Assignment 11: All that, for this?

Since I use the Internet frequently, it is quite common for me to interact with strangers online, whether it’s a common interest site or a discussion debate. Now, especially with Facebook, it becomes much easier to communicate with people online, even those you don’t know. Most of the time though, this CMC interaction rarely leads to a FtF meeting, at least for me.

However, there was one instance where I actually met someone FtF after interacting with him for several months through Facebook. It was actually quite sketchy, now that I look back on it. This person apparently read a comment I wrote on some group wall, looked me up, messaged me and then to top it off, he got my AIM too. Needless to say, he IMed me soon after and we began to chat regularly. Thanks to Facebook, I found out he was a friend of a friend and according to our profiles, we actually had some things in common. Our chat topics normally consisted of sports teams (since we came from a similar area), our mutual friends, classes, etc. He was extremely sarcastic and loved to talk about how awesome he was. Maybe it was due to my naïveté as a freshman, but pretty soon I believed everything that showed up in our IM windows. Our interactions definitely followed the Hyperpersonal Model. The cues were very limited; I basically knew that he loved to drink, partied frequently, had numerous friends, hated Ithaca and was in love with himself. The fact that he was so sarcastic and insulted everything led me to conclude that maybe he was as cool as he appeared online. That was all I knew of him and gradually I became more intimidated, especially when he suggested we meet in person. Finally, after months of persuasion, I finally agreed to see him in a public place. Now I know that there was definitely some selective self-presentation going on, as well as over-attribution of resources. The fact that he had my Facebook profile available to him meant that he had the goods and could edit how he communicated with me.

Our meeting, like the Ramirez and Wang paper stated, was definitely a “turning point” in our relationship. The person did not meet my expectations at all, which agreed with the Expectation Violation Theory. He was rude, awkward and just plain weird. The FtF meeting, after our CMC interactions, was disappointing and led to a chain of events which basically ended up with no (or rare) future interactions. The research was correct in that the impressions I made through CMC failed to match physical reality during FtF, and there was a huge difference in my initial expectations of the person’s “communication behavior and physical appearance” and what was present during the FtF encounter. Thankfully, I learned to be not so naïve and trusting.