My First Chat Room Experience Essay -- Internet Communities

My First Chat Room Experience Perhaps some of the most amusing sites to visit on the Internet are the online communities. Given this topic, I was forced, although it was inevitable experience hardly avoidable, to do some self exploration by entering the intriguing world of chat communities. Communities designed for talk, friendship, romance, entertainment, education, support, or even pleasure. With the variety of topics I had the opportunity to explore, I was exposed to all of these options. Initially, my first experience was frustrating and awkward. However, as I became more familiar with the sites, I was able to navigate around quicker and acquire helpful information and resources. In essence, entering the online community world has offered me unparalleled experiences which have strengthened me both educationally and emotionally. Although the Internet is quite a mechanically inclined experience, (ie research a topic, find the information, and leave), I discovered the online communities can also offer a completely different emotional experience. An experience which provides worldwide participants a forum to interact with faceless and often nameless strangers like themselves. An interaction based on a linguistic connection rather than a physical one. While this type of relationship may seem impersonal to an online community virgin, I came to discover in my journey that the physical distance between communicators is hardly important in comparison to the emotional connection. If one is emotionally close to someone, distance is definitely an insignificant factor. At the same time, one can be physically close but emotionally eons apart. In addition, while the medium of the conversation is anonymous and often discreet, this seems t... ...was definitely a memorable one. I experienced and learned in every room I visited. Still my favorite was undoubtedly the interracial chat room. The emotional support it provided was far more substantial than the pure enjoyment aspects of the other sites. Overall, each site provided a different service. A service catering to the requests a highly focused audience. However, I noticed the online communities did have one common underlying thread. The ability to bring people together and give them a sense of belonging. While I admit I will probably not visit a few of these sites again, they were all helpful in making my first chat room experience a truly unforgettable one. WORKS CITED http://www.angelfire.com/ak/hotwax2/index.html http://chat.yahoo.com/?=Interracial%20Dating http://chat.yahoo.com/?room=basketball http://www.twsonline.com/INTERracial/ir-chat.html