Towards the end of high school, one of my friends mentioned to me that one of his female friends had a crush on me. I found this interesting and prodded him for more info. He said that the girl thought I was interesting, but didn't really want to date. Quite naturally, I was intrigued. I was sitting at my friend's computer one day and that girl sent him an IM. As a joke, I pretended to be my friend, but eventually she realized it wasn't and asked who it was. I asked her to guess, and she guessed me. I was stunned, considering I didn't know who she was. She was equally flabbergasted when I confirmed her guess. She had just been joking. This sparked an interesting online relationship that lasted several weeks.
At first, I was strongly exhibiting Behavioral Confirmation, one of the aspects of the Hyperpersonal Model, which states that one tends to behave as others see you. For her to have such strong feelings about me without even knowing me, I assumed she thought I was very interesting or cool. I tended to try to pass myself off as such without really realizing what I was doing. Thanks to Comm 245, I now know how much of a tool I was being, lol.
Wallace's attraction factors were fairly prominent. She knew what I looked like although not the reverse, but after I got to know her a little, I facebooked her and saw her pictures. This goes along with the theory of getting to know someone online, and then finding out how attractive they are. Proximity, or the theory that familiarity flows from intersection frequency, existed because we often saw that the other was online and started chatting. We had common ground, both going to the same high school, living in the same town, and having some common interests. Disinhibition was very prominent between us. Even though I hadn't ever met this girl face to face, we ended up talking about many, many different things that were very personal.
One of McKenna's relationship facilitation factors, Identifiability, struck me as relating quite closely to Disinhibition from Wallace. McKenna says that in some cases, a feeling of anonymity leads to increased self-disclosure and increased relationship development. This is known as the "stranger in the train" effect. There was a great deal of anonymity between myself and this girl, which led to our increased sharing of personal issues and a faster growing relationship. The Removal of Gating features part of McKenna's theory is also applicable. I didn't know what this girl looked like before we started talking, and it made me more intrigued with her. Also, both of our "shyness's" were evaporated by the online medium. The medium of instant messaging led to a good amount of Interactional Control also. Our ability to start and end conversations whenever we wanted was very convenient. The fourth part of McKenna's structure is Connecting to Similar Others, which is like the Common Ground aspect of Wallace. We had similar backgrounds, personalities, and opinions about several things, which helped strengthen our relationship. The Getting the Goods part of the theory isn't very applicable because she knew what I looked like, my race, age and such beforehand, and I didn't use the net to find out anything about her until I knew her already.
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3 comments:
Richard,
Nice post. I really like how you analyzed the relationship with almost every concept we learned in class. I do not necessary agree with this line though, “This goes along with the theory of getting to know someone online, and then finding out how attractive they are.” Maybe it is the way you worded it, but doesn’t physical attraction initiate a relationship? This “theory” did not say that if you find meet someone online they would appear more attractive later on. You probably meant that it was true how the online relationship reverse the typical norm of being attracted to someone and then getting to know them. In the online space, you get to know someone and then you can see their physical attraction. I am curious to see what why this relationship only lasted several weeks… does it have anything to do with the way you met?
Ellis
BTW, I think you are on my bowling team. I’m the one bringing the team average down lol.
Rich, nice post. Your blog took an interesting angle on the assignment in that you met the girl online but had a real life connection to her through a friend. The fact that she could tell that you were not your friend shows that she probably had a fairly close online relationship with him and the fact that you were also friends with him probably helped your cause. As for the behavioral confirmation, I feel like it was intensified by the fact that you knew she liked you going into the conversation. You did not necessarily try to in a certain manner due to a vibe you were getting from the conversation, you acted as you would to hit on a girl that you already knew was into you. I would disagree with you on getting the goods though. You did use your friend as a resource to find out knowledge about her and you eventually did use facebook to see if you wanted to continue talking to her.
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