Students in COM425 were asked to contribute opinion articles on the subject of online dating. This essay and others posted this week feature student opinions and perspectives on online dating platforms and their implications for the people who use them.
Identity Performance in Online Dating Contributed by Peter Ludolph Have you ever met someone who was described to you by others and they turned out to be totally different than you were expecting? I know that this has happened to me and I think that this is what often happens in the world of online dating. People control the aspects of their identity that are exposed to others and subsequently paint a picture of an identity that may or may not actually represent them. A person’s identity is a combination of both a person’s individual understanding on who they are as well as a community understanding of who they are. However, in online interactions, we can only derive an understanding of another person’s identity based off of what we are told, so the identity is much more controlled by the sender than the receiver. In face-to-face conversations, when we are told something that sounds farfetched, we can look to other areas to confirm our doubt. Things like non-verbal cues or further questioning can be used more easily in person than they can be used online. There is little doubt that people have more control over their identity when using online media sites. Yet the question still remains as to what the effect is when a relationship that has developed online transitions offline. What problems with identity occur in these transitions? Many of the problems that occur happen because of a misunderstanding during online communication. Other slips in communication also happen when people see each other for the first time. Many people put their best profile pictures up online in the hope to receive views. The problem with this is that when you meet in person you have to hope that you are looking as good as you did in that picture, which for many people is not the case. This gets into the moral dilemma of whether someone should accept you for who you are and not for what you advertised to them. Most people can look past physical appearance unless the other person is totally different than what they were expecting. The veil of the online dating profile can also be used as a confidence booster for many people who don’t intend at all to date. On eHarmony’s advice board, there are many men who are venting that women on the site have no intention of dating and use the site instead for building their confidence, by having men message them (Battista). This can go both ways in terms of gender but the example here is pointing toward women as the main culprit in these acts. This is an interesting facet of identity to look at because people are using their perfected online personas to build confidence for their less perfect physical identity. In doing this, people are receiving confidence from an identity that is not necessarily who they truly are. If you are honest with yourself you probably realize that you don’t put an “average” picture as your profile picture nor do you summarize yourself in a less than flattering way when creating an online profile. Most people want to put their best foot forward when online but what must be avoided is inflating your personality online just to receive more attention. In the end, this will be more likely to bite you than to help you in your offline relationships. A philosophical question to ponder in today’s online world is: what is true identity? Meaning, is your physical non-internet self who you truly are or is your internet persona just as much truly you? A fun story to tell is one that started years ago when I was around thirteen years old and my brother (Tim) was fifteen. This was back when Myspace was all the rage and Facebook had not yet taken off. My brother and I thought it would be funny to create a Myspace account for our Golden Retriever (Otto). So, being teenagers, we did, and soon Otto had something like 50 friends. We had a bio for him and even had profile pictures for him. The Internet world had no way to know whether Otto was a real person or not because he had all of the correct credentials. Tim and I had included Otto's birthday, address, and even an email address. To the Internet, Otto Ludolph was as real as Tim or myself. You may be wondering how we know that this dog was seen as a real person. We knew that when Otto started getting mail there was something going on. He would receive credit card applications from Capitol One and samples from Huggies Diapers. What my brother and I had effectively done was create a human identity for a dog. For goodness sake, he was getting more mail than I was and I’m real! Obviously, this is a funny story but it has an interesting moral. Otto was and is obviously not a human being, yet on the Internet he exists as one. So what is Otto’s true identity? Well, he is a dog and will continue to be one, but unbeknownst to him he also exists online, where some people may believe him to be a person. If identity is both what we understand ourselves to be and what others believe we are, then Otto is having an identity crisis. Thankfully for him, he doesn’t have to think too hard about these things. Identity online is different than it is offline. We live our lives online with immediate access to the world around us. In conjunction, when it comes to online dating, we expect immediate results. Our online interactions are hyperpersonal in order to quickly find what we are looking for when in an online dating scene. People use hyperpersonality as a form of identity management. Hyperpersonality causes a person to skip formalities and control more of their identity exposure toward others. People can more quickly engage in serious relationship and at the same time totally abandon a conversation if there is any doubt in feelings toward another person when engaging in hyperpersonal behavior. Traditional dating usually involves two people slowly getting to know one another and figuring out over time if a relationship is right for both of them. Online, we have less patience because there are more options. Online dating involves the mindset that there are a ton of options and you need to quickly sift through the options before your perfect match is taken. There is less risk and less retaliation when you blow someone off online versus in person. This high pace is something that everyone who goes online needs to be cognizant of when looking a relationship online. Identity and performance are not a fine science. It is difficult to know when someone online is truly genuine or if they are merely online for cheap thrills. It is also difficult to know if that person on the other side of the screen is real. One thing that I have come to realize is that online identity is not the same as physical identity and the way we interact online is totally different than it is in person. That is why it is crucial to mind your identity online; you never know when you will meet someone you were impolite to online. It is also crucial to understand how to communicate online verses offline. They may not have to be so separated if people were cognizant of their differing communication styles when online. Works Cited Battista, Marni. "How Do I Move A New Online Relationship Offline? - EHarmony Advice." EHarmony Advice RSS. EHarmony.com, 28 Feb. 2013. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. <http://www.eharmony.com/dating-advice/using-eharmony/how-do-i-move-a-new-online-relationship-offline/#.VrOfEvkrKM8>.
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![]() Students in COM425 were asked to contribute opinion articles on the subject of online dating. This essay and others posted this week feature student opinions and perspectives on online dating platforms and their implications for the people who use them. Success with Online Dating Contributed by Jenna Oberthaler Identity is the image a person wants to portray to everyone else, the image that they actively engage in. One’s identity differs from one’s self-image in that a self-image of a person is a combination of who one thinks they are and who everyone around them thinks they are. This is interesting when we look at online profiles. When making an online profile, what identity do people try to have compared to their self-image? This is a question with many answers but a bigger question is, when searching people online, how does one know who they are actually speaking to? I have a co-worker who met her fiancé on an online dating site. She says she is someone who never thought she would ever be married and she is now planning a wedding because of a dating site she “just tried” one day. The interesting part of her story, to me, is not that she actually met a guy on a dating site, but that he did not see what she looked like until three weeks after they started talking. My co-worker’s fiancé had pictures of himself on his profile, so she was able to see what he looked like right away; however, he did not see what she looked like until weeks after they first met online. He told her that he knew when he started talking to her that she was going to be the one for him and, to her surprise, he is the one for her! When my coworker set up her online dating profile without pictures, she had to choose words that were going to attract men to look at her. By doing this, she was creating her identity. She did not want men to care what she looked like but, rather, to be attracted to her by the written identity she made for herself. This is where some people misuse online profiles and create an online identity that is really not their own but rather how they want others to see them. My coworker, on the other hand, tried to be completely honest about who she was and write nothing but the truth on her profile. I think it is simply amazing that she was able to meet a great man—a man she is going marry within the next six months—due to an online dating site. I am also now able to categorize myself with the 29% of Americans who know someone who met a spouse or other long-term partner through online dating. This statistic is from the Pew Research Center article on Online Dating and Relationships. The article, written by Aaron Smith and Maeve Duggan, includes many statistics on Americans having an easier time accepting online dating since 2005. I believe online dating is becoming more popular because the world is becoming more digitized. Many of us are on out cellphones or computers throughout the day and, in 2016, creating sites and apps where people can now meet others during their busy lives is less challenging and more convenient for the average person. Think about how often you check your cellphone versus how often you take the time to go to a coffee shop or public place to speak to someone. Cellphones, Internet, computers, apps, and other digital forms of media have become the center of our communication. It is increasingly unlikely for anyone not to have new media resources in their home and, if they do not, they are most likely having a harder time communicating with the rest of the world on a day-to-day basis. Online dating, I believe, has become just another center of communication for those who are single and want to meet a life partner. All in all, I used to be against online dating and believed we should always try and meet up with people to talk to them. I did not use texting right away and my parents forced me to make calls to my friends. Growing up, I have always thought I would be against new forms of media used for communication but I am starting to change my mind about these new forms. I text people more often than I call people now and I am not opposed to online dating like I once was. I believe this is me becoming more in touch with today’s society and accepting that I must move forward with new forms of communication or I am going to be lost in the mix! ![]() Students in COM425 were asked to contribute opinion articles on the subject of online dating. This essay and others posted this week feature student opinions and perspectives on online dating platforms and their implications for the people who use them. Dating Sites Contributed by Romain Johnson II Dating sites have provided a way for people to hook up and create relationships for years, but I have always wondered what it was about these sites that makes people want to keep coming. It wasn’t until our COM425 class started talking about the five types of social support that people use and have on social media that I realized why people were so attracted to dating sites. The five types of social support are emotional support, self-esteem support, network support, information support, and tangible support; I would like to talk about the first three (emotional, self-esteem, and network) to explain how they can relate to online dating sites. When I think of dating sites, one of the first things that I think of is emotional support. Obviously a person is going on a dating website to look for a lover—for one night or for a life time—but nonetheless they are looking for emotional factor. I am pretty sure that is how all dating sites got started. A person needed some type of emotional support. The websites that were out there at the time did not meet the needs of that one person, creating a reason to start a new dating site with different qualities for different people. Self-esteem support is the second point. Interactive dating sites build up a sense of self-esteem for a person, for good or bad. A site may build self-esteem for the person on the computer screen but not for the actual person. Some people who have success with online dating sites gain great self-esteem once they get comfortable with the format. Dating websites have done a lot of good things for relationships and people's self-esteem, but they have also sometimes messed things up for people and their relationships. Networking support is, I feel, a huge key in any relationship. Having that support system and ensuring that people have your back is also a nice thing to have, and dating sites have tried their best to make that a possibility for all their users. People all the time use different dating sites to get support. For example, say someone just went through a tough divorce but they want to try and get over everything by dating through dating sites again. I also found another website, called cancermatch.com, that isn’t too much about dating, but matches people up for different support systems to help them get through a cancer diagnosis. Once people understand your situation, they are more able to relate to what it is you are going through. Social support in my opinion a key aspect to building any relationship online. Once that support is built between people, then everything else—like trust and love—will fall into place. |
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