Comm 245 Blue: Trouble in Wiki Paradise -- Assignment 2

Comm 245 Blue: Trouble in Wiki Paradise -- Assignment 2

Hilarious post, Alex. I liked how you laid out your impressions along the big 5. You were a little light on the hyperpersonal explanation. I thought your first commenter put it quite nicely in his constructive criticism. And Jenna's comment, a little focused on the furries! But good question...

Trouble in Wiki Paradise -- Assignment 2

Supposedly we have less information available to judge friends met online than friends met in person. Both hyperpersonal theory and the cues filtered out theories predict this. Apparently the social scientists behind these three theories never spent time in #Wikipedia.

After connecting to irc.freenode.net and joining the wikipedia channel I spent a few minutes lurking to get the general flow of conversation. What I found was disturbing.

So the guy I observed online, let's call him WikiDude, was apparently in the middle of a long rant on the subject of human sexuality. Specifically, his.

Apparently WikiDude is seventeen. He lives with his parents. He's bisexual. And a furry.

Now personally I've always been of the opinion that a guy should at least wait until his 18th birthday before dressing up like a Pokemon and having sex with other guys. But hey, WikiDude and I just met so I wasn't about to pass judgment.

The conversation then proceeded toward his other hobbies and perseverations. Apparently WikiDude is into editing Wikipedia. No surprise. He's also into vinyl albums, baseball statistics, bottled water, his terrarium, and assorted Spanish cheeses. Fascinating. But as much as I love a good Manchego, really I was just as glad we weren't chatting in person.

Big Five analysis:

Conscientiousness -- High. He is a Wikipedia editor after all.
Agreeableness -- Suspend judgment pending further investigation.
Neuroticism -- Suspend judgment pending further investigation. Probably a good amount though.
Openness to Experience -- High. As a Wikipedia editor with a wide variety of interests it would be impossible to lack a certain innate level of intellectual curiosity.
Extroversion -- High. Online at least. It seems just as likely that he could have been a complete introvert had we met in person though.

All in all, my experiences seemed to lend most support to the hyperpersonal model. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there were cues filtered out. But my impression of him didn't feel impoverished, shallow, or underdeveloped. Rather, thanks to selective self-presentation it was disgustingly palpable. And as the thypothesis would suggest, I wouldn't be surprised if the first impressions of my "CMC partner" were exaggerated or overly intense.

Some final advice: stay out of the Wikipedia IRC channel. Don't get me wrong, Wikipedia is the best. But like laws and sausage, it's a lot better when you don't know how it's made.

Assignment 2

I decided to choose a moderately-populated chat room at random for this assignment.

I didn't have to wait long to be engaged in conversation. After someone made a general call for "a/s/l" I was messaged privately by "rlgator7," a 27-year-old male currently living in Arizona. He's taking classes at a local college and working at a music store part-time. He enjoys reading science fiction and fantasy, and likes techno/trance music.

I spoke to him for twenty minutes to a half an hour before he signed off, saying he had to go to work. It was easy to analyze my impressions of his personality according to the Big Five personality traits. In terms of conscientiousness, he mostly lead the discussion and paid attention to the details of my answers, often asking for clarification, and periodically questioning as to whether he was being too "personal," forward, etc. This overlaps with agreeableness; he was very forthcoming in providing information about himself and used a lot (though not to an excessive degree) of emoticons, which always gives the impression of a more open and friendly personality. We mostly discussed music, and he was respectful of my markedly different tastes. In regards to neuroticism, he seemed fairly calm for the duration of the conversation, though a bit hyper-aware of potentially offending me. Though our main topic of conversation wasn't a "traditionally" controversial topics like politics or religion, we both had very strong opinions as to what constituted a decent band. Despite that, the atmosphere remained very comfortable. He was incredibly open in regards to his own life, willingly supplied information (often without my asking), and didn't expect me to necessarily reciprocate. He was very obviously extroverted, even admitting to this himself ("I only go into these things when I'm bored and have time to kill. They're so vague," were his exact words). He said he preferred face-to-face communication and really didn't spend a lot of time in chat rooms or on instant messenger programs.

My experience resonated perfectly with the Hyperpersonal Theory and the over-attribution process, as I formed a rather definitive impression of this individual almost immediately, despite being given a small amount of completely generic social cues. I felt as if my mental picture was fairly accurate. A lot of selective self-presentation took place on my part, because I am perpetually uncomfortable with giving out finer details online, but (as far as I could tell) he seemed to have no such issues, and he seemed to have no underlying motives in conversing with me other than to "kill time."

Assignment #2: The "Curious 1"

After trying to log-in into many chat rooms, I finally found a psychological space that did not require any information except a nickname. I ended up staying in an anonymous and synchronous chat room for “lonely college students” and personally sent a message to a male from Canada nicknamed “Curious 1.”

Taking an impression formation shortcut, I immediately relied on his nickname and the name of the chat room as cues that influenced my first impression of him. Curious 1 appeared to be exactly as his nickname and the chat room title said he was, curious and eager. We instantly tried to categorize each other by asking for features that are fundamental to an initial impression (s/a/l). He appeared to be satisfied with the basic information and began to use emoticons such as a smile =), which added warmth to the nonverbal online conversation and continued to enhance the socioemotional content of all his messages. Although CMC interaction proved to be not as “warm,” slow, and interrupted than it would be face-to-face (ftf), I was able to form an impression within 75 minutes.

I engaged in queries about his interests, and college-life with the understanding of the concept of reciprocal self-disclosure. Analyzing him based on the Big Five Personality Traits, I made the following observations. Based on his self-presentation, I would rate him high on the extraversion scale. He was very talkative and proceeded to tell me multiple stories about his social life such as how he would always be the last one to leave every party. In terms of agreeableness, he seemed considerate and friendly. I would also rate him high on openness due to his curiosity about me. Based on his ability to lead a comfortable discussion with such enthusiasm, I would rate him low on neuroticism. Although I was able to rate him on those traits, it was difficult assessing his conscientiousness.

When compared to ftf interactions, the initial impression formed through a CMC seems to be lower on breadth but much higher on intensity, which confirms the Hyperpersonal Model. I had to rely on the limited cues he chose to present to me (selective self-presentation) and over-attributed them to form an impression. For example, when he began asking personal questions such as how I look like I immediately assumed that he was eager. Perhaps because I assumed and continued to speak to him as if he was very eager, he found himself acting more forward than usual, which only confirmed my expectations (behavioral confirmation). Also, unlike ftf interactions in which one is provided other cues such as facial expression and hand motion, I found myself concentrating on just the conversation (re-allocation of cognitive resources). The Hyperpersonal Model may not be true in all cases but it justly explains my experience with the Curious 1.

Assignment # 2

For our second assigned blog post, I decided to focus my efforts on Scrabulous.com, which is a gaming site where individuals have the opportunity to create accounts to challenge other account holders to the classic game of Scrabble for free.

Initially, I was surprised to discover that it took about 15 minutes before someone agreed to play a game with me. After several minutes of me attempting to request someone to play with, finally a user by the name of "Alpha Male" sent me a personal invitation to play with him. After fumbling around to get situated with the site, which I had never previously had firsthand experience with, I manged to figure out how to begin to play. I went first, and had about 30 seconds to create my word. Then, I noticed something interesting. "Alpha Male" stated "I can see that you're new at this so I will give you more time to get comfortable without the penalty of losing points". I was shocked at his nice gesture and thanked him for his kindness. While I was generating my words I noticed that he was sending me messages in the private chat column of the game. He told me that he was 24 years old, from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and his name was Steven.

During my forty-five minute long game/conversation with “Alpha Male", I attempted to begin to analyze my impressions of his personality based on the Big Five personality traits we discussed in this course. With respect to his level of conscientiousness, he was very eager to lend me more time to get situated with playing the game, and explained the rules of the game to me every chance he could. He often asked if I needed any help or any more time if he noticed I was taking a long time to make a more. With respect to his agreeableness, he was very upfront about letting me know about his life. He told me personal information about his hobbies, how he started playing scrabble online, and what he liked about meeting new people. He was very extroverted, considering that he picked me out of the group and began to initiate conversation with me before i even thought to do so. He said that he was pretty much an open person and he liked to help people so that is why he tended to frequent gaming sites, and looked to play with newcomers.

My experience was along the lines of Hypersonal Theory and the self-disclosure aspect. He presented information about himself early on to both make me feel more comfortable, but I think he also wanted to make me tell him something about myself as well. I think that is why he presented himself as such a caring, helpful person.

Assignment 2

(I apologize in advance for the length, I've tried to cut it down as much as possible!)

For our second assignment I decided to enter a psychological space not fully classified in Wallace. I joined Yahoo!'s board game service in order to play a casual game of Go (an Asian board game) with some one. The service includes synchronous chat functions so that players may converse in the common room, or in the game room, privately between players. In this way it can be seen as an interesting variant on synchronous chat.

Having enjoyed Go in real life I felt it would be interesting to interact and play with someone else interested in the same game. With the assignment in mind I entered the Beginner Room, and joined a small game with go9127_player (go9 from now on). As I entered I said, “hello” and clicked to start the game. I received no response but go9 started playing. Having not played in a while, I played poorly, but I was hoping to capitalize on that and use it as an ice breaker to ask for recommendations. As soon as I resigned though, go9 started playing the second game. Deciding to continue, I answered his play. Near the end of the game I played a surprisingly good move which finally prompted go9 to speak, “good try/but/too late”. I know I've lost, but for the sake of conversation I followed with, “it's really done?/I guess so, heh”. I was excited that go9 warmed up, and tried to further facilitate conversation by using non judgmental speech. I resigned, but before I could ask what go9 suggests I should work on, go9 adds, “even baby can see it.”

At this point my impression had been that go9 was simply a little shy with communicating with a stranger over the Internet, possibly due to being younger, definitely not late teens or an adult. However, with this one comment, my impression completely flipped. All of a sudden go9 became a conceited and blunt person. The personal attack struck out, making me revise my age beliefs upwards. With a bit of time to calm down I begin to think it may have more to do with language, perhaps go9 was blunt simply because of unfamiliarity with English. I respond, “may want to chose your words more carefully though next time.” to which go9 says, “u r nothing wrong, but bad lucky.” With this last comment my impression starts to ease back a bit. However, when I tried to start a third game, go9 declared, “two games/enough to say who is winnwe/i should say winner/bye”. Again my strong negative impression resurged. This person, regardless of lack of faculty with english, was bored of my beginner play, it seemed to me, and with haughty unconcern, simply left.

Not wanting to end on a bad note, I tried to find another game. Joining one, I again said Hello to the other person. However, not only did I receive no response, the opponent was not starting the game. I waited for 4 minutes before leaving. The next 2 attempted games had the same course of events, save for my patience running out exponentially faster. I quit the last game in under 15 seconds of no response. These cases were interesting in that I had received absolutely no interaction from my targets, yet this very lack of interaction prompted my extremely negative initial impressions that these people where inconsiderate, rude, and aggravating. Looking back I considered that they may be dealing with emergency situations, however the technology of the online space allowed one to easily remove oneself from “waiting for a game” status: use one click to close the window. In real life, it's a simple matter to see if someone is preoccupied and doesn't respond to a salutation, or inquiries, however with synchronous chat it is impossible to know whether the person is rudely ignoring you or legitimately ignoring you.

My reactions and impressions seem to fall mostly in a few aspects of the Hyperpersonal model, while also dipping into Reduced Social Context Cues. My reactions were usually very strong, and my initial impressions, even when changed all seemed “sure”. Go9 had to be younger because go9 was shy. This then changed to go9 had to be a conceited teen because he's acting like a haughty, immature, jerk. Despite the conflicting information, every stage of the impression formation was thought to be sure, until new information appeared. This represents the over attribution process and the re-allocation of cognitive resources ideas of Hyperpersonal. I was inflating the intensity of any impression (both good and bad) and was strongly focusing on the text and presentation using my imagination to fill in the person who could say what was being said. With the no-games following, over attribution itself went to the extreme as I judged people even when not receiving a response. I considered it rude to falsely declare yourself as waiting for a game and not play, leading me to develop negative impressions. This leads into how my experience fits with Reduced Social Context Cues. People were focused on the task of playing and communication was curt or outright lacking. While go9 started at neutral in my mind, each successive player was thought of as more negative. In essence I began to assume people had poor qualities unless proven otherwise.

While I eventually went on to encounter a friendly player (it took a fair amount of time and switching rooms), and developed additional thoughts on the subject, seeing how I'm already over the limit I'll end here. If it's okay, I may add the story and thoughts in a comment.

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.