When I hear chat rooms I think of
AOL, Instant Messenger, and the days of grade school.
Back then, chatting online after school was all the rage. Dial up, parental controls, and privacy
were all obstacles we had to hurdle to connect but if you were apart of the
elite few with a screen name, you were ‘in.’ However, it opened the floodgates to an underground channel
for classroom gossip. Armed with a
keyboard and mouse, no one was safe; even the introverts from class were
chiming in!
With the progression of the
internet, we have seen the methods people converse online evolve. From as early as I can remember, email
was the primary tool people used in computer-mediated communication. Then came (for AOL users) the buddy
list and instant messaging, where two people online could instantaneously send
messages back and forth. Pretty
soon users could decorate their chat windows with wallpaper, buddy icons, and a
small profile. It didn’t take long
for chat rooms to catch on, where groups of people could discuss a topic in the
same window all at once.
Fast forward several years- most
people today have at least one account with the three social media powerhouses:
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just
as instant messenger did a decade ago, these sites allow people to connect and
communicate. Other websites that
promote communication of online communities are forums. These sites tend to require less
personal information as people join for the purpose of discussion rather than
connecting. Finally, online news
sources encourage discourse through comments to specific news articles. These websites require little to no
personal information, and it is on these websites where I’ve noticed the most
abrasive conversations. People
feel less responsible for their words when there is no trace linking them back
to a statement.
No comments:
Post a Comment