Hi Cyberfriends! By now you have received an email from me to which is attached an interview done by my research assistant, Elisa Wiherin, some years ago. The interview is of a woman who was a student at the time and agreed to share her experiences falling in love online and then what transpired in the relationship. The names of the two principals are changed but they have given me their permission to share the interview with others. I suggest that you print out the interview to work with it. Attached to that email is also a website called Cyberlove101, stories from, and interviews with, people who met and fell in love online. Story 21 is illustrative. As you'd expect, many of the stories are positive but some are not. See if you can draw people's attention to both.
Here are some questions to start you off. As usual, you answer these or create your own questions:
1. There is no doubt that Alexis falls in love online. But what does that mean? What does love mean for Alexis and what is it about the chat room environment that might facilitate this love relationship?
2. This is an example of a relationship in which the people, feeling strongly attracted to each other online, exchange pictures, phone calls and finally meet f2f. This is one end of a spectrum, the other end of which would be people who fall in love online but maint their love relationship entirely online, only relating through text. What might be the differences in "love" for this hypothetical couple as opposed to the case study examples?
3. Based on her responses, what kind of person do you think Alexis is? How might your interpretation of her as a person explain why she fell in love and how she behaved both in the lead up to the face to face meeting and during the first meeting?
4. You have spent some considerable effort thinking about the nature of personhood online. How are insights you exchanged with each other (and the reading) related to thinking about relationships?
5. What are the similarities and differences between falling in love online and falling in love offline? From the evidence in these case studies and your own experience, do you think there is little difference, some difference or a lot of difference between online and offline relationship formation and why?
Good luck; keep the conversation going!
Dr. Bob
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Dr. Bob,
ReplyDeleteI think it's a very good point that you bring up that the chat room environment might have something to do with Alexis' love.
She mentions several times that she was almost the only girl in the chat rooms and that as a result, she was constantly harassed by "obvious liars, perverts, stalkers, young kids, old kids, adults,
most of whom I thought were trying to be something they weren't." I think that although I have no doubt Alexis was in love, that her love was fueled by the environment she was in. He was the diamond in the rough and therefore he seemed more appealing to her.
However, I don't think this kind of behavior exists only in the world of virtual love. In "real life," you see that men who are in the army fall for the first woman they meet simply because they are surrounded by men all the time, and you see that good looking girls fall for less attractive guys because every good looking guy around her is uninteresting, for example. My point is, I believe that Alexis falling in love was partly due to the situation she was in; however, this situation exists as much online as it does in real life.
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI do believe you are correct in stating that "Alexis falling in love was partly due to the situation she was in." I think she was just lonely and needed to find someone to talk to, and randomly (and very luckily?) managed to be in the same chat room as Craig and struck up a conversation. She originally finds the concept to be humorous and I think she probably got a kick out of it--dealing with said people that you mention. But, maybe she just wasn't getting enough attention in real life. She mentions how women are a rarity. But, I think she is so lucky that Craig didn't turn out to be some creep who was lying about everything.
Good for her it worked out in her favor.