Note: A longer version of this paper is availble.
The technical apparatus is, then, being made at home with the rest of our world. And that's a thing that's routinely being done, and it's the source of the failure of technocratic dreams that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine. the world will be transformed. Where what happens is that the object is made at home in the world that has whatever organization it already has.
How do people wanting to 'chat' on the internet find suitable partners for that activity? The solution to that problem lies in the explicit naming or implicit suggestion of various kinds of social categories, like 'age', 'sex' and 'location'. But how, exactly, do they do that?
This paper, then, is an exercise in Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA; Hester & Eglin, 1997) as based on the ideas developed by Harvey Sacks in the 1960s (Sacks, 1972a, 1972b, 1992a). An immense part of the mundane knowledge that people use in living their everyday lives is organized in terms of categories that label members of some population as being of certain types. These categories are organized in sets, called Membership Categorization Devices (MCDs). The MCD 'sex' (or 'gender'), for instance, consists of the two categories of 'male' and 'female'. Labelling a person as being male or female carries with it an enormous amount of implied properties, so called 'category-predicates', such as expectable or required behaviours, capacities, values, etc. It is this paper's overall thesis that people who want to chat rely mostly on categorical predications to find suitable chat partners. The question I quote as my title, "hi, a/s/l please?", is massively used as a conventional early step in a chat conversation, where A stands for 'age', S for 'sex', and L for 'location'. A fitting answer to this question would be, for instance, 'frits/20/amsterdam', if that describes the character a chatter has chosen to play.
Finding a chat partner or chat partners is an interactive process between at least two parties. Their job involves a combination of presenting themselves and reading others' self presentations. For each, the job has a structure like 'find an X who wants a Y as a partner', where X is the desired chat character and Y is the character you yourself want to play. The set of XY-combinations varies in scope, of course, from very wide, say any male/female combination, to rather narrow, as we will see. The trajectory that the finding process will take is partly pre-structured by the technology used. Therefore, I restrict my explorations to one particular chat-program, Microsoft Chat, and one particular chat environment, Microsoft Chat Servers.
When logging on to a chat environment, one enters a market of sorts, where the participants are both buyers and sellers: a general sociability-market like a cocktail party. And indeed some writers have characterized chat rooms as 'virtual cocktail parties'. Some participants in a cocktail party, however, may have quite specific purposes in mind, like wanting to meet a particular kind of person, of a particular individual, or even being open to starting a relationship which may endure for some time after the event. The same is true for chats.
The actual search job in a chat environment starts even before logging on, as the chat program used requires you to fil in certain information slots like Real Name and Nickname, while also offering optional slots like Email Address and Profile. When logging on to the chat server, one has a number of options offered as clickable icons with labels like Enter Room, Leave Room, Create Room, Chat Room List, and Users List. When you click on the Chat Room List icon, you get, after a few moments, a list of over a thousand rooms, alphabetically arranged, with the number of participants and sometimes a few words or signs about the topic. You can select a Room and click a button to enter it. When you do, you 'enter' that particular room, getting a new screen.
You now see three windows, a large one to the left, and a small vertical one to the right, and a small horizontal one at the bottom of your screen. The right one mentions the nicknames of the participants, again alphabetically arranged. Your 'nick' should be in it. The nicks can be ordinary first names, sometimes with a number attached to differentiate it from others, while others are suggestive of an interest or presented quality.
In the large window to the left, you will see a more or less steadily growing number of text lines, most of them preceded by '[nick] says:'. These lines can be read by any participant in the room, and they consist of public announcements and shared conversations. It can also happen that you see '[nick] whispers to [your nick]'. In that case, someone has selected you to send you a personal message which only appears on your screen as well as on the screen of the sender, but not of the screens of the other participants. Then there will be participation announcements, i.e. '[nick] [number] has joined the conversation' or '[nick] [number] has left the conversation'.
In the horizontal window at the bottom, you can type one or more lines of text. On its right are five buttons, the first is to 'say' something to the room. If you click it after having typed some text, that text will be displayed in the 'room' (the big window), as [your nick] says: [text]. When you click the third, after having selected one of the nicks from the right window, you will see [your nick] whispers to [chosen nick]: [text]. The fourth button has the effect that what is projected has the form '[your nick] [text]'. It is meant to 'do an action' such as '[your nick] smiles'. Sayings, whispers and actions are formatted in different ways (colours) to differentiate them from each other. What this technical arrangement allows is a mixture of 'talk/action in public' (i.e. in that particular room) and 'talk/action in private' . One can also create a 'whisperbox' for one's 1-2-1 conversations, which is not tied to a specific room.
When you right-click on a name in the right-side window, you get a number of options, including Get Profile, Whisper Box, Ignore, Send Email, Send File and Netmeeting. Get Profile allows you to get more information on that person, if he/she has filled in that part of the form, but often you get 'This person is too lazy to create a profile entry'. The other options mentioned allow you to manage your personal relations with others in various ways: create a Whisper Box, Block any whispering, send a mail or open an Net Meeting session. What seems to be most often used is the Send File option, to send a picture file. This can be (pretended to be) a picture of the sender, a 'self pic', or a 'self', or a more or less pornographic one, a 'hot pic'. Many chatters seem to be really focussed on exchanging pics, which is called 'trading' (cf. Slater, 1998), rather than on chatting as such.
So after creating your self-presentation offline, you log in and then you are confronted with an enormous range of room options online. Some names seem to be designed to come early in the list, by starting with one or more A's, as in A!!!!!!!!!FriendlyChat, while others rely on certain key words. Scanning over a thousand names for those words by scrolling the list might take a lot of time, but the Chat Room List has a search facility. You can type a string and the list will be shortened to having only those with that string in its name. Many room names seem to be designed for being found this way, by containing a number of more or less redundant strings that people might use in a search.
Here are some examples of room names: A!!!!!!!!!FriendlyChat, Animal&Girls, Australia-Sydney-Chat-Room, christian evening post, desert_and_cactus_only, engineer, francais-saloppes, francais_soumise_sub_slave, german_deutsch_rollenspiele, hayatherseyeragmensürüyor, holland-babbel, italia-14-19anni, italia-padania-e-basta, L@Ros@deiVenti, nederlandse_chat, sex-tr, subslavespankbondage, Sweet_Girl_From_Alabama, #BI_LES_FEM_ONLY, #Chinese_Chat, #France, #LesbiansBiTeenGirls_Cam_NetMeeting, #polska-do-flirtowania, #russian_Virtual-Bar?, #tr-%izmir, #ukphonefantasy.
A first look at this bizarre, but mostly quite usual collection of room names suggests two broad classes of categorization: first a local/national/cultural/ethnic class, and second one oriented to topics, with a large dose of sexual ones. For the first class, different kinds of indicators are available, such as naming as in Australia-Sydney-Chat-Room, and the use of a local language as in hayatherseyeragmensürüyor, or in combination: german_deutsch_rollenspiele. When you enter such rooms a first function of such categorizations becomes apparent in that non-English categorizations suggest a different language practice. While English is the default language, quite a few people prefer using their own local language. Some rooms even suggest a more restricted area, as in Australia-Sydney-Chat-Room, for those who are interested in chatting with people not too far off. This seems a bit paradoxical, as chatting in a world-wide network allows contacts between people who are physically far apart, as is often mentioned in chats. Rooms with such local restrictions may be designed, however, to facilitate possible subsequent face-to-face meetings or telephone contacts, as is suggested by names like Fr@nce-P@ris-Rencontre and #ukphonefantasy.
The collection of sexually suggestive names is not only large, but also indicative of a large variety of interests, including just (probably heterosexual) sex, gay male, lesbianism , and female bisexuality. Some names invoke some more specialized practices like BDSM, and a collection of other 'perversities', as in names like 'francais_soumise_sub_slave', 'subslavespankbondage', 'golden_shower' or 'family-secrets'. But quite often sexual interest are only revealed in subsequent stages of contact.
Non-sexual interests are, of course, also apparent, including religious, professional, political or commercial ones, as in 'christian evening post', or 'culturecrossing', 'holland-paranormaal', 'jesussaves', 'Pokemon_Chat', 'francais-informatique', and '#Russian_Philosophy_2918'.
Having selected a room, your next step is to see who's there. As chatting ultimately concerns exchanges between (virtual) persons, it is no surprise that nicknames are used as concise 'labels' to announce who is available on the chat network or in a particular room. Consider some examples: ^P0371G , amanda14, anneke, banana81, Dream-Girl, emma69, ericdraven, latex_bi-tch1 , Leeroy, LuCho1, Mary15, Miguelo, SomeFun, Steffi, teaser.
Some of these are rather opaque, at least at first, while others seem quite ordinary. Anneke, for instance, is an ordinary Dutch name for girls. So, by using this nick name, a person at the same time categorizes herself in two Membership Categorization Devices: gender: 'female' and language: 'Dutch'. When using this type of nick, you will quite often be whispered in Dutch, for instance by the typically Dutch chat-greeting 'hoi', and/or by a question like 'ben jij Nederlandse?'(are you Dutch? - female form). This question asks you to categorize yourself, using the nationality device 'Dutch/Belgian', within the language category 'speaker of Dutch'. Many other first names like 'amanda' and 'emma', do not have such a language specificity and so do no 'project' a specific European language/nationality, like 'anneke' does. Some French names, like 'nathalie' are a bit ambiguous in that respect, as they are used in quite a number of other language communities, so you may get a more open question like 'bonjour, tu parle francais?', or 'hi, do you speak French?'. A name like 'Miguelo' suggests a roman language, of course, while 'LuCho1' or 'Konusmaz' indicate non-European languages, here Chinese and Turkish, respectively.
Quite often, a first name nick also carries an attached number, as in 'Mary15'. One reason for such attachments is that a nick has to be unique, so if you join the channel with a nick like 'Mary', there will mostly be another who has already claimed that particular name. An error message will appear suggesting that you take another nick. The easiest solution, then, is to add an 'identifying detail', like a number. Technically, any number, letter or other character will do, so you can take Mary1, or Mary~, or Mary-m. Quite often, numbers are used in accord with the nick's age, as is probably the case in our examples 'Mary15' and 'amanda14', but not in 'emma69', which suggests an 'activity preference' rather than an age category. Some of the other nicks in our examples suggest other aspects, claims or interests, as in Dream-Girl, latex_bi-tch1, SomeFun, or teaser. Other examples are: 'machomadness', 'daddyishere', 'LadySusan28', 'maleslave', 'curieuse33', 'patrickcam', or 'YOUNG_GAY_BOY'. More elaborate informations on a character can sometimes be collected from his oer her 'profile', but for reasons of space, I will not discuss its use here.
This paper's interest is not only in finding out which categories and MCDs are actually used, but also how they are used, what kind of function they can be seen to have. How do chat participants organize there way to the point at which they start their actual chat 'business'? For the chatting environment that I have observed, there seem to be two major purposes, one may be called 'social', i.e. 'just chatting', as under the rubric 'friendly chat', and the other is sexual. These purposes may be 'mixed', of course, in that the first may lead to the second. Apart from those two major purposes, a number of others can be inferred from the room titles, including the discussion of political, religious, and technical topics.
Sexual chats can take various forms, most prominently 'pic trading' and 'cybersex'. As becomes clear from research by Don Slater (1998), an enormous 'market' for 'pic trading' has emerged, with a quite explicit normative structure of 'fair trading', i.e. if one receives something, one should reciprocate in kind. When one is in an appropriate room, and especially if one plays a female character, other participants quite often try to initiate pic trading. This can have the form of sending a pic, without any verbal exchange, possibly followed by a request like 'send also'. But you may also get a verbal request first, like 'do you have a (self) pic?' or 'can i c u?'. If you reply in a negative way, you most often don't get any further reaction, or just 'ok'. A 'pic request' can also be preceded by some verbal exchanges, 'social', 'sexual' or both. That question, 'have a pic?' or 'wanna trade', can then be considered the real starting point for that particular encounter.
The second form of sexual chats involve what is known as 'cyber sex'. This may be characterized as 'interactionally improvised pornography', the exchange of 'sexually explicit' messages enacting a sexual fantasy or a 'shared' masturbation session. There is a repertoire of opening moves for these kinds of games, including 'wanna cyber?', 'are you alone?' and 'what are you wearing now?'
Categorizations in room names, nicks and profiles has two major functions: guiding the selection of suitable chat partners and suggesting topics. Location information has quite divers implications in different contexts, i.e. linguistic, cultural, national and geographical. Language is a primordial parameter in any text-based activity, and chatting offers numerous illustrations for this. Cultural implications seem to be more diffuse, but probably important for some (classes of?) participants. Nationality is important in various ways, for instance as an 'identity anchor'. So when you use a typically Dutch nick, like 'frits' or 'anneke', you may get first questions asking whether you are from the Netherlands or from Belgium and subsequently from which region or town. This may be important for indicating reachability, either in person or over the phone, as chatters quite often remark about being 'too far away' from each other. Location information can also be used as topic opener. So when you mention that you live in Amsterdam, you often get positive remarks about the city, like 'I visited Amsterdam last June and I liked it very much', or 'I would die to live there' (sic) from a pot-smoking U.S. student.
After language, age and gender seem to be the most important points in exploring mutual suitability. When possible partners differ in age or gender category, this quite often leads to questions like 'Am I not too old/young for you?'. Of course, age and gender are basic parameters for sexual selection, as people differ in their range of sexual preferences along the lines of these categories, i.e. same sex or opposite sex, and roughly the same age or older/younger age. Such preferences intersect with straight or kinky ones, of which a large variety can be found. Many rooms are organized around one or another combination, as announced in names like '#LesbiansBiTeenGirls_Cam_NetMeeting', 'Hollandlolita' or '#Lesbian_Domination'. In some of these, the host makes efforts to keep to a more or less strict 'regime', for instance by banning obvious males from a room like '#BI_LES_FEM_ONLY'. In others, an automated welcome message is used to lay out a room's rules.
To sum up, categorization plays an essential role in a sorting-out process leading, ideally, to small-group or dyadic suitability. A/S/L, age, sex and location, are obvious starting points, but other differentiations, as in sexual preferences which are themselves partly rooted in age/gender combinations, also play a role. In this process, suitability explorations and topic initiations are intimately related. Chatting, then, is in essence text-based categorization. New communication technologies get invented with rather limited purposes in mind, but they are quite often adopted by masses of users in unexpected ways. In this process pre-existing communicational purposes and procedures will be adapted to the new environment, but basically there does not seem to be any radical change. Comparing mutual categorization in face-to-face encounters, telephone calls, and text-based CMC as in online chatting, one can see that similar procedures are being used, although in a more and more explicit manner, as in the question I have used as a title: "a/s/l please?".
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