Iam officially addicted to AIM. I've spent so much time on it that I could write a social psychology thesis on the displays of personality through AIM. Since I am a mere architectural history major, I guess a column will suffice instead.
It's general knowledge that girls are more into AIM and online expressions than guys. Frankly, when guys are really into emoticons and font colors, you need to start questioning things.
We'll begin with a foray into away messages. There are many different kinds of away messages, different species, if you will. You have the people who give you a laundry list of what they're doing that day, the people who have very succinct away messages like "class" or "sleep," the people who like to quote obscure movies (like "Heavyweights" or "Labyrinth"), people who like to quote obvious movies ("Mean Girls" and "Dumb and Dumber"), people who use song lyrics, people who write anecdotal stories about their lives, people who just go idle and people who never go idle and don't use away messages at all.
Let me tell you how irksome I find that last category of people. Are you there? Are you not there? If I IM you will I get one of those stupid idle messages? I just don't know. PUT UP A DAMN AWAY MESSAGE.
They are almost as irritating as the people who make laundry lists. The best is when the people make a laundry list and then at the bottom write something like "I know you cared" or "Because you wanted to know." Cute. If I really wanted to know, I would just talk to you. Instead, you made it pretty clear that no one really ever asks what you're doing, so you felt the need to externalize it. You have no friends.
Next in our analysis are fonts and font colors. In a broad stereotype, most guys stick with Times New Roman (or Arial on a Mac) in black. Some guys venture to Arial Black or Arial Narrow. If a color is used, it's generally navy or grey (I know that's a shade, don't nitpick). It's rare to find a guy who writes with a background color.
Girls, though, are a whole different breed. After I check all my friends' away messages, I have to stare at a piece of blank paper for several minutes until all the colored spots I'm seeing fade away. Girls write in rainbow tones with any background color in any size with any font. There are typical girlie fonts with Georgia and Comic Sans leading the pack, and nine out of 10 girls on my buddy list have pink as their font color.
I will admit I used to have Georgia, size 10, in hot pink as my font. Recently, I've gone back to Times New Roman, black, size 12. I like to think of this as my "Stripped" period and the earlier as my "Pink" period. If Picasso can have colors in his life, so can I.
When you think about profiles, you envision several standard pieces of information: cell phone numbers, e-mail address, Greek letters (if applicable), organizations and Webshots links. Don't forget about people from New Jersey and California who almost always have some type of shout out to their state. (We Virginians know our state is the best -- everyone else did, after all, come here, did they not?)
Gender separations tend to become obvious in the body of the profile. Almost every girl I know has some type of "Sex and the City" quote in her profile. Guys never have quotes. Guys will occasionally copy and paste funny AIM conversations from their friends.
Again, the "No Information Provided" profile is indicative. You're aloof. You're too busy for a profile. You're mysterious and unavailable. You're the James Bond of AIM. I probably want to date you.
And then there is the standard Comic Sans, rainbow colored, emoticonned, "Love my peeps!" type of profile. This profile will most likely contain some type of love proclamation to a boyfriend usually done with that winking smiley/heart and then initials. I love the people who do the "I.L.Y." thing followed by someone's initials. You don't think I get it? I was in kindergarten, too, once. I think I even wrote that on my Trapper Keeper about Andy Rhinehart in third grade. Guys are not immune to this type of flagrancy either.
Perhaps you are still unclear as to how these generalizations relate to personality. Start looking at patterns among the types of people with similar AIM traits -- you'll get it. I can't give away all my secrets; I'm seriously considering writing a book on this.
Lindsay's column runs biweekly on Thursdays. She can be reached at mccook@cavalierdaily.com.
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