Joe Salkowski
Some things are better left unsaid. In chat rooms, though, that applies to just about everything.
Increased bandwidth and improved audio compression have made it possible to actually chat in chat rooms. Using the microphone and speakers that come with multimedia computers, visitors to a growing number of Web sites can carry on audible conversations with similarly equipped surfers around the world.
If only they had something to say.
As it turns out, pumping up the volume on chat rooms hasn’t amplified the quality of conversation. In fact, the ability to talk online seems to make it even harder to find someone worth talking to.
General interest chat rooms on America Online, Internet Relay Chat channels and the Web have never been known for savvy, cultured conversation. The ability to hide behind anonymous screen names often drags discussions down to the lowest common denominator.
Hyperactive teens and horny guys usually trade insults, insider slang and come-ons while everyone else sits back and wonders if it’s worth the trouble to squeeze a few words onto the scrolling screen.
What happens when all these people can actually speak to each other? To find out, I spent a few hours in voice chat rooms on Excite, one of the first so-called “portal” sites to offer this service.
Excite hosts rooms with broad titles like “Teen,” “20ish,” “30ish” and so on. But it didn’t seem to matter which room I chose; each of them would have been more accurately named “Awkward Silence.”
Upon entering a room, most people said something to make sure their software was working. “Can anyone hear me?” “Is this on?” “Where is everyone?” Once this fascinating banter ended, the real problem emerged: What in the world were we going to talk about?
The silence begged to be broken, but no one dared to speak. I squirmed, feeling like I was trapped at a birthday party for someone I didn’t know.
“There isn’t a whole lot to talk about here, is there?” someone finally said. Nobody answered.
In another room, a woman bravely tried to play host to this pathetic party. She welcomed people by their screen names as they logged into the room and asked where they lived.
Beyond that, though, she was stumped. “Isn’t it funny,” she said, “how people have so much to say in regular chat rooms? And now that you can actually talk, nobody’s saying a damn thing.”
Hearme.com, a voice chat site that’s been around since early this year, has attracted a few vocal users. But as a stranger on their site, I felt like I was walking into someone else’s living room whenever I dropped in on one of the user-created chat forums.
The only rooms that attracted more than a handful of users were dedicated to sex talk. There, a dozen or so men would wait around, mostly silent, while one or two women teased them with the possibility that they might say something vaguely erotic. Sort of like phone sex, I suppose, but without either the phone or the sex.
Ironically, most interaction in the voice chat rooms I visited occurred in text windows meant to complement the conversation. Either someone has sabotaged the microphones on our nation’s multimedia PCs or chat room users prefer to let their fingers do the talking.
This preference probably won’t change anytime soon. Voice chat is great for far-flung families or groups of friends who want to share a low-quality conference call on the cheap. But even if video chat rooms become available, text-based communication will remain the best way to get to know strangers on the ‘Net.
Tapping out conversation on a keyboard isn’t nearly as frightening as sending your actual voice out into the void of cyberspace. It’s easier to share details about yourself when you can choose the right words and see them on a screen before turning them over to anyone.
Text chat with strangers also gives you the chance to mistake a man for a woman or vice versa, one of the ‘Net’s essential experiences.
I envision chat sites where strangers meet in text rooms, then move on to audio and video when they feel more comfortable with each other. In addition to preserving bandwidth, this process would mark an improvement over real-life social gatherings that thrust strangers into a room and force them to make small talk.
You’d still have to wade through the crude words and crummy conversation that fill today’s chat rooms. But before you powered up your microphone and speakers, you could be confident that someone would say something you’d actually want to hear.
To contact syndicated columnist Joe Salkowski, you can e-mail him at [email protected] or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services. Inc., 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chicago, IL 60611.
