In high school, I had gotten a brand new computer to start my high school experience off on the right foot. With the computer came access to the internet and with the internet came chat rooms. I was addicted to them at first, logging on and talking to every person that would converse with me. I finally befriended a male from Pennsylvania who was the same age. We hit it off pretty well talking about our similar interests in movies, music, television etc. We were in the same grade and connected well since we were in similar points in our lives. We continued talking here and there for over a year or so. He was like that distant penpal that you responded to when you got the chance. We kept the relationship online, since Im not much of a phone person and plus he was still a "stranger" so I figure speaking on the phone would be awkward.
I ended up staying at my aunts house one weekend who happened to live in Pennsylvania and so we met up. It was a rather dry conversation and just felt weird. I knew how to interact with this person online but in person it felt much different. This was consistent with Ramirez & Wang hypothesis in that a long term relationship of talking back and forth developed an over-attributed impression of the person. I thought highly of this person and had an impression set in my head that meeting them afterwards gave off a feeling of disappointment. If it had been a short term relationship then the face to face meeting would have been an enhancement on my part of my dwelling impression.
My experience with this individual also followed the uncertainty reduction theory (URT) by Berger and Calabrese. As I continued getting more information about the individual, the more I liked speaking with this person and conversations became more intimate and more in depth then the regular convo. It however predicts a positive experience when leaving the virtuality and our outcome was not so positive. The hyperpersonal model is a better fit for this interaction because inflated perceptions were made and a negative outcome arose out of leaving virtuality. I thought much more of this person than what I actually got. Guess sometimes it is best to not leave virtuality.
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2 comments:
Anthony, it was an interesting post. I also have seen many of my friends meeting new people online and having modality switches to FtF after certain amount of time. Like your case, most of my friends found it awkward or not comfortable to talk to their partners. These cases were mostly due to hyperpersonal effects as well. However, some of my friends still decide to keep interacting with their partner, most of them said the relationship did get better or at least comfortable as there were more FtF interactions.
Your situation seems par for the course for this scenario. Most of the accounts I read while researching for this assignment had similar outcomes. After spending a lot of time in CMC and transferring the relationship to FTF, people rarely express shock or surprise, typically just disappointment. People often experienced dry conversation that didn't live up to their online communications. I think in many ways this can be a product of the medium. Online conversations are significantly slower, we have more time to be witty, and we're often multitasking, so even if conversation is dry we're not as likely to notice. As the previous post suggests, maybe try giving it another FtF shot. Who knows, maybe it'll get better with time as you both adjust to each other in a different medium. Good Luck!
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