I turned to my beloved New York Times website to find an article about an online relationship. “Getting Hooked on an Online Game, and Getting Hitched to A Fellow Gamer” caught my attention. Flint and Tess, two online characters in the world of Ultima Online, being played by Ms. Sartore and Mr. Morelle, respectively, fell in love online. They met in 1999 and over the course of several months spoke and played online. Ms. Sartore was particularly attracted to Morelle’s compassion—he was kind to all of the people in Ultima, giving the poor ones money or armor and helping whenever someone needed it. Morelle was an employee of the Navy, and was looking to his retirement. With his retirement he also felt it was time to retire from Ultima. Ms. Sartore heard this through a mutual online friend and when she did, blurted to Morelle online “Will you marry me?” She didn’t mean it in the real life sense, but that’s what it eventually led to.
Morelle decided to stay on Ultima and the two continued to get extremely close. So close, that Ms. Sartore flew from her home in Minnesota to Morelle’s home in Seattle, WA. to meet the true life Flint and attend an Ultima users conference. After their real life meeting, their characters married online. Shortly after the virtual wedding, Mr. Morelle virtually asked Ms. Sartore to marry him in real life. They did and the article concludes with the introduction of mutual Ultima virtual friends of Flint and Tess, who too will be married in real life.
From the perspective of the Feature Based Approach, Ultima Online is generally somewhere between synchronous and asynchronous, recordless, and distributed. These features would lead one to believe that a good amount of digital deception is occurring in Ultima between the characters. In this specific case, the contrary was occurring. In the article Mr. Morelle said, “I knew it was getting serious from our online discussions, so our first meeting was so important. No matter what, when you're dealing with a virtual person, you're building up a fantasy in your mind. As soon as I saw Deb, I knew the fantasy matched the reality.” Social Distance Theory, on another hand, takes the opinion that the more interaction in IM and E-mail medias, which are the closest form of media to Ultima, the more one lies. This theory also contrasts with the story of Tess and Flint. The Media Richness Theory best explains what happened between Tess and Flint. The richer the media, the higher the amount of lies being told. Since Ultima is not an extremely rich media, the lies were lacking, and in fact true love was able to blossom.
In this extreme online love example, Wallace’s four factors of a successful online relationship were fulfilled. Since Mr. Morelle and Ms. Sartore met in CMC, they got to know each other first, then looked to physical characteristics. They often interacted in Ultima, which caused them to have a high intersection frequency, which most likely led to some of the initial attractive qualities each partner found in the other gamer. Hours of online conversations, especially after Ms. Sartore initially proposed, must have led the couple to find out much about their similar beliefs and common ground. Lastly, each partner was so disinhibited that they each took a turn asking the other to marry them—one in the virtual world, and one in real life.
From the Media Richness Theory we can understand that a lack in major digital deception can lead to real life relationships that are based on truth. By analyzing Wallace’s four factors, I was able to see how an online relationship can develop and eventually lead to love and marriage. If you’re interested to read the entire article about Tess and Flint: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E6DC143CF933A05750C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
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1 comment:
Justine,
Nice post! The article you found on New York Times about online relationships is very interesting. The idea that two people can meet through a game, fall in love, and get married seems so surreal.
You made good points about which theories the article did or did not support. I agree that Ultima is more of a lean media than a rich media. In this case where there was no or little deception, this supports the Media Richness theory that says leaner media have less deception.
It is interesting how important Wallace's proximity factor is in Flint and Tess' relationship. Due to the intersection frequency through Ultima, the two developed an attraction that ultimately leads to marriage. Although, Tess had limited cues through CMC, she detected personality traits about Flint through the game. She was attracted by his kindness to others. This idea supports the physical attraction factor by Wallace. In CMC, people get to know each other and then become physically attracted like in Flint and Tess’ case.
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