My Experience with Online Relationships
As a digital native, I think that people expect me to be comfortable forming friendships and relationships online; however, I don’t particularly want to meet new people through social media sites. I’ve never formed a romantic relationship, or even a friendship, online because I consider myself outgoing, confident, and approachable, and I prefer to meet people face-to-face.
I’ve been enrolled in school while working at restaurant and office jobs for the past few years of my life, so I am constantly moving from one social circle to the next. In my mind, online dating and making friends online is more of a last resort for people who have a hard time making friends or for those who are actively searching for “the one.” When people can’t find what they’re looking for in their physical environments, they turn to virtual environments, where they can search millions of people and filter through photos, interests, career goals, hobbies, etc.
On Facebook, sometimes I get friend requests from people I don’t know. After browsing their profiles to make sure I really don’t know them and we don’t have several mutual friends, I deny them. This may sound harsh, but I meet enough people face-to-face, and I would rather put the time and effort into maintaining current friendships or creating new friendships with people who live nearby.
I am already invested in relationships with family and friends, and I often have trouble finding the time to keep in touch with everyone. In order for me to invest in a new online relationship, the other person would have to be perfect, and if she were perfect, I would probably assume that she is too good to be true.
After watching the documentary, Catfish, I wondered about why Nev became so involved with Angela (Abby & Megan). He seemed outgoing and confident, but maybe the idea of having online friendships/relationships appealed to him because:
- his friends wanted to make a documentary about it
- he was talking with beautiful, talented, charismatic people
- these people admired Nev and were interested in him
- he was a little naïve.
While Nev was victimized by Angela’s deception, I found her story more tragic. Her profiles accentuated her dreams and goals as a young woman, and her communication with Nev was also her communication with a past version of herself that ceased to exist. Angela was longing for something she couldn’t find in face-to-face communication or her physical environment. Her lack of fulfillment and satisfaction led her to create different versions of herself online, where she could pretend to be a successful dancer or model or musician.
Her deception started with social media; she found a place where she could recreate herself, connect with others, and share her art, but her online identities were vastly different from who she really was, and she spent the majority of her time managing her different identities.
It seemed like Angela would have maintained this online relationship with Nev forever if he didn’t breach the line between the imaginary, virtual world and the real, physical world. In the documentary, Angela seemed to live online, taking short breaks into reality to cook for her family or tend to her children.
The virtual world where she primarily lived started to leak into reality as she continued to manipulate others through webs of lies. Eventually, she was no longer just deceiving Nev online, but she was also deceiving her whole family and herself. During an interview with ABC News, Angela said, “In my mind there were days where I actually believed that Megan existed. I immersed myself into thinking that somewhere she’s there.”
Meeting the Girl in the Pictures
Deception will always be part of the human experience, regardless of the communication meduim. Catfish is a provocative reminder that anyone can go on social media sites and create profiles to become whoever they want to become. Online relationships may have positive outcomes for some, but generally I think it is better to meet people face-to-face, leaving it to our own courage and confidence in approaching others, or leaving it to the universe to decide who crosses paths.
sawicki15 