Thinking back to the summer before arriving at Cornell for the first time, I can imagine my anxiety over being a freshman and having a social life. Of course any new student being plunged into a totally new environment would experience an initially utterly daunting society. Luckily for us, we have been provided with certain tools (a big one being Facebook) that allow us to begin our social networking before even seeing people face to face.
I had not been an avid Facebooker prior to arriving on campus. So the multiple friend requests that I received from people I was settled to dorm with (people I had never met before) pretty much shocked me. What was more was that these very same people had started groups based on minimal things that they had in common (Clara Dickson '06-'07! or Balch Hall 2010 or even Hotelies 2010, just to give examples). They seemed highly intent on creating a safe social web that they could fall back on before arriving on campus, and they seemed to be succeeding.
Though I generally have a "personal policy" (though not nearly as formal as it sounds) to only friend people that I have met, after receiving a friend request from one girl who was to live on my floor I decided to :gasp: accept her request. She was a Korean from close to where I lived and she seemed like a nice person to get to know. However, after stalking her profile for a bit, I wasn't so sure about her anymore. Her only available pictures seemed to be of her in her bikini at a beach vacation. Our music tastes differed greatly and the more I took in from her profile the less I felt the need or want to befriend her in real life. I had not realized then the severity of Walther's Hyperpersonal Model on my thoughts and behavior, mainly the two aspects concerning over-attribution and selective self-presentation.
I had over-attributed certain aspects of this girl's profile to developing my own idea of what her personality would be like. I had strongly felt that because she decided to make her profile the way she had, that I would no longer want to be friends with her. On the other hand, she had probably made her profile that way in order to attract certain friends or to appear more friendly and open. In the end, my initial reactions to her took a whole semester to melt away, and after getting to know her better (we were in the same writing seminar) I realized that I had been very wrong in my assumptions about her. It is funny how our opinions of others can be so wrong based on minimal cues, and how necessary it is to not shut off people who we could potentially be very good friends with based on a few interests.
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2 comments:
Meeting freshman-year roommates is probably an experience all of us share since the situation is forced on us by the University. Although I lived in a single my first year at Cornell, I also used Facebook to "study up" on my hallmates before arriving on campus in August. Your story is very interesting because it shows that this ordeal is one that validates the SIP theory's positive outlook for relationships that leave the virtual realm. Instead of growing more disappointed with your friend, the additional personality cues that were available to you face to face allowed you to bypass the limited perception that your friend put on the Internet. I guess it's a good thing that Cornell's directives overpower the Hyperpersonal model!
I enjoyed your post, I would be willing to bet a lot of us did that before we arrived on campus! When I am on facebook I find myself sub-consciously forming ideas about others based on what they present on their profile. I think that URT also comes into the picture with meeting people whose profiles we've seen. Interacting face to face after seeing a profile for a short amount of time can clear up a lot.
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