Being an avid fan of fantasy literature, it was inevitable that I would learn about the role playing community online. As the insistence of a friend, I joined Castle Moonshadow, which consisted of a community of high schoolers and middle schoolers from New Jersey and Canada. I gradually became close friends with Sam, otherwise known as Aria, Lantaraana, Fuyu no Iki, and a multitude of other characters. After two years of playing games together, critiquing each other’s writing, and bouncing philosophical and absolutely whimsical ideas off each other, we finally met each other during a mutual friend’s birthday.
It was definitely a bit of a shock, seeing the girl that I had been talking to for two years. As the uncertainty reduction theory predicted, I knew a great deal about her and her me, so we liked each other from the get-go, and we definitely took to each other more quickly than if that was our first introduction to each other. However, I always saw her as a poet, a avid role playing gamer, a fantasy fiend, a writer, and a Canadian. In accordance to the SIDE theory, which says that I would have focused on those stereotypical characteristics while talking to Sam online, I didn’t or couldn’t see all of those things, but instead, when I saw her, I saw an individual, a person. I didn’t see her any less for it, but she did not quite meet all of the expectations that I had of her. To some degree, this also fits the hyperpersonal model, since, throughout our interaction over the two years, my impressions of her have been based on whatever information she has chosen to reveal to me. Although I didn’t have a negative impression of our first meeting, it certainly was not what I expected.
This also runs contrary to the SIP theory, which would expect that time would eventually equalize my online impressions with any offline impressions. Our first meeting was smooth, but definitely not the easy transition that the SIP theory would have foreseen. On the other end, the long term association did not lead to a negative or uncertainty provoking meeting, but instead, a rather pleasant and enjoyable time where we both learned more about each other, despite the two years we’ve known each other.
Comments:
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-perfect-or-anything-but.html
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-mutual-friend.html
2 comments:
Hey Thomas,
I really enjoyed your post, I’m not very familiar with the role playing game community online, so it was really interesting to read about a change in virtuality after an online game interaction. You did a great job tying in your great interaction with Sam with a multitude of theories. I really liked how you looked at SIDE, and that although you focused on those and knew of them in your online interactions, when you met in person, she went from being part of a group, to an individual, and shed your preconceptions. I think your interaction contradicts Wang and Ramirez’s piece. Looking at your description, it seems you had a very long interaction in CMC before meeting your friend Sam. Wang and Ramirez say that a long-term interaction in CMC would lead to cold FtF meetings. It was very cool that you still had a very enjoyable meeting with your friend even though others would have predicted otherwise. Great post!
Hey Thomas,
Great post, again! It's definitely a strange experience meeting with people that you've developed a very strong opinion of online. I remember meeting a fellow forum member for the first time, after a series of indirect conversations and slight acknowledgements of each other. Especially because this forum seems to be a bit on the "nerdy" side, I feel that I had made very geeky assumptions about his physical appearance and possible awkwardness in real life social contexts. However this was not the case at all. It's a really interesting thing that you've noted, that all of your preconceived roles of Sam simply dissolved to an individual when you saw her. Strange what a "lasting" impression our first thoughts about others is, huh?
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