pictures or change chat settings. Eventually he forgot about sharing pictures as we compared our hometowns, and my opinion about him changed. No longer was he persistent and demanding. Instead, he and I both exchanged lots of interesting questions to find out what these two parts of the United States thought of each other. He answered my questions very openly and became very extroverted. He teased me for not knowing about things called ‘double wides’ (some type of trailor…I still don’t get it..) and went out of his way to try to send me to links that would show me one. He was very conscientious of the questions I asked, answering in as much detail as possible.
I think the Hyperpersonal Model best describes my impression formation. Since we had a talk that basically made us talk about our stereotypes, it caused us both to selectively self present information about ourselves. If we met in real life, perhaps we would have a lot in common and get along great. But through the nature of our conversation, we only talked about the ways we were different due to our backgrounds. We selected what information we wanted about our hometowns in order to give an idea of our personalities. For example, he said that he shops at Walmart all the time and I said I have only been there three times in my whole life. He assumed that all Northerners need to have designer clothes and own nice things. In reality, there just does not happen to be a Walmart close to me, but perhaps I would shop there if one was built. I told him I liked Target, but he claimed that was much fancier to Walmart. By selecting the information we wanted to share in order to create a descriptive stereotype, I think it caused us to over attribute parts of our personality too. Joey started talking about things that most people associate with the South, such as how much he loves Nascar (he wants to be a professional racer). His comments about himself and his town caused me to over generalize what his daily life is like, and what living in the South is like. He purposely talked about attributes of his town that he knew would be different, such as how people live in trailers and how the tallest building in his downtown is only eight stories high. Perhaps I accidentally exaggerated and over generalized what people from Manhattan are like in order to represent what the North was like. Although we may have formed stereotyped opinions of one another, it was still great getting to know someone with a very different background than myself.