Mary Henderson2/18/2001English 1101The Chat Room As Dr. Barry Mowell of Broward Community College once put it, "One of the most effective vehicles for wasting your time and interacting with pre-pubescent or otherwise immature, rude people who frequently engage in gross self aggrandizement and ill-mannered behavior would be the internet chatroom." When I read that six months ago, I ventured into a chat room for the first time. I found that a chat room can be quite addicting. I have since chatted on the internet every day with little exception. Since I am a computer science major, I looked for chat about thatsubject. On America Online, hereafter referred to as AOL, I found that in the category “Special Interests” tech chat fit my requirements.When I first went to it, I didn’t know any of the abbreviations. In a chatroom, in addition to talking about tech subjects, there is a compelling desire to laugh. They express that as LOL, short for laugh out loud. There also is ROFL, meaning rolling on the floor laughing. There are other abbreviations, some utilizing profanity. Essentially, over the last six months, I have begun to notice that the people in the room can be classified into some simple categories. These may be generalizations but are wholly accurate and appear to encompass the entire spectrum of people who chat.There are helpers, non-helpers, SNERTS, script kiddies, hackers, and relationship seekers. First of all, there are those who help people with their computer questions. They seem to go to extraordinary lengths to do so, freely assisting people with their computer questions very patiently. Then there are those who help no one. Either they dont know how to or simply refuse to help. Some of them may be termed smart alecks because, when someone asks for help or a tech question,they give rude and sometimes obnoxious answers. When someone comes in the room and gets an answer like that, they fre...
