Being a separated forty-year-old mother with a son named Bryant did not stop ChrisVA from wanting to have some online fun. However, even more surprising was the fact that thirty-eight-year-old ChrisVA is now married to a woman he has been with for over 18 years. Nevertheless, Jeremy still came searching for a woman to help his “not so hot sex life.”
Unfortunately for ChrisVA, since I was a forty-year-old responsible mother with integrity and self-respect, I was more interested in acting my age and being the sophisticated woman I was supposed to be. I quickly learned that acting forty was a little harder than I expected it to be so I really had to think through my methods to make him believe I was truly who I said I was. Since we were talking in a private chat, which is an example of lean medium, I had to take advantage of the limited visual clues that would cause him to judge and stereotype me. Therefore, I made sure that I typed in complete sentences, used correct grammar and was careful with my word choice. I refrained from shortening words and questioned what any Internet slang meant like any other clueless forty-year-old.
Then, when we started talking about our personal lives, I made sure to stick to very vague and open-ended questions where I could easily reciprocate with an ambiguous answer and some story to go along with it. I also tried to stick to topics that I thought a forty and thirty-eight-year-old would discuss. This got a little difficult when we talked about how hard marriages were. Yet, when I asked about what his favorite age was, it was a lot of fun because I got to imagine what I want to have done by the time I am forty, except of course being separated.
Being in an online psychological space really allowed me to protect my anonymity and this lie regarding this fantasy life I was telling ChrisVA about. Since I was not face-to-face, I had time to think about my answers and choose my words wisely, and my facial expressions were not there to give me away. Furthermore, I got to wrestle between my ideal, ought, actual and true self. Since I was talking to myself twenty years from now, I made sure to incorporate a combination of the qualities I hope to possess at that point, the qualities I feel like I should possess at forty-years old, some of the qualities that I possess now as a nineteen-year-old, and then a little mystery regarding the parts of me that have not been revealed yet. It was a very exciting, yet somewhat depressing experience because it was interesting to think about the future, yet I hope that I am not a separated mother dating online at forty-years old.
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2 comments:
That sounds like a really interesting experience. Obviously, this would probably only work in the leanest of media since you decided to take on a personality that was so greatly different from yours.
I remember once playing Literati with a ~40 year old woman (though she kinda acted like she was older, and could have been lying) and she thought I was the same age as her. It was plainly obvious that she only knew people of our age through stereotypes because she asked me about extremely typical (and old-fashioned) things about teenage life and whatnot and I had to tell her that well, she basically had no idea what she was talking about.
I bring this up because it illustrates how awkward it can be sometimes for young people to interact with older ones through the internet. My parents for example only like to use email and rarely use things like MSN, probably because their lives are more hectic and they don't place a high priority on semi-synchronous internet communication. In a way, I feel that these media are more honed towards younger people because the internet is primarily a revolution of youths expanding their creativity. So when you meet older people on the internet, it can be an extremely different experience sometimes. I was very interested in your post.
ashish
Jillian, your blog was really interesting to me since I went in the total opposite direction by becoming a 18 year old female. However, your point about the limited visual cues and the ease to think about your answers definitely was a common factor in both of our experiences. Online chats and other psychological spaces give the impression manager a great deal of anonymity and allow them to control their self presentation tactics. This worked well in my favor when I was able to deceive the 19 year old boy I was talking to by changing my age during our conversation without him getting jealous. Furthermore, I agree with you on the grammar part of your comment since it works as a sets, props and lighting tactic. It seems like online people associate perfect grammar as a sign of maturity.
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