Mad as a Chatter

Just about everybody who has been in a chat room can recount some tale of intrigue or perversion. Remember the time a chat room argument ended in a real-life beef complete with baseball bats? Or the chat room suicide-watch on CompuServe? Or the time someone impersonated a porn-addicted President Clinton on CNN.com?

Such lurid tales of chat room pathology are now part of our culture. But the reality is that most chat room behavior is simply that: chat. However sinister it sounds, the majority of online talk serves more as a safety valve than an incubator for antisocial acts. Chat is an ideal vehicle to get out aggressions and express unpopular thoughts before they turn into actions.

Chat rooms are like neighborhoods - some are good, some are bad. They're places where a 50-year-old man can pretend to be a teenage girl, diehards can give a final pronouncement on the Microsoft (MSFT) case, or kids can LOL ("laugh out loud") for hours at a time. Chat rooms are places to swap recipes, run focus groups or attend business classes.

Chat rooms are also big business. According to America Online (dossier), the company that brought chat to the masses, 11 percent of its 23 million customers spend time in chat rooms. The largest AOL chats attract huge crowds. A recent Britney Spears event brought 234,000 people online. Sears has started running fashion chats for teens on Talk City (TCTY), transcripts of which are then sent out to Sears apparel buyers.

The best part about real-time chat is that it's authentic, says Jenna Woodall, cofounder and senior VP of community at Talk City. "People will talk about a broad range of subjects. It's like the water cooler at the office - people don't always talk about work."

Woodall estimates 25 to 35 percent of the total Net community is talking online. All of them can't be stalkers or we'd have an epidemic on our hands.

That's not to say that some don't get out of hand. "In some ways it's like Carnival," explains Bernard Beck, assistant professor of sociology at North-western University in Evanston, Ill. "That's when people say to themselves, 'We'll engage in riotous behavior.' Then when it's over, it's over." Beck likens loose-lipped chatters to conventioneers on a drunken revel in a strange town - no one knows them, no one cares to know them and, suddenly, dropping water balloons from the hotel balcony seems like a great idea.

Luckily, such miscreants are in the minority. "Most people have deep-down moral convictions that they have to be nice even when no one is looking," Beck says. Though he adds, "That's not true for everyone."

The question is, why not? It's as vexing a problem online as it is off. Why do some people enjoy cutting you off in traffic, stomping on flowers or abusing innocent chatters? Jump into any real-time virtual community and it won't take long to find someone being rude. There are off-color jokes, sexual innuendo and all manner of insults. The following exchange, which appeared recently in a chat room, is typical:

Doc_Z: Get a life, Weeez.

Weeezel: I am a 36-year-old businessman who has a life.

Doc_Z: Sure that's man Weeezel?

Tddi: I AM GOING TO NUKE YOU F**KS!

Doc_Z: Go ahead, nuke me.

There's a tension in modern society. We're all for freedom of expression, but no one wants to see 7-year-olds getting "nuked" online. No one wants pedophiles luring kids to secret meeting places, but no one wants Big Brother telling them that they can't have an opinion about Elian Gonzales.

The impasse may never be resolved, but it highlights the fate of repressed social urges. When people are angry and feeling oppressed they speak out. Maybe they can't do it at work or at home or even on the street corner, but they can call a radio talk show or go on the Internet and have a good rant.

Even the trash talk is pretty benign, says