What an A$$hole-#11

Just as I moved into Cornell last year, I, like many other freshmen, sought to make as many friends as possible. If I was to live here for four years, I figured I should find myself good company. One day one of the girls that I had just met asked me if I used Xanga and if I had ever read the blog by a particular Cornell student who I will name X. When I told her no, she suggested I read it and so I did.

X's page was the most testosterone driven page I had ever viewed. He constantly discussed his sexual escapades and expressed his views on women. His information claimed that he sought to know everything about women. How they think, dress, act, and *explicit word.* After reading through several of his blogs, I reached a conclusion: X is a complete A$hole. Furthermore, my friend had also told me that she had already met him and he was well known for his conquests. I did some more exploring on his Facebook and it only furthered my distaste for him. All I could think was that this kid was a male chauvinist and a complete pig.

My views on X played right along with the Hyperpersonal Model by Walther who claims that we will have exaggerated positive or negative views on a person due to a limited number of cues. Some of the qualities which worked with the model include the over-attribution process, selective self-presentation, and re-allocation of cognitive resources. Even though I had yet to meet X, I felt like I knew everything about him. Since there was less information in which I could draw about X (all I knew was that he is male, a Cornellian, and what he posted in his blog), I developed a much more exaggerated impression of the type of person he was. X utilized selective self-presentation in his blog. He only showed off the testosterone driven aspect of his personality, all while using a witty style of writing which keeps many members of the Xanga community compelled. Finally, due to the re-allocation of cognitive resources, I focused more on what he wrote in his messages because there was nothing else to focus on. This lead me to over analyze everything he said and lead me to the conclusion of what he was like.

Later on into the semester I finally met X. My opinion about him was only partially correct and of course, there was a lot more to him than what I knew about him from his blog. This played right into Expectancy Violation Theory by Wang and Ramirez because I had expected his offline persona to be the same as his online one. After learning about him through different online sources for an extended period of time (about 5 weeks), I thought I had him all figured out, but I found myself being completely wrong. Today, he is actually one of my closest friends on campus and we both know each other's deepest, darkest secrets. He still continues to write on his blog and nothing has changed as far as topics or his writing style, but my opinion of him has completely changed.

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