Like many incoming freshman, my friend “Kate” set up her Facebook account the day she accepted to Cornell in December. So excited about her upcoming year, Kate instantly started to search other Cornellians. After carefully reading someone’s profile, she would choose to friend them if they seemed “cool” and enjoyed some of the same things she liked. One of the freshman guys she friended, “Chris,” really caught her eye based on the attractiveness of his profile picture, his favorite music and movies, and that he was on the football team. A few days after Chris accepted her friendship, he apparently found her to be quite interesting too because he instant messaged Kate the next time she was on AIM. Kate did not tell me about her conversations until May when she explained how awesome Facebook was and how she was so excited to meet Chris. After many months of chatting online and with move-in day quickly approaching, Chris and Kate decided to meet when they both got to campus. They exchanged cell phone numbers online but left their interactions strictly text-based when they were figuring out a time and place to meet. They finally met FtF for (a very short) dinner in Appel before classes started. This was the last time Kate would ever meet up with Chris as she was absolutely shocked when physical reality was brought into their relationship. He looked nothing like his attractive Facebook picture and could not carry on a conversation about their shared favorite music (i.e. Ani Difranco).
As Kate and Chris were in contact for about eight months, they had plenty of time to get to know each other past what was listed in their Facebook profiles. With their consistent contacting and increased self-disclosure, Kate began to feel very attracted to Chris. This example most closely aligns with Berger and Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) because with the more information she learned about Chris, the more she liked him. Naturally, she was expecting a positive outcome for her FtF meeting after leaving virtuality (as URT predicts) but was unfortunately let down. Based on the amount of information they exchanged about Ani Difranco online and how little Chris was actually able to talk about it in person led Kate to believe that he used search engines to his advantage. Thus, Kate fell victim to the costs of meeting and interacting with a random person online. According to Ramirez and Wang, “The combination of the increased control over message design provided by CMC, opportunity for selective self-presentation, and receiver susceptibility for overattributing characteristics maximize the likelihood of developing heightened expectations and idealized impressions over time.”
Since that one dinner-date freshman year, Kate (now a junior) has been able to successfully avoid Chris in public but she occasionally sees him around campus or at parties.
2 comments:
Krystal,
A very nice post, although I have to say I can sort of sympathize with Chris here, because I don't think I would be able to carry on a conversation about Ani DiFranco either (with a straight face, anyway). I agree that your friend's experience falls into the the Uncertainty Reduction Theory camp, as she did indeed develop heightened expectations and found that the FtF meeting did not uphold her impressions formed online. Also interesting is your analysis of how "Chris" might have used what information Kate put up on Facebook (Ani DiFranco) to forge a false connection with her. Another weird, slightly creepy, aspect of Facebook's potential.
Hi Krystal,
It seems so hard to believe that after talking for so long and feeling so connected that this guy could end up being SUCH a let down/different person. I think that it definitely is a good example of uncertainty reduction theory. It exeplifies the Ramirez and Wang results that a long term association in CMC followed by a modality switch has a negative impact on the relationship. I think it is scary how misleading Facebook can be and how problematic selective self presentation can be.
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