For this assignment, I will use the story of one of my best friend’s online relationships to demonstrate the hyperpersonal theory with relation to online relationships leaving virtuality. For the sake of this assignment, I will call my friend “Jade” for anonymity purposes. Now Jade and I were great friends throughout elementary and middle school. Once we separated and went to different high schools, we still kept in touch and I became Jade’s source of comfort and support through her tough online relationship.
Jade and I were juniors in high school when she told me of this boy she met in a national religious youth group newsgroup that facilitated interaction for chapters all over the
On the day of the convention, Jade and Marc planned to meet after an orientation meeting and I was shocked when I received a call from a hysterical Jade, extremely disappointed after her initial meeting with Marc. I think that the hyperpersonal model definitely came into play for Jade and Marcs’ relationship because Jade had initially painted an exaggerated, flawless picture of Marc in her mind and set high expectations for their meeting. She automatically wanted to believe that he was a great, wholesome guy just because he was a part of her religious youth group. Because of their limited virtual means of communication, they were able to carefully filer their information sharing and choose how they wanted to present themselves. This led to a disappointing first meeting because they were, for the first time, forced to interact without control over information disclosure. It turned out to be a challenge because both Jade and Marc had such strong feelings for each other just from talking online that they were devastated when they didn’t turn out to be the people they expected/wanted to be. This was a perfect example of the hyperpersonal model and in light of the theory, it is a shame that these exaggerated perceptions and expectations had to lead to a negative, disappointing outcome.
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/enemies-falling-in-love.html
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/she-blocked-him-when-myspace-love-goes.html
3 comments:
After reading these blogs I come to realize that the hyperpersonal theory applies to a lot of online relationships, and strongly! Not being face to face allows people more time to create a person they want to be. They can change those things that in real-life you would and could never even for a second think about changing. Gender, age and physical appearances are the main ones which come to my mind first. Also, you use your imagination and create a person who you think is a certain way, when really they could be totally different. Like we were talking about today in class, the main default of the hyperpersonal theory is disappointment. And this is something that a lot of people feel when they meet their online “friend” for the first time face to face.
Hey Sherrie,
I found your post about your friend meeting a long time CMC interaction partner face-to-face and being disappointed very interesting. This was a great example of the Hyperpersonal Model in that she took the few cues she was given by Marc and over-exaggerated them. In this case the over-exaggeration was positive which, in turn, led to disappointment when she was confronted with additional cues face-to-face.
I also found that Jade’s reaction was congruent with the predictions of the Ramirez and Wang paper in that, after their year long long-tern association, she evaluated the additional cues more unexpected, negative, and uncertainty provoking. It is for this reason that she experienced such great disappointment upon meeting him in person. Great post!
I think you are very correct about the Hyperpersonal Model being the most accurate theory to describe your friend's relationship. It's interesting how drastic of an impression she formed after the face-to-face meet. I would like to see what you think this relationship anecdote means in terms of Ramirez and Wang's study--particularly in terms of their short term/long term associations.
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