I "think" I am talking to "you"

Hi, instead of telling a new experience, I want to tell an old experience first. It still happened in China, as my last blog, so … please don’t be tired.

When I was in China, we didn’t have public computers in school, so you have to buy one yourself if you want to use. In the first year of my university, we have only one computer in the dorm, although there were 6 girls living together. And we girls liked turning off all the lights, shutting down all the phones, sitting around in front of the screen to watch a movie together, on Friday night. It was the best time of a week after 5 days’ study. You can’t image how I miss the period now.

And we also has some chat tool called “QQ”, just like MSN or Google Talk function, but maybe much more beautiful on the surface. If somebody wants to talk to you, may be a friend and may be a total stranger, a little blue window will jump out. When movie time came, and some blue window jumped out, usually the girl sitting nearest to the keyboard would reply for the computer owner Zhou if she permitted. And the girl would type in what Zhou said.

One Friday night, when we were watching a movie, a blue window jumped, it was from the computer owner Zhou’s high school classmate. He wanted to talk to Zhou. So as usual, another girl replied for Zhou. It was the best part of the movie, so after a few words, Zhou said “You just type in what you want to say, I have to watch the movie”. So that girl typed in some words to answer the guy’s questions. We were all busying watching the movie, so no one paid much attention to the content of the chat. Then suddenly, that boy said “Zhou, you changed”.

This blog topic brings me back to that night. That boy didn’t know it was a total different person, but he realized there were some changed. Maybe the opinion, maybe the language, maybe the favored symbols (like some appearances, some signals…)

That boy is a friend of Zhou, so Zhou most probably will express the true self when chat with him usually. The girl replying for Zhou is busy watching movie, and she is not familiar with that guy, besides, there is nearly no opportunity and need for her and that boy to make friends with each other. So under this situation, the girl most probably will express the true self or just type some meaningless answer, at least there is really no need for her to pretend to be someone else to reply. Even if she pretended to be Zhou, the result proved to be failed.

I’ve talked a lot, I don’t know if you have gotten my point. I agree more with the SIP, “impression formation will develop more slowly in CMC”. And from the SIP picture, you can see the red line and the green line goes closer with time going on. At first, the guy chatted with the girl thinking she was Zhou, but as time passed, he realized “Zhou” was different, and this result was much closer to the fact, the red line. However, in CFO, it says “lack of cues in CMC should lead to neutral, negative, undeveloped impressions”. Under my situation and my example, I can’t agree with this CFO perspective easily.

My example may be a special case, but after all it happened in the internet space and the only reason makes it special is that it happened between acquaintances. But I think the CFO or SIP doesn’t have this limit.

(I am sorry I didn’t get into a chat room, because I didn’t find one, or I don’t quite know how to find one. Sorry.)