ldt022: Loneliness and the Electronic Medium
#022 - [ Loneliness and the Electronic Medium ] [ jvaldez ]
Loneliness and the Eletronic Medium;
A case study by:
jvaldez and company
Picture this. Our modern day source for meeting people has changed from the normal 'singles' bars and dance clubs to an all digital text only system of communcation. In short, IRC (internet relay chat for those not addicted). For those in life, who wish they had, have never experienced, or lack any *good* experiences with social interaction, the IRC chat rooms provide a place where they can be anybody. They can drop 200 lbs and gain the looks of a super model, all by the click of a button. To be more specific, a click of the connect button. This case study is actually not about the downsides or effects of IRC and human social reaction, but rather directed towards how the male gender age thirten to upwards of fourty react to IRC nicknames representing the female gender. In short, to see how low we could go.
the experiment
NOTE: This experiment was done about a year ago on IRC servers of Undernet (undernet.org) and Efnet. We would have researched this more on Dalnet (dalnet.org) but we wanted to give humanity, decency, and dignity a slight chance.
We used the following channels:
Don't be fooled by the difference in suffixes above, they all stand for the same channel.
#UnattractiveLowLifesInSelfDenialUsingIRCasanEscapeFromTheirSad,SadLives
When doing the tests, we hit these channels at what we considered peak hours, normally 3 PM - 6 PM. These hours coincide with most high schools and most shitty eight-to-five day jobs getting out. Why was the day job factor considered in this experiment? Here are two of the main reasons:
- There are a lot of thirteen to eighten year olds. That is a given.
- Multiply that times two and you might have a good figure on the nineteen to thirty-five age group within the channels.
Test 1
In our first phase of the experiment we tested the nickname "Nichole17" (N17).
The results were as expected getting 27 messages (from different people of course) within a period of 90 seconds. Quite a staggering result if the reader is not one familiar with IRC. However, I myself thought this number to be low. So, we changed the variables a bit...
Test 2
Jeanie15 (J15) sounded just perfect and in fact, did bring a lot more messages. Totaling up to 40 messages within a 90 second period. Why did it increase? Well, here is the theory: When we are young, adults and others sometimes shorten our names to make us sound young. Examples:
Robert => Bobby => Robby
Katherine => Kathy => Katie
Also, we lowered the age by two years, which probably helped out greatly as well. So by creating an adolescent style name and a lower age, we could spark the interest of many. Still not satisfied, we continued onto our next subject.
Test 3
Alexis13 (A13), the best producing nickname we had thought of. The results were staggering; 67 messages within 90 seconds! We had found the formula. It goes something as such:
Exotic Name + Low Teenage Age = Reaction (ExN+LA=R)
Think about it for a second, Alexis is a really exotic and interesting name, you could even go so far as describing it as "sexy." Combine this with the prime age of innocence, thirteen, and this pseudo-chatter presented the perfect image of complete innocence to many and resulted with a complete hard on by most.
Conclusion and Thoughts
That concluded our experiment but for those who want or think they can get better results, try AOL and other servers perhaps.
On another side note, we also took and added other variables to our little experiment. Unfortunatly, these side projects were not logged as well as our main goal was. Here are some of our results.
- When joining the channel, with A13, adding a "Hi" would result in a thirty-five percent increase in overall messages. So:
ExN+LA*.65=R
- However, when using A13 once more, but using a lower case 'h' for the "Hi" greeting, messages jumped almost half of normal.
2(ExN+LA)=R
Our theory on the jump is that when using a capitol 'H' in "Hi" it seems that the A13 subject seems to perky, not as innocent as when using a lower case 'h'.
- Adding exclamation marks also mixed the results up a bit, but no overall gains or anything substantial enough to report. Again this goes back to the innocence theory above.
In conclusion, I hope this has made you aware of how many sad, sad people there are on IRC. Pretty pathetic is what the case study was rated at by our group. Future tests might be interesting in different languages to determine whether this is a North American phenomenon or not.
- jvaldez - 'making the world a better place by killing off worse people than myself'
- juergevaldez@hushmail.com
- 9.22.2001
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