Assignment 11

My personal example of an online relationship going to face to face was this past summer when contacting someone in the professional world. A family friend of mine had a brother who was rather high up in the world of finance. On her advice, she recommended I email rather than call him due to his travel schedule. This would allow him to get back to me at his leisure. Upon asking him in an email to possibly meet and discuss his career, he emailed me back a day or so later with a rather abrupt email. As I recall it went something like “plz to meet, call my secretary to arrange a lunch time”. At this point I was thinking “oh great this guy just thinks im wasting his time”. I called, setup a time, and got another email back a few more days later saying something like “see you at 12”. For a guy whose who has done very in well in the financial world, I was rather unimpressed with his lack of email professionalism

Eventually our lunch time arrived and his personality was completely different than expected. I had anticipated a rather bland executive who would be all business. I was actually completely wrong. He had an extremely bubbly personality with an almost boy-like exuberance to him. This example can be looked at under Walthers hyperpersonal model. Here, I was using the limited clues I had about this person to create an image in my head. I was over attributing based on the information I had. That image turned out to be wrong based on the lack of non verbal clues.

According to the Rameriz and Wang paper, a person having an online relationship can often have a negative view of the other person once they meet face to face. My case was exactly the opposite. I had a negative view going into the face to face meeting and came out with a completely positive view. I think this may have happened because of the limited emails I exchanged with the person.

Assignment 11

An example of a relationship that moved from CmC to real life is how I met my friend Armand. The summer after graduating high school I had joined the class of 2010' to meet people before school started. I saw that on his profile Armand had an awesome picture of him throwing a kid to his back in the county wrestling tournament. I had wrestled since fourth grade so I sent Armand a message and we ended up talking a decent amount online. It turns out that we were assigned adjacent rooms in low rise six so there was no doubt I would end up being friends with him in real life.

I would apply hyperpersonal theory to this online/real relationship; Because all I knew about Armand was that he wrestled, I definitely saw that as being a defining factor of his personality. Normally I wouldn't find hyperpersonal impressions to be very accurate, but in this case my impression was spot on. Because I had wrestled for so long I could guess exactly what kind of person Armand was. I eventually found out that he took third in counties in Nassau county Long Island. The sort of person that makes it to counties is one who eats, breathes, and lives wrestling. My impression of Armand being confident and outgoing was very accurate. I didn't need to prolong the CmC portion of our meeting because I quickly realized that we'd get along really well. In this case having a hyperpersonal impression made it easier to get a feel for my friend's personality and interests.

Having common ground definitely made it easier to accept the exaggerated impressions given by the heyperpersonal theory. Wrestlers tend to be a little crazy and their commitment can be considered hardcore. I expected Armand to be the typical county placewinner; somewhat overconfident yet obviously possessing great skill and dedication. Due to the effect of the hyperpersonal impression I in a sense knew Armand before I really got to know him.

11 - A Mutual Friend

Early in High School, a friend of mine from summer camp who lived in a different city introduced me to her friend Jamie through AIM. My friend thought we had musical tastes in common so she insisted we talk online. Jamie and I would instant message each other with varying frequencies. Some weeks we would talk almost daily, other times we would go multiple weeks without talking. For the most part we talked about music, we were both in the school band, and about general school-related topics. Jamie tended to be more talkative than me and came across as very outgoing. She had pretty strong opinions about things, which always led to interesting discussions. The next summer (about 6 months after we began talking on AIM) I returned to camp, and Jamie went as well.

The Hyperpersonal model correctly describes how through CMC I formed a strong impression of Jamie based on over-attributions and the conversation-style that developed over time between us. While I didn’t have a large breadth of impressions about her, certain traits were very exaggerated. As Ramirez and Wang found in their paper, after a long-term relationship through CMC, expectation violations in FtF were fairly negative and frequent. Though she was very talkative online, she tended to much quieter and less assertive in FtF. Certain interests that we frequently talked about online turned out to be less a part of her general life than it appeared through our CMC. She selectively self-represented herself (and I’m sure I did as well), such that in FtF I could see that a different set of traits were more prominent. My impression of her had to change significantly. In addition, through CMC I had always talked to her one-on-one. In person I was able to interact with her in the context of a group of people, where she also didn’t follow my expectation.

Over the summer, our relationship wasn’t as close as it was through CMC. Yet once we returned to our own cities, our CMC returned mostly to the way it was. Despite having new impressions from spending the summer FtF, our CMC was still very much rooted in our older impressions.

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11 - A Concert Friend

I don’t consider myself the kind of person who seeks out relationships online, but sometimes it certainly has its benefits. During my freshman year I found out about a concert that my favorite band from home would be playing in Buffalo in a few weeks. First I tried to convince all my friends at school to come with me, but I found this to be unsuccessful since none of them had even heard of the band that was playing. In this case I turned to the bands website, specifically the message boards to meet someone else going to the show.

Eventually I met another college student from another upstate New York school who was also planning to attend the show, and we began to exchange emails. Granted, our mixed mode relationship was a short one, centered around a single event and a single shared interest, in this case a band. But through our email exchanges and then eventual meeting at the concert, we did develop a brief friendship.

I feel the model that most accurately describes my interactions with my new friend is Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model. Over-attribution was certainly an important factor in my views of my new friend. Because I met her in a specific band chat room and soon found out that she would be working the merchandise table for the concert, I thought of her as very into the local music scene. Also, since most of our conversations centered on these things, their importance to both of us surely seemed inflated. Walther’s developmental aspect, which says that over time we would adapt social cues to the verbal channel, did seem to be working as we got to know each other better and better through email. In the end though, a few weeks was not enough to truly get to know each other.

Re-allocation of cognitive resources, focusing ones control on the verbal channel since no others are available online, did have a moderate effect on our interactions, especially since email is an asynchronous form of communication, allowing the sender plenty of time to choose their words carefully. The two most important factors in our interactions, however, were selective self-presentation and behavioral confirmation. Because we had met each other for a specific purpose, we chose to talk mostly about our interests in music, and confirmed this single-minded view of each other with our responses.

When we finally met in person, my new friend was very much as I expected her. In this case, the fact that our meeting occurred under a similar premise to our online communications probably contributed to this. Even in FtF, I noticed that selective self presentation and behavioral confirmation continued because of the focus of our friendship remained towards the unfolding concert.

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Assignment 11 - Oscillating relationship from CMC to FtF and back

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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Assignment 11

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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Assignment 11: Aspereta

An example of a relationship that started online and eventually left virtuality is my own. This came about because of an online role-playing game called Aspereta. It is while playing this game that I met another character, let’s call him Tom, who I instantly formed a connection with and we quickly became ‘online friends’. We enjoyed each others company while playing and often had a lot to talk about since we had many shared interests. For example we both enjoy designing and creating characters, items, and monsters for these online games. My brother who also played Aspereta met Tom and they too got along extremely well. The three of us often arranged online meeting times so that we could all play Aspereta together.

As we all maintained our friendship over an extended period of time we came to learn that we both lived in the same state, the same city, and frequented many of the same places. After time had passed we decided to meet face-to-face. My brother and I decided on the location, a mall, and we all planned a convenient time. I had seen his picture and he had seen mine and so it was not hard to spot each other. For all our closeness online I didn’t know what to expect in this new environment and was happy to find that only after a few moments of awkwardness we were soon browsing through the mall and chatting like old friends.

This positive experience of leaving virtuality, modality switching from Computer-Mediated Communication to Face-to-Face can be explained by the Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT). URT from Berger and Calabrese states that “the uncertainty reduction process leads to affinity or attraction” (Class, Slide 36, 11/21). More simply this theory states that when one has increased information about their partner, thus decreasing uncertainty, it leads to increased liking and intimacy. The friendship between Tom and me only strengthened after our meeting face-to-face and I believe that this is because I was able to learn more about him through a physical relationship. I gained more information about him from our encounter like his gestures, unconscious habits, and other little things that became apparent from this form of communication. Another reason that this experience was positive is that Tom was very honest to me about himself during our online communications and so when I met him offline there was nothing about him that shocked or disappointed me.

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A11: Meet the Canadian

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.

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Assignment 11

I had a friend who I met through a mutual friend. The thing is, I never actually met him. We met because the mutual friend gave me his screen name. He told me I’d like talking to this guy (we’ll call him John) because he was funny. I was wary of talking to a stranger online and even more doubtful that I’d find him funny. However, over the period of a semester, we chatted more and more on AIM. He would randomly send me links to funny videos or start a conversation with a joke. I found him to be quite entertaining and enjoyed talking to him. After some time, I decided it was ok to meet in person, with our mutual friend. When we finally met up, it was extremely awkward. He got into my car and didn’t say much for the whole ride. If it weren’t for our mutual friend, the whole day would have been filled with awkward silence. I was pretty disappointed and wondered how someone could be so funny online, but boring in person. Perhaps he was intimidated by face to face interaction or he takes longer to warm up in person.

Accordingly to Walther’s Social Information Processing theory, this is normal. In the absence of nonverbal cues in online communication, such as facial expressions and tone, individuals can still form rich impressions of each other. Although I didn’t see or hear him, I was still able to deduct his meanings and sense sarcasm/humor in his online communication. He had no choice but to transfer this cues into the written channel through emoticons, capitalization, punctuation, etc. My impression of him took time, but it did develop slowly in CMC. Another theory also helps explain our relationship. Walther’s hyperpersonal theory suggests that because I knew very limited things about John, I over-attributed those things to his overall personality. Since I knew for sure he knew some witty jokes, I expected him to be a funny individual even in person. The developmental aspect of this theory agrees with the SIP theory that people adapt cues to CMC over time. Also, it explains that John probably used selective self-presentation to choose what he wanted me to think about him. Thus, I knew he was capable of humor, but not that he was socially awkward and silent in FTF. My expectations of him to say something funny online (since this was the grounds we were introduced on) follow behavioral confirmation. He knew there was pressure to be funny so he behaved accordingly.

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Stalkers!

We all do it regardless of how sketchy it is: yup you got it, stalking our classmates on Facebook. Freshman year I came across this guy on Facebook- he seemed like a nice, handsome, intelligent guy. Through his quotes, I knew this guy was pretty insightful. Furthermore, he was well-read. I decided to add him as a friend, and once he accepted, I was able to access his conversations with his friends. He seemed to have a lot of substance and seemed very down-to-earth.

After scrutinizing his profile, I messaged him asking him if he wanted to meet for some coffee. Contrary to what I thought, his response was full of enthusiasm. Phrases such as “Hi!” and “Will see you soon!” made me immediately like him. I was so happy he was just as psyched as I was about meeting him in person. That following Friday we met up at Stella’s for some coffee. He was nice and friendly, but he was not as enthusiastic as showcased by his messages.

In Ramirez & Wang’s paper “When On-line meets Off-line: An Expectancy Violation Theory Perspective on Modality Switching” one’s expectations of a person can be at changed by switching from a CMC environment to a FtF environment and this can also yield a more negative view of the person. This occurs in relationships that are mostly CMC mediated. Being that I met this guy on Facebook, and communicated with him via Facebook for approximately 2 weeks before having met him, I felt that my perception of him was more negative in FtF than in CMC because he seemed more lively in CMC.

My experience with leaving virtuality and entering the real world is congruous with the Hyperpersonal Model proposed by Walther (1997). I had a highly inflated view of this guy before I met him because of my complete reliance on a few cues that formed a highly exaggerated perception of the guy. Since I had only received a few “full of life” e-mails before actually meeting him, I assumed that this was demonstrative of his real-life personality. This is an example of the over-attribution process, one of the five parts to the Hyperpersonal Model. Selective self-presentation was shown when the guy chose to present himself in this very enthusiastic and happy manner. Behavioral confirmation was shown when I responded to the highly enthusiastic messages, with enthusiastic messages as well, which caused him to reciprocate more enthusiastic message, creating a constant rush of enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, I decided to keep a distance from this guy, as his super-introverted personality fTf was incongruous with my first perception of this guy on CMC.

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11: Well, that's... unexpected

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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assignment 11

Meeting people online is becoming increasingly more popular and whether or not people believe these relationships will last is constantly questioned. Since I haven’t personally experienced meeting someone online, I chose to write about a couple who found love on the internet. Monica is 24 years old and went online one day in search of finding her prince charming. Almost immediately, two weeks after putting her ad online, someone responded. She describes her relationship with Brian as being wonderful and they “hit it off famously”. They had many things in common and after about a month of conversing online, they began to talk on the phone and send post cards to each-other. Monica soon insisted that they meet in person and that’s exactly what they did. Although her friends described her fascination and obsession with this person they believed to be a complete stranger ridiculous, she replied by saying that he has her heart and they were madly in love with each other. After meeting, their romantic fling “fizzled away” but they are now friends who talk occasionally online. She was in love with him and liked what she saw in person at first. Once they got comfortable with one another, Monica realized Brian wasn’t the man she envisioned him to be. His personality was somewhat more aggressive and less romantic in the FtF setting as opposed to the CMC setting. He also proceeded to tell her that they didn’t know enough about each other to be in love and should remain just friends.

According to the Hyperpersonal model, the negative outcome experienced by Monica is a consequence of five factors. First off, Monica had over developed impressions about Brian due to the lack of cues available online. Brian and Monica were both engaging in selective self presentation and the over attribution process is thus likely to occur. Monica had false hopes about the man she thought she loved and had inflated perceptions of Brian’s charming character he presented himself to be online. Brain forgot to mention that he was married and had three children. Developing a relationship in CMC didn’t work out for Brian as there wasn’t enough opportunities present to really get to know each other. For example, people are not able to see the other person, they cannot analyze their mannerisms, and the availability for all other cues is not present. These reasons are why Brian told Monica that they didn’t really know each other. As stated in class, once a relationship leaves virtuality, there is less control over information sharing which, in this case, lead to “disappointment”.

Monica decided to give online dating another chance. As a result from the previous experience, Monica set guidelines for herself which consisted of not getting involved with anyone who is married, has children, or who is over 30 years old. Although this seems like unproblematic, there is no one controlling whether the other person is telling the truth or not. I guess this would be revealed when they met in a FtF setting. After no time at all, Monica met someone who was just about 2 hours from her home. This time, Monica spoke not only to this new man on the phone but also spoke with a few of his close personal friends before actually meeting in person. The aspect that is most intriguing about the internet is that relationships are developed and based on personality rather than physical appearance. In real life, these concepts are reversed. All in all, when they met in person, Monica described it as “they clicked very well online, but even better offline.” The impression she had of him was almost what she received when they met in person. They are still together and are very happy together.

The theory that supports a positive outcome once a relationship leaves virtuality is Uncertainty Reduction Theory. As described on the slides from class, “the uncertainty process leads to affinity or attraction.” For this theory, there is an entry phase where people are beginning to interact with one another, a personal phase where people are communicating more spontaneously and personally, and then there's the exit phase where people decide whether to keep persueing the relationship. Monica's exit phase had a positive outcome due to increased information and cues. Their uncertainty of one another decreased as time went on, as the more information one knows about the other person, the more "liking" they will have for them. Since real life provides the availability of various cues that are not present in CMC, people are able to get to know one another on a more personal level. And from there, people’s relationships will grow and prosper because of it.

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After seeing the broadway show Spring Awakening several times, I decided to join an online fan site for it. The fans in this group call themselves "The Guilty Ones" (a reference to a number in the show). After posting in the forum a few times, I began to talk to someone who had seen a few of the same shows as I had (for his sake, we'll call him John). As we talked I found that the hyperpersonal model was very appropriate - I felt like I knew John very well even though I knew so little about him.

After a few months of occasional conversation, I found out that we were going to be attending the same show. When we met up in the city, I found that I was a little bit dissapointed in the real life John. I felt like I had so much in common with him online, but in person, he wasn't all that I had built up in my head. I also learned a lot about his other interests which didn't at all align with mine. Although John was very nice and friendly, I couldn't help but prefer him in virtuality. This aligns with what the hyperpersonal model predicts about leaving virtuality. I fyou have a really positive image of someone built up in your head, it is easy for the actual person to dissapoint in reality. John and I continued to talk for a bit about our love for the show, but in the end, that is all we shared in common.

Assignment #11

As summer was fast approaching last April, I was in desperate need of a summer activity. Having just gotten over a tough case of mononucleosis, I was in no state to apply to competitive internships and successfully complete the demanding applications. At the suggestion of my father, I contacted a friend of his who ran a small public relations firm a few minutes from my house. Although not my dream job, it was definitely something to do.

To contact the head of this company, I emailed him in a formal, professional manner asking politely if I could be a part of his workplace for a few weeks to learn more about public relations. To my surprise, his response was informal and full of excitement, using phrases like “Hi!” and “Can’t wait to hear back from you soon!”. Immediately I felt a liking towards him because of his friendly email. He made me excited to join his company and meet him in person. When we did finally meet in May, he was friendly, but did not speak in exclamations like in his email. He checked up on my progress every now and then, but also kept his distance most of the time.

My experience leaving virtuality and entering the real world fits with the Hyperpersonal Model proposed by Walther (1997). I had an inflated view of my boss before I met him because of my exaggerated perception of the few cues I received. Since I had only received a few enthusiastic emails before actually meeting him, I assumed that was consistent with his real life personality. This effect is called the over-attribution process, which is one of the five aspects of the Hyperpersonal Model. Another factor, selective self-presentation, was shown because my boss decided to present himself in a very specific enthusiastic way. Behavioral confirmation, another aspect of the Hyperpersonal Model occurred when I responded to my boss’ email with the same enthusiasm, causing him to reciprocate that attitude again, creating a cycle of excitement.

Ramirez & Wang write in their paper “When On-line meets Off-line: An Expectancy Violation Theory Perspective on Modality Switching” that expectations of a person can be violated by switching from a CMC setting to a FtF setting and cause a more negative view of the person. This typically occurs in relationships that spent a large amount of time in CMC. Having communicated with my boss for a month, we did not spend a significant amount of time in CMC, but my perception of him was still slightly more negative in FtF than in CMC.

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Assignment 11: Shifting Modality

The Cornell Class of 2010 website was my gateway into forming online relationships. I used this social networking tool to look up friends of friends that were going to Cornell. Once Cornell distributed Net IDs, facebook became my network of choice. Facebook quickly transforms into a breeding ground of pseudo-relationships for pre-fosh, and yes, I was quick to indulge in the countless Cornell groups such as “Sarcastic People are fun” and “CU Jewish camp goers”. Still, I avoided the more intimate “I’m so excited to go to Cornell!” wall posts and private messages until I received my roommate assignment.

I remember analyzing Sara’s pictures and trying to deduce her personality from her interests list. She had many diverse other-directed identity claims ranging from her interests in naps and rain boots to her activities of track and Amnesty International. I interpreted this information to mean that she was well-rounded and social. When we started instant messaging, she was seemed fairly affable. I though it was cute how she would always insert “~*” at the end of her sentences, even though I initiated most of the conversation. When we arranged to meet up in New York City, I was excited to meet her.

Little did I know that our greeting hug would be the only hug Sara and I would ever share. Although sharing a frozen hot chocolate at a crowded Serendipity’s provided a social buffer, conversation with Sara was contrived and awkward. She would respond with one word answers to my questions and avoid eye-contact. I do have experience dealing with introverted people, but Sara would barely crack a smile and I suspect that she sensed my disappointment.

Shifting from CMC interaction to FtF interaction with Sara clearly supports Hyperpersonal Model. I committed the overattribution error when I decided that her “~*” symbol at the end of sentences meant that she was friendly. I developed an exaggerated impression of her personality based on limited information from her facebook profile. Perhaps I should have considered that Sara was utilizing selective self-presentation in her interests and hobby lists. Also, Sara clearly benefited from the reallocation of cognitive resources in CMC. She could present herself in a better light because the focus was only on the topic of conversation whereas face to face, her body language came into play and significantly tainted my impression of her.

Although the CMC to FtF transition of our relationship was far from ideal, it made wary of the deceptive powers of facebook and my tendency to idealize people based on conventional signals. After this experience, I was careful not to engage in the ever-popular activity of messaging my classmates before I actually met them.

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Assignment 11

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.

Assignment #11 Freshman Facebooking

Almost two years ago I experienced a phenomenon that has sprung up over the past few years with the invention of Facebook. After I was accepted to Cornell, one of the first things I did was set up a Facebook account. Within days I already had tons of Facebook friends who were going to be in my class the following year. While I was pretty wary of these kids, mainly dismissing them as weirdoes, one girl who wrote on my wall seemed pretty cool. She was from California and liked the same music that I did. I responded back and soon after we were talking on a pretty consistent basis. We talked over the summer and before I knew it, I was already at Cornell. I was a little nervous and concerned about meeting my Facebook friend in person. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but we talked and decided to meet for lunch. Unfortunately, our online personalities didn’t connect like they did in person, and lunch was very quiet and pretty awkward. Perhaps if we had continued to meet we would have grown accustomed to each other, but after that strange lunch, we never met again.

At first glance I felt that my online relationship was fostered by Berger & Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT). At the beginning of my relationship, I only knew a very little bit about my friend when we first met on Facebook, but as we began to chat online, through self-disclosure I increased my information about my friend. Through this increased information, it led to greater liking and intimacy of our relationship. However, this breaks with URT when it switches modality from CMC to FtF. URT predicts a positive outcome when those in a relationships leave virtuality, however with my relationship this wasn’t the case.

While my experience doesn’t necessarily coincide well with the URT, it does fit very well with Rameriez & Wang’s paper on the subject. The two stipulate that; “studies which support the “enhancement” assumption do not allow much time to pass between when communicators commence their interactions via CMC and subsequently meet FtF, thus limiting the amount of message exchange that can occur, whereas studies that do not provide support report an extended period of online interaction prior to the in-person meeting.” Showing that perhaps there’s a difference between short-term and long-term interactions. Rameriez & Wang look at this and hypothesize that; “MS following a long-term association via CMC will provide social information that will be (a) evaluated more negatively and (b) uncertainty-provoking relative to interacting via CMC.” My interaction with my Facebook friend certainly follows this hypothesis. We communicated in CMC for a long period of time prior to our meeting, which resulted in a very cold and uncomfortable FtF meeting.

On a side note, as this is my final blog of the semester, I’d just like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed blogging out to the blogosphere, and hopefully will continue with my blogging in the future. Thanks to all of you who commented on my posts, your insight was very interesting and I enjoyed reading them.

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11: PERFECT or anything but.

When I first told my friend, X, that I got accepted early decision to Cornell University, her first words, “AHHH! I’m so proud of you, and I have the PERFECT roommate for you. She just got in early too, and I know you two will LOVE each other.”

Now, sitting at my computer 3 years later, the words PERFECT and LOVE seem beyond ironic. You see, after living in a way too small of a dorm room with my roommate whom I will call Y, it seems that even if we lived in the largest room in the world, she would still be, perhaps, anything but perfect for me.

My feelings, however, were not always this way towards Y. In fact, PERFECT and LOVE would be two words I too would have used to describe her when we first started talking through AIM. We both loved Laguna Beach, Grey’s Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives. We both had the same favorite restaurant, and loved the same dish from it. We both did similar things in high school, and it seemed that we both wanted the same things out of college. To sum it all up, it seemed that our interests were perfectly aligned, so when she asked if I wanted to room with her, I of course was not hesitant about starting what I wanted to be a PERFECT college experience with a PERFECT roommate.

After Y and I decided to be roommates, we attempted to set up multiple face-to-face meetings. Yet, with the end of senior year craziness and with me going away for the summer prior to freshman year, that plan just never worked out. So, when I walked in to my dorm room on that Thursday, August 18, 2005, there she was, for the first time in front of me, Y.

From the way too loud screech of Y’s “LAAAUUUUUUURENNNNN!!!!!” when I walked in the door, I had doubts that my PEREFECT roommate would be less then PERFECT. Yet, I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. Then, when her way too strange study, hygienic, eating, and communication tactics started becoming things that began affecting my life and happiness, I knew that this PEREFECT mixed-mode relationship was anything but. I would constantly be woken up at 4am by a printer or the lights, would have to step through piles of her clothes and garbage and food just to get to my side of the room, and even found a cockroach in my fridge one day because of her food supply.

Leaving the virtual world and entering the real world with Y is best described by Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model. The Hyperpersonal Model is made up of:
1. The over-attribution process: Few cues lead to a stereotype
2. Developmental aspect: Given time, we adapt our cues to the social channel
3. Selective self-presentation: In CMC, you select what you present to your partner. When leaving the virtual world, you have less control over your information sharing
4. Re-allocation of cognitive resources: When you talk in face-to-face settings, you have to worry about many different things. Because in CMC you have less to worry about, you can devote more resources and time to what you are saying
5. Behavioral Confirmation: We end up trying to behave how people think we are (Walther 1997)

The two aspects, however, of this model that apply to Y and mine's mix-mode relationship are the over-attribution process and selective self-presentation.
The Over-Attribution Process
The fewer cues present in CMC allowed me to over attribute the few cues I had of Y. Because we both seemed to have similar interests, our mutual likes of Laguna Beach and the restaurant “Joes” created an inflated impression of Y that was completely inaccurate.
Selective Self-Presentation
Y most definitely was a victim of selective self-presentation; she managed her impression by only telling me things on AIM that she knew I would find attractive. For obvious reasons, Y completely neglected to tell me that she worked best at all hours of the night and slept most of the day and did not share with me that she was a total slob, yet had we met and built a relationship in a face-to-face setting, these cues would have been visible, as it is apparent that Y is perhaps not the with it, put together, and PEREFECT after spending just a mere five minutes in a face-to-face conversation with her.

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assignmment 11

Back in 8th grade, one of my first boyfriends asked me out over AIM. I had many classes with him, so he had the opportunity to ask me out in person. The fact that he chose to use CMC to communicate with me falls right in line with McKenna’s Relationship Facilitation Factors. One factor is identifiably, which includes the concept of visual anonymity. Visual anonymity can lead to increased private self-awareness as well as decreased public self-awareness. This boy felt more comfortable communicating with me online because he was less aware of how I was viewing him. This led him to behave in a more disinhibited manner, and was able to ask a question that was embarrassing to him (asking me to be his girlfriend).

Another theory that can explain why this boy chose to ask me out over the internet rather than FtF is the Impression Management Model, which shows that people sometimes pick a leaner media for ambiguity. Asking difficult questions is hard to do in person because one has to state and present the question perfectly to get a desired response. If the response is not desired, it is difficult to hide embarrassment and devastation in the form of facial expression. It is much easier online to hide disappointment because only verbal cues that are voluntarily presented are seen by the other person.

In my mind, at the age of 13, I thought he was a big scare-dy cat because he didn’t have the guts to ask me out in person. This was the only thing I was able to base his personality on because I didn’t know who he was prior to this conversation. After our brief AIM convo (that ended in me saying I would think about it, aka no way ever), I created a view of this person. The Hyperpersonal Model describes why my views about this boy were made so quickly. The Hyperpersonal Model states that an over-attribution process will occur in an online texted based space, where there are fewer cues to judge someone with. As a result, you exaggerate those few cues and therefore create generalized beliefs that may not be true. So, after this conversation I didn’t want to go out with this boy because he wasn’t acting tough because he wasn’t able to confront me in person (and I didn’t know him at all). As the weeks went on, I suppose he started getting desperate and began talking to me in classes. I could tell he was shy but he was very persistent at becoming a part of my life. After a few weeks, we actually became friends and I started to see him in a different light. We ended up “going out” for the rest of the school year. This example shows that by meeting someone online, the lack of cues may lead you to falsely identify another. The only way to truly test if you like someone is to meet and interact with them face-to-face.

Assignment 11

I, myself, have never experienced an online relationship. While I feel that the medium of cyber space is beneficial in facilitating many examples of communication, I personally feel as though dating and building relationships is something that should be done face-to-face, in a non-mediated medium. Nonetheless, I am fascinated by relationships that have been able to grow and prosper online.

Rather than write about my non-existent experiences with online dating, I decided to discover those of others in the media. I began by searching “online dating” on nytimes.com and was quite surprised by the number of wedding announcements referencing that the couples met online.

Aside from the abundance of wedding announcements that chronicled the experiences of couples that met their matches online, there were also a number of in-depth features on the failures of online dating sites. An article written on Sept. 30, 2007, quotes 33-year-old Jennifer Silver, who stated that she had a number of terrible experiences with dating services such as JDate and Match.com. According to Silver, people were very dishonest on their profiles and often did not bear any resemblance to they image they portrayed on their profile.

A second article, written in Dec. 2004, cited how the online dating industry had began to plateau due to a number of instances in which people lied about their identity. Allison Gold, quoted in the article, likened her initial experiences with online dating to being a kid in the candy store, where there are a number of great options to choose from. However, Gold soon found that when she met the men she thought were going to be straight out of Ocean’s Eleven, they were nothing like she thought they were going to be like. She said she felt “jerked around”, after being lead to believe she was finding a perfect match, when in reality the men had lied about their appearance, career, or marital status.

Such experiences support the SIDE and Hyperpersonal theories and reject the SIP and URT theories. Both SIDE and Hyperpersonal predict negative outcomes of relationships that begin online and then leave virtuality. SIDE attributes negative outcomes to the fact that face-to-face interaction fosters individuation and differentiation, which weaken social attraction. Hyperpersonal, however, states that inflated perceptions developed online detract from social attraction when the relationship leaves virtuality. Both theories provide accurate explanations for the experiences of both Silver and Gold, who, upon meeting online dates in real life, were turned off by the inaccurate self-descriptions provided online.

Cited articles:
Williams, A. (2004, Dec. 12). E-dating bubble springs a leak. The New York Times.
Fischler, M.S. (2007, Sept. 30). Online dating putting you off? Try a matchmaker. The New York Times.

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Assignment 11

For this assignment, I chose to analyze an experience that my friend had while he was approaching his freshman year in college. Prior to going to school, many freshmen are prompted with Facebook as a means of networking with fellow students at their respective university. Some people develop relationships that they start online (through this medium), yet I believe most fail due to initial Facebook friendships being very superficial.

The latter description is what occurred to my friend at University of Florida. He would constantly tell me how many new friend requests he received online, and how many ‘hot girls’ accepted his friend request prior to actually getting on campus. Looking back on his decision to friend so many people, and additionally IM them, he regrets doing so as his actions were indeed a bit creepy, stalker-like, and do not truly reflect his own personality. The draw of Facebook and the excitement of college brought him to constantly check this online database and come in contact with anyone associated with the university. When he got to campus, he would creepily know surface level information about people and weird them out that he knew their name (and other information) beforehand. Time progressed during the first year, and my friend actually ended up disliking Florida. Since transferring, he has learned from his lessons of pre-campus ‘Facebooking’ and actually meets people first before ‘friending’ or messaging them online.

The example and description above fit with portions of the Hyperpersonal model made by Professor Joe Walther. Specifically, my friend overattributed information found on a person’s Facebook profile, to be true and endearing information about a person. As we have studied in class, people lie constantly about their profiles and can change any information they want (thus information should not be totally believed on a profile in Facebook). Moreover, as my friend would commit this overattribution error, people who my friend ‘talked to online,’ overattributed his traits to think that he truly is a stalker (which he is not). In addition, behavioral confirmation also can be found in this situation. As people found out that my friend knew information about people due to Facebook, my friend started to question himself and think that he possibly was being creepy because people thought those were his actions online. In thinking so, he changed his actions and made a change with his Facebooking life.

It is apparent from the facts stated above, that through the Hyperpersonal Model, this example of Facebook can be theoretically confirmed. I’m glad that my friend learned his lesson, and hopefully by reading this post, others will reevaluate their own Facebooking ways.

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Assignment #11

Not having experienced an online relationship that blossomed into a face to face relationship, i explored the web for examples of such a relationship. I came accross Laura who submitted her story of how she met her husband via Match.com. Her profile name was "Your SearchIsover" and his was "handybunk." She had been on match for quite a while, to no avail, until she came across "handybunk's" profile. After reviewing his information, she sent him an email, and he responded. After corresponding through email, they evolved to phone conversations until one day Laura needed a broken window in her house fixed. Obviously, the first person she thought of to mend her window was "handybunk." They went out to dinner, and the rest as they say, is history.

Of the theories we have examined, after assessing the story, the Hyperpersonal model of communication really outlines Laura's experience. All five aspects (over-attribution process, developmental aspect, selective self presentation, re-allocation of cognitive resources and behavioral confirmation) are incorporated in her scenario. Particularly since the medium in which Laura met her mate was match.com, it can be assumed that when filling out their respective profiles, they exhibited selective self presentation- choosing to display information which they deemed attractive about themselves, and neglecting to include less attracitve information. When relaying the story, Laura also specified that she chose to go on match.com because she feels uncomfortable in bars and vibrant social scenes. It is possible that because Laura did not have to concern herself with excess non-verbal cues, through re-allocation of her cognitive resources, she was able to more efficiently and successfully find "handybunk." Laura also mentioned in the story that she was the first to send an email to "handybunk" expressing an interest in him, and telling him she believed they had a lot of similar interests. After hearing that positive feedback, it is possible that "handybunk," anxious to find a mate himself, reacted according to how laura perceived him, making his reactions a product of behavioral confirmation. The nature of Laura and "handybunk's" relationship displays signs of developmental progress, as they started exchanging emails, and then phone calls, and eventually met face to face, getting to know one another better with every increased mode of communication. It can not be said definitivey after reading Laura's story whether either her or "handybunk" participated in the over-attribution process, but it would not be unlikely, again considering their initial medium for meeting as match.com.

As can be seen through the anlaysis of Laura's story, her online relationship that extended beyond the virutal world closely displays the characteristics of the Hyperpersonal model.

Asignment 11

Early this semester my group of friends from home decided that we wanted to surprise our friend Courtney, whose twenty first birthday was the first week in November, with a visit. Courtney goes to Fairfield University in Connecticut and the rest of us are scattered around from up here in Ithaca to down in DC. To make sure we were welcome I contacted one of her housemates (through facebook, of course). From September to November we exchanged many messages, setting up logistics, sharing excitement, and some small talk.

Looking back at the messages in my facebook, the first thing I notice is how friendly she was. She messaged me back almost immediately, saying she has heard about us and knew Courtney would be so excited for a surprise visit. The messages seem to closely follow the hyperpersonal model. Initially we had a positive exchange, and from there we seemed to become more and more friendly. In the second message, she noticed our similar majors and we exchanged more messages about that. We also brainstormed ideas for exactly how to surprise her, what to bring, party ideas, etc. The messages were always upbeat and included a lot of explanation points, making me feel friendlier towards her, in line with the hyperpersonal theory. The little bit of her personality I observed through our messages and the parts of her profile that made us seem similar were amplified due to the CMC communication. By the time we were ready to head to Fairfield, I was also looking forward to meeting her.

According to Ramirez and Wang, the hyperpersonal theory predicts that after an extended period of time communicating in CMC, the participants would likely “fill in” missing details about the other, likely contradicting already formed impressions. However, due to the relatively short term nature of our contact, I believe this effect was minor in our meeting face to face. There were small things I thought would be different about her, for example, I thought she would be more outgoing from our message exchange than she was in reality. Ramirez and Wang state that modality switching gives access to new social information, filling in the blanks from CMC, enhancing partner perceptions and furthering relationship growth. This applies to my experience, I had a glimpse of who she was and since our contact in CMC was relatively short, meeting in FTF solidified my impression. They also state that modality switching diminishes communication process and social outcomes when FTF is different than what was perceived in FTF. I only noticed this slightly and it didn’t have an affect on our meeting. By the time we left, I felt like I was saying goodbye to another friend!