Entry 6 - Processing Your Social Info

"Shoulda had a V8!"

"There, there."

"O hai :3"

I guess these could be called "first dates" for my fiance and I.
We met online December of 2009 on Facebook by recommendation of my sister who knew him as a Christian from deviantArt. We moved most of our conversing to MSN instant messaging and playing Super Smash Bros Brawl online. Yeah, our kind of story causes skepticism to some listeners, but the medium of how we met was not what made us fall in love - it was because of our personalities and God's evident hand upon our relationship. As I often say, "It's not where you are, it's who you are."

That is one reason why I decided to present the Social Information Processing Theory of Joseph Walther to my COM300 class (the other reason was I really wanted to use that Peter Tork clip from Monkee VS Machine!) As Walther claimed, opposed to popular CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) studies of the early 90s, the internet can be used for more than academics and work, but for relationships as well. His theory's name has an acronym that supports the main idea - SIP. Like sipping a drink through a straw takes longer than taking big gulps, such is the flow of information about someone when discovered online rather than in person. 

In our case, CMC was just what my fiance and I needed to start off.  First, we are both shy people who are often labeled as socially awkward because our introverted personalities leave us at a loss for in-the-moment words. Talk to us 30 minutes later and we know just what to say! But through writing, we are geniuses! Even before we met we both believed CMC opened the window to our souls. Second, I was sixteen going on seventeen ♫ and he had just turned 22. I had a year and a half of highschool to go and he was finishing his bachelor's degree. It would have been harder for us to wait to get engaged if our relationship was able to progress at an in-person pace, yet it was necessary for us to wait.Third, we lived in different states so even if we had by some miracle met in person our separation would have been hard without being able to chat or Skype (now we are blessed to live in the same state.)

We felt like using the SIP theory made us able to learn and appreciate all sides of our personalities. They all have a different flair in chat, in text, on webcam, over the phone, and in person, but they still are the same. We accessed different areas of our brains as we found ways to pick up emotional cues with or without non-verbals. Today Daniel and I  prefer in-person communication, but still enjoy taking an occasional trip down memory  lane online.

* Screenshots taken by Daniel and I of The Legend of Zelda's Link and Zelda on that wonderful Wii game, Super Smash Bros Brawl. Nintendo owns The Legend of Zelda, the Wii, and Super Smash Bros Brawl.