- Find an appropriate chat room you feel comfortable entering.
- Log into the chat room.
- Observe the chat room activity and look for the evidence of social rules governing the environment and take note of the.
- Enter the conversation once you feel comfortable that you're aware of the social rules.
- After some time of interaction with those in the chat room, create an opportunity to break the rules you observed. What happened?
- Write about your experience in the comment section.
Friday, January 22, 2010
How Do We Communicate in Chat Rooms
Interpersonal communication is governed by rules, and these rules can be extended to social media as well. I'd like to collect your thoughts and observations of a particular chat room. Here's what you need to do:
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19 comments:
I observed and entered a teen chat room where no mention of web cams or being older than the suggested age was allowed or tolerated. After "befriending" a few of these "teens" I mentioned being a bit older than the allowed age and immediately got many private messages of guys wanting to talk privately.I ignored them and later in the conversation mentioned I was a female with a webcam and "mature". I again got many responses from males wanting to chat and then started a chain of other females disclosing the same information. Although these things were strictly against the rules it seems I was in no way the minority. They seemed to be waiting on someone else to push the limit and see what happened and when they saw nothing, they felt more comfortable doing the same..(I would also like to say that I took note of these other names and upon logging out I reported them to the admin of the server so that they would not continue such conversations at my expense) -Jeralyn Duncan
I visited a website called Urbanchat.com and it was a very different experience. I normally dont chat on line unless it's on facebook with family and friends. While making an account to even chat on this website. There are rules you have to abide. One was not to leave hate comments or nude pictures. Admin. can kick you off with no questions. While reading the chats I noticed that people were disclosing all kinds of personal information others were trying to hook up. It was just to funny to be honest. After some time I made a comment of hello. No one noticed me until someone later asked me to send them a picture so they coukd see how I looked. I then started picking fights with others telling them where to go and have a good time with themselves.Shortly after I logged off I went to get back on and my account was deleted and I can't make a new account so the trouble I caused got me kicked off for good... lol What can I say..
Lakeisha M.Dodson
When I entered my chat room that was all about young girls dating older guys, I posed as a girl that was younger that was dating an older man. Then after a few guys started to seem interested i told them that i was in fact my real age, which was closere to them then they were comfortable with and they were not very happy or interested at this point. People are extremely uncomfortable when they see someone has manipulated them. This surprised me a little bit because of the reliablity and trust another person can put in another person that they are just chatting with on a random website.
Michelle Arboe
Most of the chat rooms I went o access are similar to the one above. but being that I was on my work computer that wasn't the best option. I'm not saying my job is great but losing it over a chat room you might see on "To Catch A Predator" wasn't worth it. Since the example was a Twitter account i figured CNN sound off would suffice. I jumped on one of the more "controversial" topics, anything Mr. President says, and chose his recent brush up with the SCOTUS Justices. A few things struck me immediately:1) as the conversation waned the smarminess increased. For the most part people were responding to the specific post by building branches off the tree, but there were a few who were just yelling to be heard. 2) Some of the posts disintegrated into grammatical exercises and seemed far from constructive. 3) There is a report abuse button under every link. This will come into play later. The chat seems to be heavily monitored both by the site and the people using it. 3) People get FIRED UP! My experiment ended when I realized there were people on both sides of the fence so nothing was really out of bounds. Instead of trying to write an outrageous post, I just hit the report abuse button for everyone I could. I wonder what will happen now? M. Kriebel
I went to a chat room called Showchoir.com. I was in show choir through out high school and we would always hear about ridiculous things people would say in this chat room, and after visiting it myself...i can concur that these high school show choir kids are morons. the rules of this chat room are basically talk stuff about other choirs. if you brag about your choir, then you will get into a nasty argument with the others. i started chatting and found out what show choir a few were in. i told the group i went to LC and got a few nasty comments about it. i took that opportunity to start bragging about how great we were, and told them how i thought a few shows were really awful. one person tried to hurt my feelings with a few petty remarks, witch obviously didnt work, but everyone seemed to side with him. i left the chat room, but im sure they will continue to talk badly about LC for the next few days... sorry LC
-Laura Prout
The chat room i chose was called saints fans only. The rules to enter said you must be a saints fan. I entered and observed people talking about how the saints were going to win the superbowl. I pretended to go along with them for a while after which i said i thought the Colts were going to win. I got alot of angry saints fans cursing at me and telling me to exit the chat room. It seemed they didnt want to continue thier conversation until they forced me out of the chat room.
The chat room I chose was titled "Gay Men's Lounge". There I posed as a young 23 year old male who was new to the whole gay scene and was wanting to be with a man for the first time. I received a lot of responses, from men both young and old wanting to meet up and have secret rendezvous. However, when I told the chatters I was really a 19 year old female, I received a lot of hateful responses. It seems that people don't enjoy being lied to and tend to get very angry. I didn't get hateful with any of my messages, I simply signed out. -Lucinda Williams
In my experience, most of the members on the chat room where younger and look more interested in these public chat rooms. The chat rooms in which I was a member most of them mete on their daily basis and have certain rituals they perform. Those members are aware of the other people's presence in the chat room and make questions about their personal life or activities. When I decide to leaving the chat room I have found it is not necessary to say a formal good bye unless engaged in a conversation with another member. However I have found that many members enter and exit these rooms without typing any text at all, and when you stared to question them about something they become less actives and slow typist. Miguel Lopez
I went into a teen chat room and said I was a 21 year old male, with pictures. I cant tell you how many young girls sent me to a private chat. Wanting to no where I was from if I had a car they wanted my pictures and wanted to meet with in ten min of talking. I ended up telling them that I was a female and decided to lecture them on the dangers of meeting random older men off of a chat room no one seemed to like that and the blew up my spot all over the chat room and began to call me nasty names. It was actually very funny
~Meagen Morse~
So this was a very interesting first chat experience to say the least. I entered a chat room for teens 14 and up called knuddles,( I know, sounds hilarious but it sounded easier to start there). This chat room was pretty much a beginners sight. In the middle of chats; other boxes would pop-up to show me things like how to start and examples for what to talk about. This sight may seem very immature in the chat world but i think it was a great place for me to begin learning how to not think and to just simply chat. I tend to always over think what to say next but with chat rooms there seems to always be someone talking so you don't have to always have something to say. I'm actually excited to chat in hopefully many rooms to come. I also hope their all as safe and secure so it will become easier for me.
I'm not sure if I was in a chat or not. All I know is that I ask my nephew to help me find and enter a chatroom. The chatroom I entered they were discussing the on Haiti. Everyone had very good ideas on ways to help Haiti. I was moved by the support the chatroom was having for Haiti. I Didn't know the rules or even if they had any so I decided to help persuade the discussion onto a more controversial topic. Once the discussion was moved from the issues on Haiti to the State of The Union Address thats when the hit the fan
Deven Brown
I logged into a chat room and they really didnt talk about to much a girl was talking about how she quit her job and loved it and was spending all her time in the chat rooms I jumped in and started telling her what kind of person was she that she didnt want to work basically no one paid any attention to me? the rules in the chat room no fighting no cursing no selling
Shannon
I logged into a chat called Republican Passions. It's so funny how many people were putting down President Obama, I observed and agreed with them for a bit. Later in some conversations I admitted to being a liberal and how I LOVED Obamas views and how I thought in time he could take our country to the next level, possibly get in trend with other countries as far as healthcare, etc. People spoke so terrible about him like he had never accomplished a thing. They called him a community organizer, not a president. In the end I was sent messages like " republicans work so you don't have to" lol...it was actually pretty funny and clever, along with several more messages along the same lines.
As a former cheerleader, I decided to go into a site where it was mainly cheerleaders. As I observed their conversations and followed up on their comments I started to join in and agree with some of their comments. After sometime however, one girl said something about being really tired from practice (for a competiton). I then told her that there was really no reason for her to be tired. This then went into the ever famous debt, whether cheerleading is a sport or not. Of course, I argued that such dumb activity should not be considered a sport. Because of that comment, several of them got upset and said that I obviously had no idea what it took to be a cheerleader...
Ivana Guillen
I went in to a nerd room ahahaha it was a room halo fans. I sat and chatted with fans of the game hyping up the conversation and talking about how halo is so great of a game and it was the best game ever made. I had them eating out of my hands and then I brought them to there knees! I told them that call of duty 4 was the best game ever and that they where scifi nerds and that they all live in their mom's basement! Boy, did that ever cause friction! All hell broke loose they told me they were going to find out my ip address and hack into my computer and all my email accounts which i know they can't do so I said my final thoughts told to kiss my arss and peaced out of that room!
----jonjacob
After reading several other comments it seems that the security in these chat rooms is not very efficient. Once we broke the rules of the chat room in most cases nothing happened. For this reason people might think it is easier to mislead others about anything. You cant tell who is typing on the other end of the computer, they might say they are a 23 year old blond looking for a boyfriend when in reality they are a 50 year old man looking for nothing but trouble. In almost every comment it was easy for them to get close to the chat room or a specific person. communication has really changed over the past 15 of 20 years, and we need not to forget just how dangerous it can be.
I think its cool that jon decided to go into a gamers chat room. The only video games I enjoy are guitar hero, rockband, and old school nintendo.
However I know a lot of people who play those kind of games. They even have tournaments. If you go to the 4th floor lounge at the NMC building you will witness a bunch of people very serious about their gaming.
Its pretty entertaining. Idk how people get into those things, but they do.
Lucinda Williams
Lucunda Williams... It's easy to get caught up playing video games. I my self am a gamer I do it because it's the most legal way to calm my nerves and to take out frustration during a long day. It's like smoking cigaret for some people.
Marcus Robinson
i tried the new popular site chatroulette. and I can understand where Jeralyn is coming from. At first i used my cam and only got a few people to stop and talk to me most of which were over seas and we couldn't understand each other. When I cut the web cam off and presented myself as a female the guys tend to want to stay and chat, And after some the things i've seen guys do on there I wont be doing that again! I better get a A for that experiment.lol
Marcus Robinson
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