Hi! It's Atlas

Life in the chat lane is anonymous, adventurous and now animated with 3-D alter egos

11/24/98

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News

Every day, millions of Internet denizens immerse themselves in the strange world of online chat.

Cloaked in anonymity, genteel housewives suddenly become surly males. Dateless geeks bloom into Armani-draped gigolos; homely wallflowers morph into Lady Dianas.

A trip through the thousands of chat rooms available through any modem-equipped computer can be a wild sociological ride. In its rawest form, the rolling text of chat looks like a running transcript of citizens band radio traffic. It's CB in ASCII.

However, in chat's newest embodiments, the experience becomes a 3-D cruise through cartoon castles, urban centers and bars. Like players in a board game, chatters use mouse cursors to move talking icons - or avatars - across graphical landscapes, whispering inner thoughts to strangers, debating the day's issues in a public forum or flirting with apparent members of the opposite sex.

The names, sexes and biographical data displayed by chatters are often total fiction. Spoofing teens and youngsters are everywhere.

But well-meaning humans still gravitate to chat for its speed and simplicity. Unlike its Internet relatives, e-mail and message board postings - chat is immediate and transient. Arguments, love affairs, friendly debates and soliloquies blink on and off in seconds.

"Computer screens are the new location for our fantasies, both erotic and intellectual," says Sherry Turkle, author of Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon & Schuster).

"We are using life on computer screens to become comfortable with new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, sexuality, politics, identity."

For others, such as Linda Peeples - a self-described cyberwidow from Lake Highlands - finding grief chat rooms for the suddenly spouseless was a godsend.

"I met wonderful people then that I still talk with every week," says Mrs. Peeples, whose husband, Jerry, died suddenly four years ago. "They all helped me in chat. I thought I was all alone, but I wasn't after all."

Now co-administrator for Tom Golden's Grief and Healing Web site (www.webhealing.com), Mrs. Peeples says she "kind of grew out of chat" and rarely participates anymore.

Some find the experience so uplifting and titillating that they never leave. In fact, Ms. Turkle, a psychologist and professor of the sociology of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, makes a living studying participants for whom chat is more real than RL - Real Life in chat-speak.

No good estimate exists for the number of chatters worldwide. With more than 200,000 Web sites coming online every day, chat rooms are multiplying, especially as coding becomes easier to use. Singles, dog lovers, sports nuts, computer professionals, rock fans and celebrities all have established chat centers.

Teens, using simple Java script injections on their private home pages, increasingly find private chat interaction replaces marathon telephone sessions that used to leave their ears red and parents sore.

And, because chat seems to draw deep expression out of participants, psychiatrists such as Michelle M. Weil are investigating its potential application as a treatment.

"Now you can respond to patient queries at any time of the day or night, including hours before morning sessions, after evening sessions or even during free time slots," she says in her paper.

A host of ethical and legal issues may thwart chat's use as a serious therapeutic tool, she points out. And chat may ultimately be supplanted in popularity by an approaching wave of low-cost video conferencing tools that threaten to make every Internet home an Internet television station very soon.

But for now, chat has a warm place in the hearts of young and old members of the online community. Technological advancements notwithstanding, chat rooms probably will always be home to a large, vocal sect of keyboard clickers.

Three types of chat exist in today's Internet world: text-only, proprietary setups like those of CompuServe and America Online, and the new graphical 3-D formats.

The active interface of all these services is called Internet Relay Chat, or IRC.

Users log into one of the hundreds of server sites all over the world. Usually, at least three windows open on the monitor. The main panel is the chat screen itself, with its scrolling transcript of people talking. Below it, a text box allows you to enter your own messages in the discussion. Nearby, there will be a constantly changing list of who is logging in and out of the room.

The latest developments in free software now translate scrolling IRC text lines into cartoon like graphics. Chat participants download small programs from sites such as The Palace (www.thepalace.com). Once installed, the programs make each chat room into a scene.

Chatters select or build their own characters, or avatars. Inside The Palace chat site, for example, a provocatively posed Cindy Crawford may be posing in the corner of a virtual castle dungeon.

"She" is actually a "he," but there's no way to tell from the way that character is acting.

Every time Cindy's creator types something into his text box, then hits Enter, a comic striplike balloon appears on screen above her head. She is luring males to "whisper," or talk in a private chat room with her. One, a beefy, bare-chested "Bill Clinton," moves his avatar over to her side. Both immediately turn gray, indicating the two are talking privately.

The rest of the room continues spouting off in word balloons. Conversations ebb and flow with departures and arrivals in each room.

You might select a simple happy-face icon, announcing yourself present and ready to interact. Inevitably, other avatars will begin directing questions to you, making small talk.

The experience of chatting in a 3-D virtual space can be more fascinating than text-only chat. But it can also be confusing for neophytes. Even over the fastest modems and connections, transmission delays can make chats disjointed.

Avatar chat usually offers limited animation tools, so avatars can express emotions or move. They can also send out strange sounds and phrases that blurt through your speakers.

Dr. John Suler of Rider University in Lawrence Township, N.J., has studied the way avatar chat is transforming the chat medium.

He explores the new subtleties in his book Life at the Palace HomePage (http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/palacestudy.html).

"Most chat environments have the option of sending a message to someone that other users cannot see," he writes. "At The Palace, no one can see it, not even a wizard or a god. This is something that is not possible in the real world, which makes it feel very special, even powerful as a unique feature of cyberspace.

"It's almost as if you are telepathically connecting your mind to the recipient of your whisper. Whispering 'Hi Lucy' is a sign of intimacy, something shared just between friends."

The Palace alone holds more than 1,000 chat rooms, hundreds of which are open at any time. Another host, Worlds (www.worlds.net), is also configured with hundreds of virtual spots worth exploring, such as a new universe.

A second breed of chat, one using proprietary software, is a popular feature of large providers such as AOL and CompuServe. These proprietary interfaces tend to be friendlier than most in IRC.

Finally, there's the grand daddy of all chat, the bare bones text-scrolling interface of raw IRC. To use it, chatters can configure browsers to use IRC or download free software like mIRC. It helps you log in with your Internet connection.

When you first log in to a text-based chat room, your first job is to choose a user name, which is the name that everyone else in the chat room will see. You can use your real name or you can choose the nickname of your choice. Just don't choose a handle already in use by someone else in that room.

First-time chatters in this environment should be warned that each chat area has its own rules. Disobey any, and you're liable to find yourself talking in the dark.

Moderators lurk. They seek out rule-breakers and are empowered to ban you from further discussions if behavior proves disruptive.

Many rooms are designated for specific discussion matter.

It also is possible to monitor multiple chat channels from anywhere in the world. Some love-starved teenager in Australia may be watching what you're writing, even though he doesn't show up listed as an active participant on your chat room screen.

When you send messages, your server bounces them to every server on its network. About 80 percent of chat is carried on by young males, no matter what their avatars indicate.

Women should especially be prepared to fend off strange requests for love and marriage from all sorts of cybersuitors.

Mrs. Peeples, for one, learned the hard way.

"I was brand new, using my son's AOL account, and I was going into religious rooms, stuff like that," she says.

"I'd be in Catholic Chat, talking with a bunch of priests about losing Jerry, and I kept getting all these instant messages on my screen. They'd be all these stupid gobs who wanted to hit on me."