Digital environments have a lot of influence on our emotions. It shapes our emotions by first off, putting ourselves out there and making us feel vulnerable. When you put yourself out there on the internet, for example on a dating profile, you are entering a giant pool of potential significant others versus a single person. This is automatically intimidating. When you are on a dating site, it can have pros and cons like anything we do.
The pros of it are that you shielded behind a screen so if something goes wrong you can just log off or block the person and never have to deal with them again. You also have a giant group of people to pick from versus when you date in person you may not have that many people to pick from, especially if you are from a small town. The cons of online dating can be that someone catfishes you. Catfish is when a person makes a fake online account and pretends to be someone they are not. For example, a 40-year-old man pretending to be a 22-year-old girl. This is risky and can even cause harm to a person. The article that Koerner wrote is a prime example of this (click the dark-colored "article" button below to view the article in a new window). When someone catfishes you, it can really play with your emotions because you think that you are in love with this person and trust them, but in the end, they are not the person you thought. This causes people to shield their emotions more on the web. When dating in person you can see who you are interested in. Being in front of the person or having them involved in your before dating such as a classmate, fellow worker, neighbor, etc. helps you determine that the person is who they say they are. When your neighbor Bobby is living his daily life as Bobby for the past 10 years you save to assume that that is his real identity. Unless Bobby is a secret spy or in the witness protection program but that is highly unlikely. This also allows you to go on face to face dates with him rather than texting or messaging. I prefer face to face or in person dating because you are able to see the person’s emotions. You are able to tell if what they are saying is lining up with how they feel. I believe this is an important thing especially in the beginning stages of dating. My boyfriend and I have been dating for five years on this August 31st. I have been in a long-distance relationship with him for four of the five years with him. We dated for a year before I left to go off to college three and a half hours away from him. We have quite a bit of experience now with digital love. It’s hard to only see him for four months out of the year so we had to adapt by using the digital environment. Our secret to making things work is facetime. I talked about earlier in this post about face to face dates. FaceTime allows you to see each other’s emotions and apply it to the conversation for deeper intimacy. Therefore, I have came to the conclusion, that if one were to enter a digital relationship before meeting the person in real life, I think it should be on a FaceTime rather than texting and messaging back and forth.
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AuthorI am Olivia Golay and I attend Saint Bonaventure University. These blog posts are from the class I am currently taking, English 325: Writing in Digital Environments. ArchivesCategories |