When I graduated high school, my friends and I agreed that we would keep in touch through LiveJournal, a free blog service that was popular at the time. This was before Facebook was released. We agreed to post at least one blog a month that would update us on any new developments in our lives. For a while, this worked great (we've stopped doing it now), but I began noticing that strangers would begin posting comments on my friend's journals. Many of them were new friends my buddies had met while at college. One day, while reading a blog, I noticed a comment from one of these strangers, but had no idea that she actually knew my friend very well. For reasons I can't remember, I responded to this girl's comment and a day later, she began posting comments on MY journal. Soon enough, I was posting comments on her journal and we were LiveJournal friends. For a few months, we had a great online communication going - all with some random girl, so I thought. Online, this girl was fun and outgoing, and very funny. She had a very dark humor and seemed very intelligent, judging from the complexity of the language that she used in her journal. She seemed to put a lot of time into her comments and online communication with me, which led me to think her a friendly and warm person. I had guessed that from the amount of time she put into her online persona that she might be somewhat of a loner or introspective.
When I got a weekend vacation, I decided to go visit my friend, who goes to school about 4 hours away. When I got there, we decided to go out to coffee with some of her friends. As we meet her friends, one of the girls says, "Hey, you're RJ right?!" I think, What? Who is this random girl who knows me? Of course, it's the girl from LiveJournal, as I guessed. OhMyGod and ICantBelieveIt's follow for a few minutes and before I know it, I'm off into a 2 hour discussion with her. My previous assessment of her personality in CMC remained correct; she was fun, outgoing, energetic, and very smart. She wasn't a loner or introvert, as I had predicted, but just very sociable.
Ramirez and Wang's modality switching study predicts that social information from meeting in FtF violates previous CMC induced expectancy. The timing of the switch plays a large role in determining the valence of the FtF interaction. Their study predicts that after a long-term (3 weeks+) switch, there will be a negative response. This was not the case with my blog friend and I - the same connection that we shared in the virtual world seemed to translate perfectly into the real world. Too bad she wasn't single.
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2 comments:
Great post, RJ. It's interesting that your experience went against the findings of Ramirez and Wang. It seems like the fact that she was such an outgoing person really helped the transition. Also, your impression of her personality remained basically the same during the switch. This means that there wasn't really anything to be disappointed about, as the hyperpersonal model might have hypothesized.
RJ,
I really enjoyed reading your post. I think I probably would have assumed the same thing about the LiveJournal girl, since I seem to attribute negative characteristics to people who spend an extensive amount of time . However, since your over-attributions were unfounded, your experience might go with the Hyperpersonal model. Overall, great job.
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