Chatrooms Etiquette
By Aphrodite
Our members use chat rooms to swap information, gossip, flirt and discuss subjects like swinger parties they are organising or have attended. The process of finding swing-partners and meeting up for adult fun is greatly facilitated trough the chatting and flirting that takes place in chat rooms. Although, at first glance, the way to go about chatting to people in a chat room would appear to be pretty much a matter of common sense, there are some points of etiquette that do need to be considered before you start.
First of all it is important that you fully understand the complexities this form of faceless conversation creates. You also need to be sure of what you want to get from the chat and what sort of people you would be best aiming to converse with. It is surprising how ignorance of these fundamental points and a lack of awareness of the following matters of etiquette, can practically ostracise someone from participation in a chat room.
Before you even think about contributing to the conversations taking place, you need to get a real feel for the atmosphere of the chat room. Even though this is cyberspace, ambience and an overall feel of a surrounding environment are very much conveyed by the participants of a chat room. It will feel just as though you are in a real room and like real rooms full of other people, the degree of comfort you experience can range from extremely stressful to completely relaxing.
What you should be aiming to do, is to familiarise yourself with the chat rooms to the point where the atmosphere doesn't feel in the least bit strange or daunting any more. In order to do that you need to listen into the chat that is going on in an objective and non-judgemental way. Try to pick up the underlying tone behind the words being used and get a sense of the way people are communicating. Also listen out for when it goes wrong and misunderstandings occur. Recognize how to avoid these pitfalls.
This is a very important exercise and one that requires time and patience. Visit each chat room several times on this basis before even considering making a contribution. Once you are sure that you have a full understanding of what the participants are all about, how they communicate with one another and fully comprehend the kind of issues they discuss, you are ready to introduce yourself.
As a newcomer to the chat room, you will need to build rapport and earn respect gradually over several sessions so start with an introduction that is unassuming. Ask questions rather than make statements and use your questions to build up clear pictures about the other people. Use this information to provide positive feedback to them, demonstrating that you are an understanding person, who remembers others as individuals. Once people have accepted you and no longer think of you as a newbie, you can start being bolder and more frank in what you say. The most successful chat room participants are often those who are the most open minded and assertive. But this doesn't mean the same as striving to dominate every discussion. People who do that usually find themselves rejected more quickly than they are used to in face to face meetings. This is because it is much easier to ignore someone in cyberspace than it is in person. Remember that you will never win everybody over and that there is no reason to even want to. What you should be aiming to do is to create a network of chat room members who are like-minded individuals, sharing your interests and values.
Some chat-room rules are so important that they must never be broken under any circumstances. One is to avoid using excessive criticism or make scathing comments. Another is to avoid sarcasm.
Negativity is something else to be avoided, even though you will hear a lot of it. People may like to talk about the negative things; the things that didn't work out for them, like the disappointing swinger parties they attended but they are not so keen on hearing negativity from someone else. It is best to keep to the positive things you have experienced. That way you will put other people in a positive mood that fantastically increases the chances of them want to meet you. And at the end of the day, it's those real, face to face, meetings that you joined the swinger dating site for. The chat rooms are merely a means to an end. You will be surprised how many of their regular participants appear to have missed this point.