The IRC World: An Unconscious Pretending In A Real-Time World

brain
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow.

by Curt Castillow

When I was a kid, my friend Mark Saxon was given a “CB” radio for Christmas. It was one of the nicer quality CB’s that received long-range signals. Excited with the prospect of communicating to the world, we began at once talking to strangers. Most individuals we spoke with were within our state, but occasionally on a cloudy day, our receiver picked up far away places. One such place was Australia. Mark and I would spend hours—no—days talking with a world of people we hadn’t previously met. I don’t have a CB anymore but I do have a computer. Instead of a handheld receiver, I have a keyboard, and, instead of communicating by airwaves, I communicate by bytes and bits. I find it just as fascinating to communicate today with a complete stranger in the UK as I did back then with one in Australia. It is that real-time communication that appeals to the IRC and MOO users. Though both IRC and MOO group users apply real-time technology to communicate, there is a subtle difference in the way in which they interact online. The difference is in the their conscious or unconscious effort to pretend to be something they are not.

In the MOO world, users interact in a pretend world of textual sights, sounds, and places. A user may find himself in a conversation with a stranger in a tree house or a jet tub. They consciously make an effort to imagine they are in the tub and make comments like “The water feels great!” Conversely, in the IRC space, there is no pretend world of make-believe. Users interact with each other without pretending to be anyone but themselves or anywhere but at home behind their computer. They don’t try to imagine they are in a closet or a gypsy wagon, just as I don’t try to imagine I am grain silo when I speak with my sister by telephone. As she and I talk, I acknowledge she’s in a car on a cell phone, and she recognizes I’m behind my desk at home. We don’t try to pretend we’re anywhere else nor anyone different then what we are—brother and sister. In the IRC world, people don’t try to consciously pretend, but in a sense they still do only they do it unconsciously. Let me explain.

The “anonymity of interaction in IRC allows users to play games with their identities” and be something unlike their real selves. Their “boundaries delineated by cultural constructs of beauty, ugliness, fashionableness or unfashionableness, can be by-passed on IRC. It is possible to appear to be, quite literally, whoever you wish” (Reid, 1991). I don’t believe most users deliberately try to be someone their not, but it’s a phenomenon that just happens. I noticed as I spoke with a user in an IRC environment, I was a little more upbeat and friendlier than I am in person. I wanted to make a good impression with him. This phenomena found in IRC users is not exclusive to cyberspace interaction. It can be witnessed in person as well. For example, we might find ourselves on edge with a family member then answer the front door and greet our neighbor with a friendly smile. On a first date, a man says all the right things and acts the right way but it may not be his real self. The blind dater doesn’t consciously deceive his date into believing he is something different than he really is, but he does it anyways.

Why are we not genuine with others online or in person at the front door? I don’t know all the reasons, but I think I know one: I suspect one reason is because we fear if others knew our “real selves”, they would dislike us. So we put on our best behavior and appear to be better than we actually are.

So whether I was trying to convince a trucker on my CB that I was older than I actually was, or convince a musician on the IRC channel that I’m a better guitarist than I really am, I want to look the part I think they believe I should be. In essence, I want to be to be more than I really am—I want to liked—whether it’s really me or not.


(I participated in three different channels on the EFNet: #apple, #horses, and #(I can’t remember the title but the people were foul)