Going on ten...

The primary method of communication with my friends in high school is through instant messaging. Generally, most of us are on Google chat during work hours and will converse when we have a free moment during our schedules. However, most of us are also fairly bound to our computers after work, whether for schoolwork or entertainment. Even when it comes to my best friends, we will most likely talk over a computer-mediated channel rather than over the phone.

I’ve known this man for close to ten years now. We’ve seen through each other’s hardships, happiness, and woes. We stay up late, talking about everything and anything. We’ve helped each other through relationships, family troubles, school, work, anything and everything you can think of, we’ve seen it from each other. We’ve confided our deepest secrets; all of this bonding was mostly done over instant messaging.

While we started our relationship face-to-face, our bond has definitely developed over the course of the years through the Internet. While we may not be physically close to one another (he lives about five hours away from Ithaca), we are the type of people to leave our screen names on all the time even when we are not on the computer. There will be times that we leave each other messages and the other person will respond, thus initiating the conversation. Our online proximity is therefore very close since we encounter each other on a fairly regular basis.

The other reason we get along so well is the fact that we have so many things in common. We have often been noted by our mutual friends as being the same person with only a chromosome to differentiate us. We share a lot of the same ideas, values, interests, and characteristics, which allows us a wide variety of topics to discuss. Even when we talk about issues that we don’t necessarily have an interest in, we make the effort to understand the topic presented even if it’s to show our affection for each other. We share so much of the same common ground that it is unthinkable for either of us to stop our communication regardless of our distance. Since we have known each other for so long, the Law of Attraction no longer really applies to our relationship. We’ve known enough about each other over the years to be able to create a sound judgment of one another (which falls in line with the Social Information Process Theory.)

However, I do believe that our relationship did grow mainly in part due to our preferred choice of medium. Since we knew that we liked each other both in person and online, our relationship developed fairly steadily. Following with Wallace’s disinhibition effects, since our relationship developed, we, in turn, shared more information about ourselves. The initiations of conversations by both of us with each other offers both of us the impression that we indeed do enjoy each other’s company. Thank goodness for the internet; I might not have one of my best friends if it weren’t for instant messaging!