Chatrooms Did not vanish, they evolved

Brushaud Stanislaus
CAS 283
9/3/2014
BLOG #2

Just as technology evolved throughout the years so have communicating and interacting as well.  Discussed in our textbook Internet Relay Chat also known as IRC was developed in 1988. This was our first form of a chatroom. People connected to servers, supported by different networks available at the time and were able to communicate via text. As the years progressed CMC finally came along the lines of instant messaging and web-based chats. But, at this current stage in life this form of communication has slowly began to diminish due to texting and social media related forms of communication. However virtually based gaming has picked up the pieces of the chatroom environment and found a way to encrypt the format into their gaming programs.

There are many kinds of chatrooms, some with just audio, video and audio, or simply text based. From experience I have been through multiple forms of these chatrooms. At one point in my life I was a member of the game DC Universe Online. This software opened you to a world based network capable of creating your own hero or villain and pretty much doing anything you want. You were given the ability to create a being based on your own preferences. A form of selective self-presentation can be applied here because people were able to create their avatars of how they would want people to view them. I have encountered characters that preferred to be the opposite sex to as far as people wanting to be a gorilla in a batman costume. The language used throughout the game was based around that type of universe: codes, insiders, relationships of all forms were prevalent. Though my experience was normal playing the game I cannot say the same for the audio only created chatrooms.

If anyone ever played games from Call of Duty or Battlefield, you instantly know exactly where I am going with this! These networks managed to become very negative similar to comments posted on YouTube. Applying what we learned in class about face to face interaction we can see from these networks that people are more comfortable expressing their selves online than in person.  Fighting online is a lot easier online than confronting someone in their face. Majority of the people that have insulted me or made negative connotations towards me I would confidently say 85% of them would never say any of what they said to my face. The reasoning behind this I would blame for the lack of social context cues. This ability to communicate anonymously while interacting gives everyone the ability to speak freely regardless of their position in society such as: jocks, geeks, nerds etc.

 

Like our outlines points out, without cues people become self-focused and don’t care about others. People just begin to hate each other just based on their interactions online. With these problems developing it opens up new doors for potential dangers for CMC. For example cyberbullying, the use of electronic communication to bully someone. Cyberbullying usually is a form of intimidation or simple threats but through the years this problem has gotten very serious and no longer a matter to sweep under the wrong. Cyberbullying has the ability to destroy and end lives of all ages. And as everyday users of the evolving CMC ways of life we are the only ones capable of adapting and changing these forms of communication for the good of human kind.