While researching online romances for this assignment, I came across one that piqued my curiosity. This particular online romance unfortunately ended in tragedy. It involved a 17-year-old Chinese boy and the 19-year-old girl of his dreams… or so he thought. According to news reports, the boy chatted with the girl whose screen name was “flying skirt” for several days from an internet café. He became so involved with his online love that he wouldn’t leave the café. Eventually, the pair arranged to meet on the day after Christmas. Much to the boy’s dismay, his dream girl turned out to be unattractive and over ten years older than him. Sadly, their meeting went so poorly that the boy went home and hung himself.
The woman involved in this communication clearly engaged in identity-based digital deception. It is not made clear in the article if the two had exchanged pictures, but it is possible since the boy seemed to be under the impression that the girl was very beautiful. If this was indeed the case, then based on Donath’s research on the application of biological deception to human interaction (1998), the girl manipulated conventional signals in order to obscure her true identity. Her screen name, flying skirt, was a conventional signal because in and of itself, it doesn’t mean anything, but in the boy’s mind, it probably was a reflection of the girl’s youth and brought to mind images of the nubile young teenage girl of his dreams. If she did send a picture, I would argue that this was also a low-cost display because it wouldn’t have been hard for her to find a picture of a beautiful girl online that she could pretend to be, even though physical features are no themselves easy to change.
Hyperpersonal effects such as the re-allocation of cognitive resources, selective self-presentation, and overattribution, all seemed to come to play in this relationship. The woman was able to manage the impression she was making on the boy by carefully crafting her remarks and selectively presenting certain aspects of her persona. This whole process was undoubtedly easier because the woman didn’t have to worry about what sort of face to face impression she would be making and was able to concentrate on her online self. With relatively few cues to go on, the boy engaged in overattribution processes that intensified his impression of the girl’s personality. The boy most likely treated the woman like she was really 19 and this made her behave in this manner as well through a behavioral confirmation loop. Based on new reports, it seems like this relationship was relatively short-lived. The woman seemed to be a highly motivated liar, so it was likely that she would have continued to get away with her deception.
This interaction seems to fit in perfectly with Hancock’s feature based model of digital deception (2004). According to this model, lying is most likely to occur in a distributed, synchronous, non-recordable medium. In this relationship, the woman took advantage of the fact that she wasn’t in the same physical space as the boy and of instant messaging’s synchronicity to get away with her deception. The fact that instant messaging is relatively recordless probably put her at ease too.
In terms of relationship factors that brought about the development of this online romance, both Wallace’s (1999) and McKenna’s (2007) theories are applicable. There relationship blossomed because the boy was physically attracted to the girl, talked to her for hours everyday online (proximity), shared common ground in the sense that he thought that they were both around the same age and had similar interests, and felt disinhibited to self-disclose online. In terms of McKenna’s relationship facilitation factors, the boy probably considered the girl to be identifiable and similar to himself and both utilized interactional control. Gating features that ordinarily would have prevented the boy from having any interest in this woman were removed online. It doesn’t sound as if the boy tried to “get the goods” on his online love before they met. If he had, perhaps he would have become suspicious at the lack of information available about his sweetheart and could have avoided the intense disappointment that resulted in his tragic demise.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36743
6 comments:
Kate! Great post. Good set-up and good writing. I found this story to be appalling, however. This raises some serious questions about using the Internet this way. The guy we discussed in class who spent 6 hours a night in his secondary life involved in another “virtual” marriage is, after reading this story, involved in a real relationship. You did a great job relating your article to the older theories discussed in class like the hyperpersonal model. I find that your explanation of why this Internet relationship could be a representation of the hyperpersonal model was true. One poignant bit of information was that the relationship escalated into such an in depth affair in such a short amount of time. This, as you said, is definitely representative of the over attribution process and cognitive resources. I could not believe that the deception could have actually gone that far but overall a great assessment of the article and taking such little information and analyzing this far. It is something to consider when questioning whether these online relationships are actually real.
Hi Kate! I really enjoyed reading your post you did a great job. I can’t believe that story! It boggles my mind the extent that people deceive others on the internet and how they believe they can actually get away with it. I feel like people think that lying on the internet has no repercussions and that no one will find out their lies since they have this tremendous feeling of anonymity. Its amazing how quickly their relationship developed and how close they became in such a short time. The time commitment that goes into having a relationship with a person on-line is sometimes more than a real-life relationship. It’s unbelievable how many hours people can sit and type to a complete utter stranger, it just boggles my mind. While the time commitment involved is worthy of a true relationship, do you think its possible to compare real life relationships to that of an on-line relationship? Its an interesting issue to explore that touches upon a lot of interesting issues.
You did a good job relating this story to many of the ideas that we have discussed in class. One thing that was interesting that you didn’t mention was one of the factors that in relationship formation: anticipated future interaction. I always find it shocking when I hear stories like this one that even after a person has completely lied about themselves online they are willing to meet in person. Its one thing if the person is anticipating a short term interaction that is entirely CMC, however, how can one justify meeting Ftf? What do you say when you meet them for the first time “Oh I’m actually 32 years older than I told you before, just kidding?” In this case with an all out lie, getting the goods doesn’t seem applicable in its normal sense. Supposing that the perpetrator got the “picture” of herself from somewhere, getting the goods would be more like having others identify the picture. Another interesting this about this article was how extreme the boy’s response was. Even if he had disclosed some information he would not have otherwise disclosed, it shows that his perception of the relationship was almost obsessive. I think the hyperpersonal model definitely does come into play.
To echo the group, nice post. In class, Hancock posed the question: is an online affair different than one in "real" life (of course, he bunny-eared 'real'). I feel that many online trysts are like emotional porn, or fantastical in somewhat harmless ways (though possibly psychologically damaging long-term).
The article you write about corroborates my "fantasy" argument. One of the Hyperpersonal components, "overattribution", can be seen as the technical operator for the fantasy-creation. This boy heavily overattributed the avatar to create an ideal girlfriend -- the classic grail story. Sadly, the abrupt shock of reality ended this young man's life. So, importantly, although this online relationship was fantastical, it had very real consequences during the cross-over into "real" life.
http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/09/can-money-buy-love.html
http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/09/51-this-blog-post-is-group-therapy.html
You did a fantastic job with relating the article to the theories we covered in lecture. The boy’s suicide seems to indicate that online relationships can be as intense as-—and sometimes more intense than—-relationships in real life. At first, I was thrown off by the title of your post since I expected the article to be kind of humorous. Instead, it was pretty disturbing. You did a great job with using theory to explain how the boy steadily became more enthralled with the girl; I agree that the hyperpersonal model played a strong role in this situation.
One thing that was interesting that you did not focus on was how the two actually ended up meeting in real life; this would imply that when they first interacted, they expected to have a long-term relationship. As we learned in lecture, having expectations of meeting in person suggests that people will lie frequently but subtly. However, the woman lied outrageously. It does not seem to make sense for her to lie so outrageously and then agree to meet in person; something seems a little off.
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