Deception often plays a role in online relationships. People can employ selective self-presentation to make them seem more attractive physically and mentally, increasing the rate of relationship development. At the same time, a thriving online relationship demands that the two partners possess common ground – that is, that they share similar interests and experiences. This article describes a relationship in which these two factors collided in an unhappy and unfortunate coincidence. The two partners, chatting under the aliases “Sweetie” and “Prince of Joy,” had been having a fantastic time chatting online and decided to meet face to face. It was then that they discovered that they were actually a real life married couple whose rocky marriage had prompted each of them to seek out a new companion on the Internet!
How could this have happened? First, it makes perfect sense that the two should be so interested in each other. McKenna’s relationship facilitation factors, such as connecting to similar others, were clearly at work. Sweetie and Prince of Joy were both in the middle of a tumultuous marriage and thus shared a significant amount of common ground. Furthermore, their anonymity compelled them to increase their rate of self disclosure and relate their woes to one another. As theorized by Wallace, this disinhibition effect is one of the factors that leads to online attraction. In this case, they revealed intensely personal information that prompted each of them to sincerely empathize with the other, thereby increasing the amount mutual attraction.
But this relationship did not end in joy. The fact that the two ultimately decided to meet in person implies that there was some amount of deception lurking beneath the comforting blanket of text. If they told each other so much about themselves and still were not able to discern their true identities, selective self-presentation likely played a role. In this case, the real Sweetie and Prince of Joy ended up filing for divorce, each of them flabbergasted that they could have been so attracted to someone they despised so strongly. This supports social distance theory, which contends that leaner communication mediums (in this case, instant messaging) experience a higher frequency of deception than richer mediums. Online, they each chose to focus on a particular aspect of their lives while covering up aspects of their personality that might portray them in a negative light (and possibly identify them). Of course, this also supports the notion that it is notoriously difficult to detect deception in face-to-face conversation – otherwise, they each (as a married couple) probably would have been suspicious that their partner was being unfaithful.
http://comm245brown.blogspot.com/2007/09/5-sleep-with-mei-mean-my-boss.html
http://comm245brown.blogspot.com/2007/09/5-digital-oedipus.html
1 comment:
What a great story, Evan! It’s such an outrageous coincidence that out of all the chat rooms in the world, they would happen to chance upon each other. It is really quiet miraculous. I thought your post was very good. I really liked how you said that empathy might also be a reason for increased self-disclosure, and I agree this quality contributes to the building of an online relationship. I mean it is such an intimate emotion and you can share it with others because you can connect on a more personal level. But I guess now that the secret’s out, “Sweetie” and “Prince of Joy” will go back to the single life. They’ll probably make new screen names and, knowing their luck, find each other in an online chat room, again.
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