Early in High School, a friend of mine from summer camp who lived in a different city introduced me to her friend Jamie through AIM. My friend thought we had musical tastes in common so she insisted we talk online. Jamie and I would instant message each other with varying frequencies. Some weeks we would talk almost daily, other times we would go multiple weeks without talking. For the most part we talked about music, we were both in the school band, and about general school-related topics. Jamie tended to be more talkative than me and came across as very outgoing. She had pretty strong opinions about things, which always led to interesting discussions. The next summer (about 6 months after we began talking on AIM) I returned to camp, and Jamie went as well.
The Hyperpersonal model correctly describes how through CMC I formed a strong impression of Jamie based on over-attributions and the conversation-style that developed over time between us. While I didn’t have a large breadth of impressions about her, certain traits were very exaggerated. As Ramirez and Wang found in their paper, after a long-term relationship through CMC, expectation violations in FtF were fairly negative and frequent. Though she was very talkative online, she tended to much quieter and less assertive in FtF. Certain interests that we frequently talked about online turned out to be less a part of her general life than it appeared through our CMC. She selectively self-represented herself (and I’m sure I did as well), such that in FtF I could see that a different set of traits were more prominent. My impression of her had to change significantly. In addition, through CMC I had always talked to her one-on-one. In person I was able to interact with her in the context of a group of people, where she also didn’t follow my expectation.
Over the summer, our relationship wasn’t as close as it was through CMC. Yet once we returned to our own cities, our CMC returned mostly to the way it was. Despite having new impressions from spending the summer FtF, our CMC was still very much rooted in our older impressions.
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I think it is of great interest that, although your face to face meeting caused your impressions to have “[changed] significantly,” and that your summer spent with Jamie was largely sparse compared to your time spent with her in CMC, you two quickly returned to your old relationship after summer camp. Many of the theories predict what would happen after a modality switch, predicting whether impressions would become more positive or negative, but none of the studies included the long term effect on the relationship. Nor does it take into account the effects, short term or otherwise, of whether the relationship remains in person or in CMC. It is also in my experience that returning to CMC after a FtF meeting is generally very natural, even if the impressions of the other party are drastically changed, so I don’t believe your experience was the exception to the rule.
Elliot,
Nice post and it truly displays your knowledge of the Hyperpersonal model. The example you gave with people connecting you with someone else based on similar musical interests, has actually happened to me before so I can relate to this.
It is nice to read something that has happened to me similarly. A band that I was in, in high school, was basically set up by a friend giving me the screen name of a great drummer he used to play with. From there we were able to hit it off and we sounded pretty good. The world is made smaller through CMC, that is for sure.
Overall, nice job, and I enjoyed reading your post.
This is a great example of how common ground increases the chance that you will form rich impressions based on exaggerated ideas. I think it's interesting that your relationship formed even though you would at times not takl at all. This seems to fit the social informations processing theory in that rich impressions can form online, but only with a long period of time.
Great job on your very last 245 post!
AIM is great to chat with people you might not have gotten a chance to meet otherwise. It is wonderful that you had the opportunity to actually sustain the relationship via CMC, and then advance to face to face communication. It helps to have a mutual friend with whom you are comfortable communicating with, which seems to be the case here. I wonder why your interaction face to face was not as satisfying as the conversation over AIM. Sometimes i think that some people are just better at being an online friend than a real world friend. (not that that is the case here, i have no idea) I think it is interesting to think about that, because thirty years ago communicating on AIM wasnt really an option, so i wonder what those people did then.
I really enjoyed your post! This is a great example to illustrate the Hyperpersonal model as well as the SIDE model. You did a good job describing and relating your example to theories discussed in class. Conversing online, only certain aspects and characteristics of a person are revealed which undoubtedly leads people to partake in the over attribution process. The SIDE model says that having a positive impression of someone online is based on a portion of a person’s true identity. In a CMC setting, “individuating” characteristics are kept under wraps, but once a relationship migrates to a FtF setting, these factors are revealed. Once this happens, a person is then able to make a definite conclusion whether the relationship will work out or not. That’s why it’s so important to reveal your true self if you plan on meeting someone online and want to further develop it in reality. I hope future online relationships turn out more positively for you!
Good post. I felt you dealt with the hyperpersonal model quite well talking about how each of you selectively self presented yourselves. Its very interesting that you pretty much re-established your relationship in order to put it in the ftf world. I think that in this case you can really apply SIP well. You can analyze how long you were friends on CMC and how well at that point SIP and by association hyperpersonal, say you know each other. Then you can examine how much new information you gathered in ftf which you got into a little in your post. In addition, how do you think your experience contrast with URT, which states a positive outcome for leaving virtuality.
Elliot-
Interesting post! Though I can’t say I have ever had such an experience, I feel as though your story is quite accurate of what would happen upon leaving virtuality. I really spend little, if any, time talking online. I hate being in a conversation that lacks the availability of non-verbal cues. I therefore feel that meeting someone online offers such a one-sided, incomplete view of the participants in the conversation. It is so easy to filter out what qualities you want to be portrayed about yourself in conversation online. Therefore, I feel that relationships that form online have a lot missing in comparison to relationships formed FtF. Regardless of my skepticism, however, I do realize that online meeting does, sometimes, work out. This leads me to believe that the success of online dating depends on the traits of the individuals involved. Great job!
-Emily
Elliot,
Your experience was quite interesting to read because you went from leaving virtuality and then back to virtuality after meeting your partner in FtF. The fact that your relationship went back to your prior CMC relationship shows how powerful the medium that we communicate in has in forming our impressions. My experience leaving virtuality was similar to yours becuase I, too, developed more positive exaggerated impressions of my partner that were not fulfilled or led to disappointment after meeting in person. It's interesting because the majority of the posts that I have read on this blog so far, in addition to the stories that I have heard through others also seem to emulate this same kind of experience when leaving virtuality. People typically tend to develop greater expectations of their partner, than negative impressions, in CMC because of the 5 Properties of the Hyperpersonal model (i.e., selective self-presentation). All in all, great post!
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