A good friend of mine randomly met his girlfriend (they went out for two years) through AOL. When I say AOL, I mean that literally. The girl was browsing through the AOL database and found someone with similar interests and decided to IM them and it took off from there. Talking about taking off, leaving virtuality, in this case provided a great deal of deflation and lowering of standards. I’m referring to the fact that during the CMC, my friend “expected a little more of her.” I’m referring to looks and intelligence. The word intelligence can be debated but she went to Harvard and was in an honor society. After they had met a couple of times, he chose to attend graduate school at Georgetown so they can both be together (among other reasons).
If you are thinking “awww”, I am as well. This thought aligns with the Hyperpersonal model best in my opinion but has some URT since he was able to compromise with the few traits he was “disappointed” with after the uncertainty was reduced. In terms of Hyperpersonal, expressing his disappointment proved to me that he had an inflated perception of this woman in virtuality. This negative out-of virtuality impression aligns with the theory of Ramirez and Wang. He’d often boast about how beautiful and smart she was. Not to mention that this is before he met her. The word disappointed shows that he had a negative out-of virtuality impression of her. The bigger question is: How was he able to compromise? I think this question is out of the bounds of this class since this is deep out of virtuality but within the bounds of the class when it comes to SIP and Ramirez and Wang. In terms of SIP, they spoke after meeting online and from that, over time the impression (that was in my friend’s favor) was molded. They had similar views on a lot of topics and that factor probably overrode the attractiveness and intelligence factor since no one can be perfect. In terms of Ramirez and Wang, this aligns with the short-term vs. long term issue. In the short term, impressions were intense, then after meeting, they lost their intensity, then gained intensity after compromises were made and in the long term, the relationship was fantastic.
There goes to show you that time is a great factor when it comes to knowing someone to potentially have a relationship with. Patience is a virtue but at the same time, one can’t be too patient based on some intense impressions that may form and be confirmed when one goes out of virtuality.
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1 comment:
Saidu,
First of all I have to say that I think the way your friend met his girlfriend is pretty unique as I have never heard of that working out before. I thought your analysis of this relationship as it switched from CMC to FtF very interesting in how you combined different theories. I agree with the Hyperpersonal model being the best theory in application with this scenario. It does seem that the perceptions created online led to distorted views when the two met FtF. I also liked how you tied URT into this by stating that even though the initial effect of leaving virtuality was negative by making compromises and reducing uncertainty they were able to once again strengthen their relationship. My only constructive criticism is that you might have wanted to explain the major theories you used so that people not from this class would understand, and in my opinion you should have written out Uncertainty Reduction Theory before abbreviating it.
Overall good post.
Lauren
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