Assignment 5 option 1

Around four years ago an old friend of my mom's was coming to New York from Florida to visit family, and she and her daughter would be staying at my house for a few days. As it turns out she was really coming to New York to have a doctor she was good friends with perform plastic surgery on her daughters nose. Truthfully I didn't expect this girl to be very attractive considering her reason for coming to new york. I was blown away when I saw her for the first time because she was gorgeous. I didn't think there was any need at all for the surgery, as minor as it was. Turns out she was very intelligent and we had a lot in common. After her surgery we chilled on the couch and watched movies for two days because she was of course not feeling very well, and it was really dreary and cold outside. During those 2 days we really got to know each other. Since then we've only seen each other once, so all of our correspondence has been through aim, email, and recently facebook. Even though we really barely knew each other, we were able to exchange very personal information and become quite close friends.

I think Wallace's factor of physical attraction has an effect here because I obviously have a liking for this person. What facebook has added to our cmc communication is a higher level of familiarity. Its nice being able to see my friend online especially since we don't see each other very often. I'd like to be able to see a familiar face when I talk online as opposed to just text. Seeing that familiar face can make a cmc conversation feel as close as ftf in some ways. The familiarity/personality added to cmc communication by the addition of images can be considered a disinhibition effect under Wallace's attraction factors. Because we could in effect see each other through online media, our conversations had a level of eagerness and trust normally not seen in cmc. The combination of physical attraction and the ease of conversation due to the disinhibiton effect of online images is what lead to our getting to know each other so well over cmc despite living in Florida and New York.

Eric