Assignment 5: Getting closer after moving away

It’s really funny now that I look back on it, because with most of my friendships, they tend to deepen after more frequent face to face interactions. There was this girl that I’ve known since late junior high but we were “close” acquaintances at best. While suffering through labs and assignments, we had our bonding moments but that was all. When we graduated and went our separate ways, I thought that’ll be the last I’d see of her. So it was doubly surprising that right now, she’s one of the few people I stay in contact with regularly from high school.

Wallace has several factors such common ground, proximity and disinhibition effects which helped to explain why we became better friends even though we’re in two different countries (though that doesn’t really count if she’s in Canada right, ha).

According to Wallace, common ground is the “mutually shared beliefs, assumptions and propositions” between people. You become attracted to people with whom you share common ground, and your interactions would depend on how much of that is shared. Basically my friend and I started our communication with MSN and it was a mutual “reaching out” because at the time, both of us were overwhelmed with settling into college life. Coincidentally, we both moved far away from home (from the west coast to east) and we were close with our families – consequently feeling similarly homesick. Through our online conversations, we bonded over adjusting to dorm life, the disagreeable weather, difficult classes and being isolated in small college towns. I also found that we had much in common, a lot more than just sharing heavy workloads during high school. She got me hooked onto Taiwanese soaps; I introduced her to Korean ones. We had a mutual love of singing theme songs, so during breaks we’d use her very nice karaoke system.

Despite living in the same time zone, we were too far away to visit each other. Therefore our proximity is basically the online spaces that we interact in. MSN was the primary channel, since it was the most synchronous. If there was time and privacy, we’d do video or voice chats too, which made our conversations more personal. She was the first person I advertised Facebook to, since most of my old classmates didn’t know what that was. So in addition to synchronous interactions, we’d use all of Facebook’s messaging functions. When time became limited, this became used a lot more.

During our numerous online conversations, the physical distance and not seeing each other made it easier for both of us to disclose more information. The more we chatted, the more personal information we disclosed, proving the disinhibition effect. When we became less inhibited, we shared things that I’d tell my best friends. I felt like I had nothing to be embarrassed of, since she couldn’t actually see me. Issues that I couldn’t tell my friends at school, I felt perfectly comfortable telling her, probably because she doesn’t see me every day and I would feel less awkward about it.

Thanks to building our friendship online, I’m already looking forward to winter break when we can hang out. :)