Virtual Identity

As we get deeper into discussing virtual identity a few things come to mind. One is that people will always be deceptive. It is human in nature, and the only way we will see a decrease in fake profile pictures and false claims is if we see an increase in the overall moral of man. That being said, I also agree that when specifically looking for intimate relationships online, users are more willing to portray truthful attributes because of the future chance of meeting their partner in person, in the flesh. Where problems regarding online dating arise for me is the effectiveness of finding a companion based off of their profiles, or their ability to speak in an online conversation.

Sure it is easy for us to judge someone's characteristics based off of their info on their profile, or the correctness of their spelling, but to what point are our judgments accurate? While poor spelling may indeed indicate a lack of education or care for being punctual, but does that mean the person is not right for you? I guess what I mean is, fifteen years ago, before online dating and Facebook, how did any of us unsocial, average human beings ever find love?

Suddenly with the rise of the internet people are becoming subject to harsher and harsher judgement, when in reality they feel that things are easier. Fifteen years ago, a horrible speller like me, who happens to be very educated, could walk into a coffee shop, sit down next to someone, start conversation, and by the end of the hour have a date. Now, we have to run spell check, analyze what other's will think of the personal information we include in our profile, and then after all of that carry on conversation over instant messenger for god knows how long, all in hopes that the person on the other side correctly decoded all of your messages. Humor, puns, and sarcasm included.

My point is (I think), that this introduction of the internet (as much as I use and love it) has slowly began to eat away at our ability to interpersonally coincide with each other. Yes, some of us will always have that ability to interact because those people are just naturally social. But for those of us who need to work on being social in order to become acceptable at it have this dilemma of either having to take the easy way out (online dating) or do it the good old fashion way. Like learning a language, if you take a hiatus, or change the way you work to become fluent with it, than you run the risk of loosing progress. In summation and opinion, using the internet as a hub to meet new people is a-okay, but when we begin that intimate relationship online we run the risk of thinking something of the relationship that is not true. I do believe human connection can happen over the internet, but its health and vitality depends on our ability to show connection without having to send it through pixels and digital signals.