Assignment 5, Option 1:

Upon receiving my roommate assignments, prior to my arrival at Cornell as a lowly Freshman over one year ago, I was unsure of where to begin. Staring at the three names and addresses of the girls I would be sharing a dorm room with for an entire academic year was quite daunting. Who were these people? Would we have anything in common? Would they sleep normal hours? Or stay away during the wee hours of the night?
Fortunately, I had one resource that I would use to best answer the abundance of questions that were running through my head: Facebook. Over the remaining months of summer, I would devote time to trying to decipher my future roommate’s identities, and attempt to build a relationship via computer mediated communication with three individuals I had never met before.
The first factor that I considered when “meeting” my roommates online, was physical attractiveness. Wallace considers this factor to be the most important variable, stating “the truth is that physical attractiveness is an enormous advantage if you want to be liked…Our stereotypes about good-looking people extend far beyond mere appearance. We judge them as happier, more sociable, warmer, kinder, more likeable, more successful, and more intelligent, too” (136-167). The photo feature on Facebook would allow me to do just what Wallace states, judge my roommate’s personalities, based on their physical appearance.
Roommate A only had two pictures on her Facebook profile…a total letdown. Though she appeared to be pretty and friendly from her picture, the fact that there were only two led me to be quite suspicious. In a world where our friends tag an average of 20 pictures of us per weekend made me question what she could possibly be hiding? Roommates B and C seemed to have a substancial number of pictures of them, many of which were pictures of them with groups of friends. Based on the physical attractiveness factor, I made the assumption that I was going to be friends with B and C, while A would probably be quite reclusive. In retrospect, my assumptions were totally wrong, for roommate A turned out to be one of my closest friends.
Another factor that played an important role in my the development of my relationships with my future roommates was the factor of common ground. According to Wallace, the Law of Attraction acknowledges that people with similar interests, attitudes, and ideas tend to be attracted to each other when forming relationships. Wallace interestingly acknowledges that the internet makes judging this factor quite difficult and in effect, the law of attraction often leads to what he refers to as “false starts” in friendships.
When judging my roommates based on the personal information they diverged on their Facebook profiles, experienced a “false start” similar to the one that I encountered when I attempted to judge my roommates based on their pictures.
Once again, Roommate A had little to know information on her profile. She did not list any of her favorite movies or television shows, and did not belong to any groups. I immediately was hesitant to attempt to build a stronger relationship with her, based on the fact that I had no ground in common with her. In turn, roommates B and C both listed personal information that I found to be similar to my own. My actual experience of meeting my roommates that fall validated Wallace’s claim that the formation of relationships on the internet can lead to false starts, for it turned out that in actuality I had more in common with Roommate A, than I did with B and C.


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