Exploring Identity in an Online Environment article review

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I have been looking more into identity and came across an interesting article about a game that was created to explore identity more. The more I read the article I understood it to be something different. It dealt with the idea of identifying males and females in online chat rooms. The abstract reads like this:

Do men and women behave differently online? Can you tell how old someone is, or determine their race or national origin based on how they communicate on the internet? Issues of personal identity affect how we relate to others in everyday life, both online and offline. However, identity in this new medium is still poorly understood by internet users.
The game that they created was called The Turing Game. It was used for research purposes. The way they introduced the research was this:


We have created a game and related resources to help us explore and teach about issues of identity online. In this environment, The Turing Game, a panel of people all pretend to be a member of some cultural group, such as women. Some of the panelists, who are women, are instructed to try to prove that fact to their audience. Others are men, trying to masquerade as women. An audience of diverse gender tries to discover who the imposters are, by asking questions and analysing the panel members' answers. The sample question and answer below is taken from a game where the panelists were claiming to be women:

QUESTION: Describe your last really bad haircut.
PENNY: I had it layered and I got a perm. Since my hair is wavy, it was Annie style.
WENDY: Sophomore year, decided to cut it really short, and I looked like a little boy. My boyfriend was very disturbed.


As stated in the introduction, the audience rates you and determines from your answer if it's a male or female. One audience member said: It's not what you said, it's how you said it'


This game looks like a lot of fun. I would love to play it. This is the official website: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/elc/turing/
but not the game. While looking through this research it was fascinating to see the research that they had done on stereotypes. The example that they used for the stereotype research was to identity which was the male in the group. They had two females and one male. The way they were able to identify the female and male was the stereotype that the females took on. One female chose her boyfriend and acted like he would have acted. Basically he was the typical male. The other female acted like her ideal guy. The male acted like himself. The one that acted like the ideal male, won the game. The other female that liked her boyfriend lost, and the male won.

The fact that the guy didn't win was hilarious. The overall experiment was fascinating to see how people determined what was male. In other words, do we have others determine who we are?
I can see how people could lose their identity through their peers, but various people could find out who they are through positive influence.

Being able to discover your identity through the net could be beneficial but that all depends on the information that is accessed.


Warning: Language
The Turing Game: Exploring Identity in an Online Environment article