Mixed-mode relationships are becoming increasingly relevant in today’s information society. A great example of this is when my real-life friend decided to meet up with his virtual-world wife in real life. I was shocked he wanted to do this, not only for the obvious personal safety-related reasons, but because of the chance that this would destroy their relationship totally. Online dating sites would have us believe otherwise, but I’ve never personally known of a relationship that started online and successfully made the transitions to real life. To spoil the story, in the end I was right and the two of them never played together again (the wife left for another game and blocked him on the various instant messaging networks).
Unfortunately, this outcome is completely consistent with the theories we’ve discussed this term in class; namely, the negative results of switch from CMC to FtF are predicted accurately by the SIDE and Hyperpersonal theories.
SIDE says that after two people that have been interacting through CMC meet face-to-face, that individuating factors will assert themselves and cause a decrease in attraction. This loss of attractiveness happens because the participants no longer perceive themselves as “like” each other. In the case of my friend, both my friend and his virtual wife were players in the same game, members of the same guild, and partners in the same fake family. These group associations brought them together and caused the relationship to be strong. However, when they met in real life, they realized that they had very little in common and were thus repulsed by their differences.
In the same vein of thought, the Hyperpersonal model predicts that CMC causes each partner to gain “over-inflated” perceptions of one another. When the two of them meet face-to-face, the proverbial bubble is burst, creating disappointment and thus dampening attraction. My friend turned out to be very disappointed (to say the least!) when his wife, who in the worlds of Ultima Online played a scantly-clad, longsword-wielding warrior princess, turned out to be a (fellow) lanky, acne-riddled high school-aged male. How this had never come up before is quite beyond comprehension, but discovering the rather essential difference between the perceived and actual gender caused my friend to be massively disillusioned with his partner, and to put it bluntly, the relationship was never quite the same afterwards.
Well everyone, I think this is the last blog entry of the semester. Good luck with finals and have happy and safe holidays at home or wherever else you will find yourself this December.
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2 comments:
Chris,
Nice, amusing post. =) I like how you focus more on the disappointments involving these theories. Writing this last blog really made me think about how close to accuracy these models bring us to real life circumstances. How often are we betrayed by our instincts about another person. Apparently, quite often, indeed. Good use of both SIDE and Hyperpersonal models to relate to this friend's situation. But how do these theories collide? Do they produce different sorts of feelings? or do they generally provide for the same type of CMC judgment?
Great post again, and happy end of semester!
Chris,
I have to say that when I first started reading your post I was curious as to why the relationship fell apart, but by the end I would have been surprised if it had lasted. Your post was both humorous and informative. I thought you did a good job of introducing the SIDE theory and Hyperpersonal model and then applying it to your friend’s situation. In both cases I agree with your assessment. I especially liked the detail in the SIDE theory explanation about how when their group associations were removed they shared less common ground than before and because of this became less attractive / likeable (in the social sense) to each other. Your reasoning with the Hyperpersonal model was conveyed in a very direct, detailed, yet funny manner and overall this conveyed your thoughts extremely well. This blog acts as a warning to all gamers that they should always ask about the gender of their online spouse rather than assuming what they hope they’ll turn out to be.
Great post,
Lauren
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