For this blog I've chosen to discuss my first girlfriend, whom I first interacted with online. It all started when I joined a community based around a fantasy series novel.
I was hanging out in the community's IRC channel and talking random internet small talk with a nice girl on there. After a while we figured out that not only were we both living in the same town, we were also going to the same high school. At this point we had been chatting via the fantasy community for a good 4 months or so and were starting to feel more and more comfortable with each other. From then on the relationship escalated into a more FtF prone relationship.
When the relationship switched from being primarily CMC to primarily FtF, there were not many problems. We met and started dating regularly. Our first FtF meeting was really not very awkward at all. We were well acquainted with one another at that point.
According to Walther’s Social Information Processing(SIP) Theory, the non-verbal cues that are lacking in CMC will be adapted into the verbal channel over time. I believe it is safe to say this is what happened here. As the months passed online, we developed the same types of impressions of one another as we would have FtF, it just happened over an extended period of time as explained in SIP. In fact, several of the ways in which we had used emoticons/actions within the IRC setting translated quite easily in a FtF setting. For example, in IRC using /me [action] makes it appear as though you are performing an action in the channel/query. We had a long tradition of greeting each other with /me tacklehuggleglomps and so on type of string within CMC and when we finally met FtF, it began with a form of “tacklehug.”
In conclusion, as predicted by SIP the switch between CMC and FtF that occurred with my first girlfriend had no adverse effects on our relationship. This is because of the adaptation of non-verbal cues over the verbal channel that occurred over our extended period of CMC. It is interesting to note, however, that at first we did not know that we were communicating with someone whom lived nearby. This could have caused for more use of selective self-presentation, or deception. However, there were no negative effects from this, and we had a very happy few years of high school after the initial FtF meeting.
1 comment:
Jeffrey, I think your post is the perfect example of how Social Information Processing theory works. It appears that you were able to learn a great deal of information about your girlfriend through CMC. The length of time you spent talking online was long enough for each of you to really get a good feel for the other’s personality, interests, and behaviors. This concept of online behaviors “translating” to the FtF setting is exactly what SIP is all about. You recognized and were comfortable with the way your girlfriend spoke and acted in person because you had grown accustomed to her behaviors online. At the end of your post you note that selective self-presentation, due to the fact that you didn’t know you lived in the same town, could potentially have hurt your relationship. I wonder, though, if maybe this idea that you would never see each other allowed you both to increase self-disclosure, and if this increased self-disclosure could have been part of the reason the switch to FtF was so smooth. Interesting post.
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