Communicative Subtlety in Multimedia Chat
How many ways can you say "Hi" at the Palace?
By their very nature, humans love to communicate. They
love to express themselves. They love to explore subtlety in communicating
and expressing themselves. In the "real" world of five senses, people
freely can experiment with language, voice modulation, dress, hand gestures,
facial expressions, body language, even perfume - all as ways to communicate
nuances in meaning. In cyberspace, the sensory options are not nearly
as numerous or versatile. But that doesn't mean that subtlety is absent.
When immersed in a medium that places some restrictions on paths to communicate,
humans get downright clever and creative in overcoming the barriers. In
the traditional text-only chat environments, users have developed a wide
variety of symbols, phrases, and acronyms - a whole new vernacular - to
get their ideas and feelings across to their cyberpeers. In the newer
graphical/auditory chat environments, the addition of even relatively
simple sight and sound options has provided considerably more elbow room
for subtlety in communication and creative self-expression. And sometimes
these environments provide options for communication that are NOT available
in the real world!
As the simplest example, let's explore the
vicissitudes of saying "hello." In cyberspace, how many different ways
can you do it?
Tinkering with Text Balloons
To answer that question, let's travel to
the Palace - a social (chat) community
on the web that combines typed-text communication with graphics and sound.
We pop into Harry's Bar at the Main Mansion site, hoping to find our friend
Lucy. She's not there, so we settle down into one of the plush chairs
and watch the members and guests talking together down on the oriental
carpet in the middle of the room. Suddenly, we see Lucy standing in the
doorway from the Red Room.
We type "hi lucy" and hit return. Now if Lucy is a good friend, we've
committed a bit of a faux pas here. This salute is rather lukewarm. It's
perfectly appropriate as a polite greeting to strangers and casual acquaintances,
but for a friend it's a week gesture. First of all, without even one exclamation
point, or caps, there's very little evidence of enthusiasm. The fact that
we didn't even bother to capitalize Lucy's name (or the "H" in high) might
be taken as a sign of indifference or laziness. Lucy may wonder why we
seem a bit distant and formal.
So let's try again.
Lucy appears in the doorway, only this time we type "Hi Lucy!" That's
better. Caps, an exclamation point... some enthusiasm! An unspoken norm
at the Palace is that one's degree of enthusiasm is loosely correlated
with the number of exclamation points in the greeting. The more, the better,
unless your exclamations start piling up in an ostentatiously long row
and spill over to another line of typed text. That might be considered
overkill... overly eager enthusiasm (or a perseveration indicative of
an underlying organic mental disorder).
For a slightly different interpersonal effect, we might use a "spikey"
- also known as an "excited balloon." It indicates, obviously, that we're
excited to see Lucy. The enthusiasm here is a bit different that simply
using exclamation points. The very electric-looking spikey has a more
visceral impact. It will be much more quickly noticed by Lucy than a standard
text balloon. It also will be quickly noticed by other users. We're making
it very clear to everyone in the room that we're saying hello to 
Lucy and are elated about seeing her. It also takes a bit more keyboarding
effort to create a spikey, which suggests that we went out of our way
to show our enthusiasm for Lucy. A spikey with just "LUCY" (in caps) is
like jumping up out of your chair while shooting your arms into the air
with surprise and delight. As with abundant exclamation points, a spikey
greeting will cause others to think that we must be good friends with
Lucy. But if you use too many spikeys (or exclamation points) with too
many people, others will assume that you're putting on an act and being
a bit disingenuous.
Maybe we want to show emotion other than enthusiasm when Lucy arrives.
Maybe we want to show warmth, affection. For quite some time in many chat
environments, this affection has been expressed by the use of brackets
or parentheses that "hug" the name of the fellow user. It's interesting
that this technique rarely is used at the Palace. It's hard to say why.
Palatians do like to think of their culture as unique - especially its
graphical features. So widespread habits from other virtual communities
may be viewed as a bit hackneyed when applied at the Palace.
Here's another greeting that one rarely sees at the Palace, even though
it does involve a uniquely Palatian visual effect. Perhaps it's rarely
used because a similar greeting violates norms in the real world. If we
put up a rectangular "sign," it will hang in the air indefinitely until
we type more text and hit return. In the real world, it would be like
hanging a "Hi Lucy!" poster around your neck. That may work fine at airports
or as a way to catch the attention of family when you're among a crowd
on TV. But otherwise, it's a bit strange. Other Palatians would probably
interpret our "Hi Lucy!" sign as overly persistent and attention-seeking,
as if we were repeating "Hi Lucy!... Hi Lucy!....Hi Lucy!" over and over
again.
A "thought balloon" greeting also is rare because it doesn't have an equivalent
in the real world. Could we think "Hi Lucy!" and expect her to know that
we were saying hello? Not in real life. Not unless we're a schizophrenic
afflicted with delusions of thought-broadcasting. For that very reason,
our "Hi Lucy!" in a thought balloon would look quite strange at the Palace.
People might think that we simply mistyped, don't understand how to use
Palace commands, or deliberately are trying to under-emphasize our greeting
to Lucy by playing our cards close to our chest. They may wonder if we're
muttering to ourself, or expect other people to read our mind. They may
simply WONDER about us....and why Lucy has this effect on us! Lucy probably
will be thinking the same things.
Actions Speak Louder...
The beauty of the Palace compared to text-only chat is that we (or rather,
our avatars) can MOVE. When Lucy arrives we could "run" to her side. She
most likely will notice this and take our gesture as a sign that we feel
close to her. With exclamations punctuating our hello, we are showing
bursting enthusiasm that may cause people to take notice. We obviously
like Lucy because we scream and run to her side when she arrives. Running
to Lucy with a spikey would magnify this effect even more, though it might
be a bit over the top in expressing enthusiasm.
Running to Lucy with a simple "Hi Lucy" WITHOUT exclamations or spikeys
can take on a very different meaning. Lucy most likely will know that
we ran to her, but in a crowded room other people probably won't notice
this. It's a more subtle, private, even secretive way to express our hello.
If it's an uncrowded room, people will surmise that we are close to Lucy.
They may even think that we are an "item" and are not hesitant about letting
others see that.
Just Between You and Me
(whispering)
If we want a guarantee that other people
will not overhear our greeting to Lucy, we can always "whisper" our hello
to her. Most chat environments have the option of sending a message to
someone that other users cannot see. At the Palace, NO ONE can see it,
not even a wizard or a god. This is something that is NOT possible in
the real world, which makes it feel very special, even powerful as a unique
feature of cyberspace. It's almost as if you are telepathically connecting
your mind to the recipient of your whisper. Whispering "Hi Lucy" is a
sign of intimacy, something shared just between friends. It's a bit secretive,
as if you don't particularly want anyone else to know that you're saying
hello. If the recipient of your whisper is someone you don't know well,
they may experience your hello as a bit intrusive on their psychic space,
or as an "advance" of some sort - perhaps a gesture of friendship, or
a hint at desired intimacy.
All of this holds true for any chat environment
where private messaging is possible. But at the Palace, there's an added
visual dimension. When you whisper, everyone else's avatar fades into
grey while just you and the recipient of your message remain in bold,
living color - as if the whole world has dropped away, leaving just the
two of you. It's a very powerful visual effect. And at the Palace you
also are located within the visual space of a room, which is absent in
text-only chat. This can significantly affect how whispering is perceived.
For example, there's a subtle difference between whispering to someone
from the other side of the room (especially a crowded one), as opposed
to being right next to them. Our private "Hello Lucy" launched from across
the room means that we have singled her out from the crowd and are attempting
an intimate connection... yet we are also keeping our distance. If we
are next to her - especially if we run to greet her - our salute is a
much more unambivalent expression of intimacy.
Speak to Me!
If we so desire, we can actually SAY hello
to Lucy. She can hear our actual voice and any emotional expression we
desire to put into it, just as in real life. This can only happen, however,
if we created a sound (wav) file and sent it to her. In fact, we could
send Lucy as many different "Hi Lucy" sound files as we care to create.
As long as she has them in her Palace sound folder, she (and we) will
hear our greetings loud and clear when we type the appropriate command.
Because no one else will hear the sound, the greeting is a truly private,
intimate experience. Maybe Lucy also has a sound greeting for us! When
people exchange sounds, it binds their friendship in at least two different
ways. First, they made a special effort to create the greeting specifically
for their Palace chum. Second, we are sharing a "real-life" piece of ourselves
- the sound of our voices. Stepping out of cyberspace anonymity (like
sharing photos) is almost always interpreted as a gesture of friendship
and intimacy.
Worth a 1000 Words
Finally, we may not have to type or say anything to greet our dear Lucy.
Thanks to the visual wonders of avatars, and especially animated avatars,
we can don any picture that conveys our hello. We can wave, turn a cartwheel,
slip her a high-five, clasp our hands over our head... or flap. It's good
ol' body language, which can be quite powerful. The emotion and meaning
we convey in our graphical greeting is limited only by our imagination.
Some of these visual effects may have universal meanings that everyone
in the room will recognize. Or it may be a visual effect that will be
meaningful only to Lucy. The fact that she is the wind beneath our wings
may be our little secret.
See also in The Psychology of Cyberspace:
TextTalk: Psychological Dynamics of Online Synchronous
Conversations in Text-Driven Chat Environments
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