I came to Cornell as a transfer student last year but the summer before I actually arrived on campus I added the Cornell network to my Facebook profile. As soon as I added this network I started receiving and friend requests from other incoming transfers. There was one student in particular that messaged me frequently because after some initial conversing we learned that we would be living on the same floor in the transfer center. We learned that we had a lot in common (activities, interests), and so from our conversations online I felt as if I definitely knew this person well and was looking forward to meeting them in person. I definitely felt as though there was anticipated future interaction between the both of us.
When late August came around I actually was able to meet this individual, and unlike what Ramirez and Wang claimed, my online transfer buddy and I actually became great friends and still are. I was not at all disappointed or let down when we first had the chance to meet. It was not hard to move our friendship from CMC to offline/ face-to-face. One of the major claims that Ramirez and Wang make is that that “there is uncertainty- provoking relative to interacting via CMC”. In my response to that though, there may have been some slight awkwardness but it quickly dissipated once we “broke the ice” by chatting about the topics we had discussed previously online.
So then I believe this relationship with my fellow transfer buddy supports Berger & Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory because the more we interacted and disclosed information about ourselves there was a greater sense of camaraderie, friendship and intimacy. I think overall meeting and becoming friends in reality actually made our relationship stronger because we are now able to learn more about one another through face-to-face interaction. Maybe leaving virtuality isn’t that bad after all.
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