Two years ago I had gone to Puerto Rico to attend my cousins wedding. Had a great time, was all ready to come back to NY not knowing that my trip would be extra special. Once I had arrived back home I told my cousin to put the wedding pictures up on her myspace so that I would be able to see them. I then got an invite from a friend of hers who was also at the wedding. I remember we had spoken briefly at the reception but it was really a hi and bye sort of thing. Her name was Jackie and she had just written Hi and that she remembered me from the wedding. I responded back with a "yea I remember you as well, how’s everything going?". From there we just hit it off, writing to each other everyday back and forth. It then moved onto phone conversations for hours and hours nonstop. Mind you, I am not a big phone person but the conversation just flowed. We talked about everything from school, friends, family, Puerto Rico, pets and life. It helped that we both were from Puerto Rico, were in the same grade, and knew pretty much the same group of people. After six months of CMC, it was time for a FtF interaction. I flew to Puerto Rico for a week and hung out with her. Ever since then, we each made trips back and forth to visit each other. She loves NY and I love going to Puerto Rico so we benefit either way. We are still up to this day the best of friends and it’s funny because at times we will think about how our friendship started with a random hello on myspace.
McKenna relationship facilitation factors definitely played a role in our friendship. Removal of gating factors helped initiate the conversation. I am a shy person and don’t really do the whole random conversation with strangers. The was no shyness or blocking off based on attractiveness or socially interactive. The absence of FtF helped eliminate most of those extra features and helped us focus on ourselves and who each other was as a person based on what we wrote. Connecting to similar others was also a factor that helped. We both had similar roots and interests that we could relate to. We knew the same people which is how we ended up meeting. Both were from Puerto Rico so it was kind of a sense as if we knew each other already. We also enjoyed the same hobbies and interacted similarly. We understood where each other was coming from seeing as we were the same age with the same stresses of teenage life. I never thought I would end up making a friend online and she ended up being the closest person to me.
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http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/09/5_relationship_gone_wrong.html
http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/09/can_money_buy_love.html
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Hey Anthony,
Thats great that you guys are still best friends. Isn't it so weird sometimes though to think that our best friends are people we don't see yet are closer to than anyone we do see?
I like your post, and definitely agree with the factors you put down. The only criticisms I would have would be that you really didn't describe the experience with as much clarity as I would have liked since I don't get the initial reasons why you would keep on conversing with her, but maybe it's just me.
Great job on describing the factors and how they relate!
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