Personal Log: Ben Versteegt

The IRC chat is a wonderful means through which talking with others, about sharing ideas, exchanging mission ideas, having discussions and simply having fun becomes as easy as going to a pub with some friends -- in fact, it's easier. Instead of going out, having phone calls or meeting each other, you can talk through IRC. IRC has the benefit of being a chatroom, whereas MSN or ICQ are often used for contacting a sole person.

While the chat has added an extra dimension to my life in Frontier Fleet, so to speak, I am also frequently confronted with the disadvantages that are intrinsical to IRC (and other ways of chatting via the internet).

Many of the people who will read this blog (if any ) are also regularly present at the Frontier Fleet channel in IRC. This means I have to be careful how to phrase my words, since this blog entry deals with that channel and, inescapably, with the people in it. After all, a chat wouldn't be a chat without any people. So I will try to phrase my words carefully.

That is where the first problem in IRC lies, and perhaps even the biggest one. In a written document, a letter for example, it is possible to phrase my words in a way that I am (reasonably) sure it won't offend anyone (or at least not anyone I am writing the letter to). In a spoken conversation, there are gestures and hand movements which make my real intention clear, so that, even if in the haste of the moment I do say something offencive, my gestures will indicate that I didn't meant it. Also, I can immediately correct the problem when I see the look on the other's face. Even when talking to someone through telephone, the sound of the other person's voice can indicate that I have said something wrong, and I can immediately correct it.

But no such luck in IRC. There is no voice I can listen to, no gestures I can watch, and no facial expression that will tell me if I have upset someone. In IRC, I can say something that I think is frienly, but it can be completely misinterpreted by the person I am chatting with. He or she might think I am insulting him or her.

The emoticons that people use to indicate their emotions don't help much in this problem. If I say something like "I don't like you ", with the emoticon behind the sentence, I hope the receiver will understand that it is a joke, indicated by the . But the receiver of the comment may think that my is insincere, or maybe even know nothing about emoticons, and he or she would therefore not get that I am joking. Also, I am using emoticons like , and all the time. Since I use them so much, it may be hard to take them seriously anymore. The same with IRC expressions like "lol", "rofl", "lmao"; I use them a lot, but that doesn't necessarily mean I am actually rolling over the floor laughing.

As a relevant side note, I sometimes type "lol" in a reflex. This can also lead to uncomfortable situations. For example, Merijn and I were once (some time ago) having a discussion on IRC about a certain player on the Atlantis. I thought then he wasn't posting too well. Merijn thought differently and was in favour of giving the guy a chance. The actual circumstances don't really matter in this example; the point is that Merijn was saying he had "actually promoted him". At the time, the discussion had, I felt, grown tense. For one reason or the other, I misread the sentence and thought that Merijn was making a joke, so I blatantly threw in a "LOL". In the context at the time, my statement implied that I found it ridiculous and laughable that Merijn had promoted this player, even thought I didn't mean this.

This example can of course be seen as the 'slip of the tongue' for IRC, but there are more disadvantages. As I already mentioned, seeing if someone is sincere by looking at facial expressions and body language, becomes impossible in IRC. In the chat, I just have to deduct from the context and from what I know about those people, if they are sincere or not. I often have no conclusive way of telling. Everyone is shrouded in a vail of anonimity. When you have no way of knowing if people are who they appear to be or mean what they appear to mean, you simply have to take them for their words. And that means you can fooled easily.

Another problem (actually more of the same), which is connected to this, is more or less what I stated earlier: because of the lack of ways of recognising a person's real intention, it gets that much harder to figure out what someone is really saying. Miscommunication is more likely to occur.

It is in this light that I introduce the next (sub)problem of IRC. I have hinted on it before; if I were to say "You're welcome..." in response to a "thank you", there appears to be no harm done. But the receiver can see this as an insult. The three dots at the end of my phrase might indicate to the receiver that I do not really mean what I say; that I am being sarcastic, and that I intend the opposite of what I say. Suppose I have a habit of putting three dots after sentences. I don't actually mean to be sarcastic or insulting, I just think that three dots after a sentence look nice. Voila, miscommunication.

Or what if I ask a simple question that my curiosity wants to have answered? A question like "Why have you chosen that name for that character?" can be interpreted by the receiver as a way of saying that I don't like the name of that character and that I expect the receiver to change it. The receiver may feel attacked when reading this question, starting an argument in the mistaken belief that I demand that his character's name should be altered.

Another source of miscommunication is the language in which we converse on IRC. English is for me a foreign language. I know how to express myself in the language, but I fail to understand or to write several subtleties which may be simple and apparent for a native speaker. No matter how much I train in English, read English books and texts, etc, I will always fail to understand at least some subtleties and characteristics of the language. This will of course mean that there will be more miscommunications when I voice my thoughts in the English language. As a non-native speaker, I simply do not know all of the (unofficial) rules of the language. Therefore some native speakers, for whom all of these rules of conduct in the English language are clear, will expect me to react to a sentence in a certain way, and will be surprised, or even angry, if I react to that sentence in another way. The other way around is also true: I, with my limited knowledge of the English language, may expect someone to react to my statements in a certain way, but they may react differently; something which, due to my misunderstanding of English, I hadn't expected.

As I said before, people on IRC are virtually anonimous. When I see a person and/or talk to him or her, I can often see if they are in a good mood or not. On IRC, this is impossible. I may ask a question and upset a person without knowing it, just because that person has had a bad day, or that person has recently discussed that topic I wanted to talk about extensively. I have no way of knowing the mood a person is in, and even if you ask a person in a bad mood if that person has a bad mood, he or she will often get angry.

Something else you don't know on IRC is how drunk or sleepy a person is. Drunk people may react very differently to a question, as opposed to sober people. Here, too, you don't know how drunk the person you are talking to, is. More generally, you have no information about the mental state of other people.

In conclusion, in IRC, the only thing one can use to see what the other person means, is that other person's words. That's all. Words and even whole sentences can be ambigious, but there is not much one can do about that. There are no gestures, no body language, no facial expression and no tones in voices that give away what someone truly means. This is why, sadly, there can be so much miscommunications in IRC. These miscommunications can lead to arguments and even hatred against each other. With this many chances at miscommunication, it is a miracle that discussions can even be held in IRC.

Categories: Ben's Logs