Assignment 11: Too Much of a Good CMC...

As an incoming freshman at Cornell University, in the spring of 2006, I spent most afternoons perusing classof2010.cornell.edu. It’s a social network of message boards and profiles that allows all of the students in the class of 2010 to meet one another in CMC before they arrive at the Ithaca campus.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I did meet many of my current, close friends on that website first. But, my current, close friends were people with whom I only briefly discussed topics like my excitement for Cornell, where I was from, what I would be studying, etc. But, there was one particular person who I talked to everyday. In fact, my best friend who was also going to Cornell and I spoke with him everyday.

For the purpose of this blog I’ll call him John. My best friend and I thought John was so cool; we all liked the same music, movies and TV shows. John would make us laugh hysterically and he was one of the main reasons I was so excited to get to Cornell. I thought I was going to meet so many incredibly fun people like John. For months before arriving at Cornell I talked to John, for hours on some nights, and when orientation week finally rolled around, my best friend and I could not wait to meet John.

The third or so night of orientation I invited John to dinner with my roommate and I, as well as another boy my roommate knew from a summer program she had done. When I met all of my other class of 2010 friends in person, it wasn’t a big deal, but when I met John, I could not have been more nervous. Dinner at Appel that night was awful. Every IM I had shared with John was hilarious and exciting. The dinner I shared with John was awkward and uncomfortable. Online John seemed suave and quick with his words, in person he was borderline speech incapable.

I ran into John a few more times after that dinner, but our friendship outside of virtuality was nonexistent. As for all of the other people I met briefly on class of 2010, I’m pretty close with nearly all of them. Hypotheses 3 and 4 of the Ramirez and Wang paper hit this situation right on the nose. I clearly evaluated my long-term CMC association much more negatively than my short-term CMC associations. Length of association appeared to have a lot to do with how positively or negatively I reacted to my CMC friendships when they left virtuality.