During my high school years, I played many computer games with my friends. One of the games was Starcraft, which I played almost every day. At one point, my high school friend introduced me to someone, Pat, who she met through Starcraft. When I first talked to Pat online, we found that we shared a lot in common, such as having similar cultural backgrounds and similar music tastes, and we started to talk to each other online everyday. After a several months, we talked about meeting in person. Then about a year after we first talked online, we decided to move our relationship offline and meet FtF. At first, it felt slightly awkward but within minutes that we started talking to each other, we felt it was the same as talking online.
Our long-term CMC association contradicts Ramirez and Wang’s claim that expectations of someone can be violated by switching from a CMC to FtF setting, causing a negative view of the person. They claim that a long-term association via CMC will be “(a) evaluated more negatively and (b) uncertainty-provoking relative to interacting via CMC.” Although when we first met, it might have felt quite awkward, we were able to pass that feeling when we started to talk to each other. I realized he was the same FtF as he was online and he felt the same way about meeting me. Our awkwardness quickly disappeared and we felt comfortable around each other. I found that meeting in person just verified my impression of Pat that I developed from talking to him online. I did not develop any negative view of him at all, contrary to the results of Ramirez and Wang. In addition, I did not find it hard to move our friendship offline. When we talked online, we did not have a problem self-disclosing information about one another and we grew very comfortable with each other.
Our relationship supports Berger & Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory. It predicts a positive outcome when relationships leave virtuality. Pat and I self-disclosed a lot about ourselves online, which led to greater intimacy in our friendship. We developed a strong social attraction with each another and it allowed us to have less uncertainty when we finally met in person. We were able to remove any doubts we may have had about each other by meeting in person. Also, we had visual cues FtF to learn more about how we act and behave.
4 comments:
Hi Selina,
Your story with Pat is really interesting. It is fascinating that you were able to make a strong connection with someone who you were talking with for a long time on CMC. It would be interesting to compare your story and others and see how much personality and looks make a difference. As you said, the visual cues in Ftf certainly helped your relationship develop and it would be nice if someone could design an experiment making visual cues change. I think another important point you make is that Pat was the same online and offline. Due to this similarity, you might have been more attracted to him and were able to have a good conversation. The negative outcome predicted by Ramirez and Wang was certainly disproved by your story while the Uncertainty Reduction Theory was upheld.
Great post, I can relate to it pretty well. I've met a few people online and then met them FTF, and there was that initial awkwardness that you mention, but after that it was like any other friendship. When the CMC relationships were long-term they didn't violate our expectations, like you mentioned. It seems like Ramirez and Wang didn't take familiarity into account, and that the longer you talk to someone the more comfortable you are with them.
Hi Selina
This is a good story about meeting someone through a CMC relationship. I think that this can't go without mentioning SIDE however. It seems that you and Pat had a lot in common through your online gaming habits, and this may have also facilitated your FtF relationship when you left CMC.
Also, if you consider hyperpersonal theory, as you say, since you did not notice any more negative traits in him than you perceived through earlier interactions online, then your meeting was a positive one.
I think that when you consider how now there are a lot more visual cues, we're starting to move out of the age where CMC is considered CFO and it's becoming a bit more personal. This could be a reason to explain if people have a lot more success moving from online to offline relationships.
Good post Selina. I too was a starcraft addict in high school. This story does an excellent job of contradicting Ramirez and Wang's theory on the CMC to FtF switch. Although you mention it supporting URT in your post, I also think that this is a good example of SIP. It shows how over time possibly non-verbal cues were adapted and would predict a positive outcome after meeting in FtF with a longer CMC relationship beforehand. The ease at which your relationship moved from CMC to FtF shows that Ramirez and Wang’s ideas definitely do not apply to all cases. I’m interested in knowing whether there were more meetings in FtF after the first, and whether they were all just as successful.
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