A11 :: Heidi Exits the Aircraft, Becomes Don

I was introduced to Don via AOL Instant Messenger; for the first month, we’d converse as VelvetStones67 and HeidisHead79. Until we met face-to-face, I often referred to him as Heidi.

Don’s mother met mine during an elementary school fundraiser. Young Don, his mother explained to mine, had spent the last quarter of his life in Australia, but was planning to reunite with his mum in America and remain "through uni.” More words and phone calls were exchanged between parents, and soon it was agreed that I was to be Don’s handler when he arrived in America – at least until summer was up.

Before we met face-to-face, Don and I met online. We probably chatted for a total of 6 hours, spread over the course of ~7 asynchronous sessions. Our first session involved a series of queries attempting to debunk each other’s seemingly alien childhood life (I was 12 at the time and he was 13): do you hunt often? Have you ever been to a baseball game?

Don and I realized that, myths and geographical distinctions aside, we shared many of the same interests: Madden NFL, basketball, the beach, et al. I became very excited to recruit Don for Lego battles and pick-up games – the activities I engaged in with friends. The over-attribution process of Walther’s Hyperpersonal model had affected my perception of Don; self-selective presentation was also at play (in reference to Don’s athletic skill). I had, as Ramirez and Wang explain, positively evaluated Don and “developed idealized expectations” of our similarities.

When we first awkwardly shook hands on the playground, I was jolted into remembering that Don was Australian (Hypothesis 2 correctly predicted the modality switch would incur “social information perceived as less expected”). His wild accent made me chuckle much more loudly than would be polite – I’d expected Don to look and talk as my friends did, but his textual diction did not convey the accent, nor his more formal FtF style. It became, in some sense, an in-group/out-group affair, with the social cues being our accents and style of dress (physical attributes I had not consciously expected to matter). “Physical reality intrudes” upon our idealized expectations formed during online conversations. The violation of my expectations led to a wholly uncomfortable meeting.

For one, Don displayed a less than impressive physical prowess, despite his boasting over AIM. Though this violation elicited disappointment, the accent and the British-Manner-style of dress were more affecting – in accordance with Hypothesis 2 states, these traits I “perceived [to be] more relationally important.”

The most immediately impacting expectation violations were quite superficial, i.e. accent and outfit. The relatively short time we spent in CMC, then, allowed enough “uncertainty-reducing” for Don and I to overcome this immediate physical discrepancy and eventually neutralize my expectancy violation. (Perhaps a longer CMC session would have introduced other negative expectancy violations relating more to personality judgments.) By the second FtF meeting some time later, we reconciled our shallow (though jolting) physically-manifest differences and re-discovered the mutual interests that had led to an enjoyable CMC experience.