I've had several experiences with online relationships that later turned into real life ones, that left virtuality. One such experience involved someone introduced to me by a mutual friend so that I could inform her about certain programs at Cornell. Our interactions from that point forward follow the hyperpersonal model extremely closely.
Interestingly, I have almost as much information about her insights as I do about mine. At one point she told me that, prior to contacting me, she was intimidated by the online persona I had created for myself through my personal blog: witty, sarcastic, and awesome. I also suspect she may have taken those blog posts and combined them with the knowledge that I was a Cornell student and - knowing nothing else about me - assumed that I would be intellectually intimidating and unapproachable.
I, on the other hand, had no prior information about her going into our first interactions, so my initial impression of her was influenced entirely by her manner of IM communication: her eloquence rather quickly led me to assume that she, too, was intelligent.
When we eventually met, I realized that she had also definitely presented herself rather carefully, another feature of the hyperpersonal model. Truth be told, in person, she was far less eloquent and consequently came across as much less intelligent. Had I not had prior, computer mediated interactions with this person, I would in all likelihood not have known she was smart. One quality inherent to CMC and to Instant Messaging specifically is the ability to edit and revise one's thoughts before submitting them for viewing by others. This allowed her (and myself as well, of course) to discourse at a higher level than she tended to do in most FtF interactions.
It is interesting to note that by the time we finally met, we had developed a close, strong friendship, which is again in keeping with the hyperpersonal model's tendency to predict that the breadth of communication in CMC will be narrower but the intensity greater. This increased intensity - spurred on at least in part, no doubt, by the anonymity and other factors intrinsic to CMC - of our interactions led to the friendship forming much more quickly than it would have had our interactions been limited to FtF.
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3 comments:
Hi Jason,
I think it's very interesting that you were gauged your correspondent's intelligence based on your CMC interactions! Since most people are given excess cognitive resources in a CMC environment, perhaps everyone is able to appear more "intelligent" by taking that amount of time needed to do so. It sounds like your experience also supported Ramirez & Wang's conclusion that short term CMC communications translate into an enhanced FtF relationship. Very good post!
-Brian
Jason,
Interesting post. Clearly the less than perfectly synchronous nature of IM allowed your friend to choose her words carefully and present herself in a different light. I find it interesting that you say you didn’t think your friend was very smart when you met her in person, but you conclude by adding that you made a close friendship with her. I wonder if this friendship never would have occurred had you not interacted with her in a CMC setting. Great job!
Good job with this post. It’s interesting how you were able to use your impressions from CMC to change how you saw her FtF. This demonstrates how CMC can really help a relationship since you were able to understand her intelligence that doesn’t come across in FtF but is still there. I’m sure there are other people who are the opposite, where they come across very well in FtF interactions but are not as eloquent when it comes to instant messaging or other CMC. Nice work.
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