Meghan Daum's Virtual Love

Meghan Daum’s “On the fringes of the Physical World” is about the author getting an email from a fan of her previous works. The one email then turns into a relationship between Meghan and the fan PFSlider. It goes from a few emails a night to a few phone calls a night and eventually to actually meeting. Meghan develops feelings for a man she has never met but only talked to online and on the phone and becomes very baffled by the whole situation. Once she finally meets him she realize the lust she has for him over the phone is not the same in real life. But this doesn’t stop her from continuing to talk to PFSlider and even stop her from going to visit him in LA. After a few months of meeting a few times but constantly talking PFSlider gets a

The main argument of the reading "And Then She Texted Me" by Ilana Gershon is how people in today's world breakup through social media and how social business is accomplished through retelling these breakup conversations. In this reading Gershon includes an actual breakup conversation over IM that was sent to her over email. This piece supports the main argument of the reading by providing evidence of breakups over technology becoming more evident in this day of age.

In the article “The IRL Fetish” by Nathan Jergenson, is a powerful essay that demonstrates the idea of this so called “Fetish” that we have with technology today. Within this essay Jergenson uses specific word choice in his essay to strengthen his argument about being connected. He uses quotes from other speakers and writers to get his points acrossed about this fetish that we have in our society right now. Finally, Jergenson also talks about the little victories that we have with technology, like “logging off”, and the irrational fear that we have about being disconnected.

In this society many people completely immerse themselves in a new life that often times leads to distractions within their real life. Turkle states, “For those who are lonely yet fearful of intimacy, online life provides environments where one can be a loner yet not alone, have the illusion of companionship without the demands of sustained, intimate friendship”. This statement supports her overall claim that the addiction to technology leads to a person alienating themselves. A person could have the greatest life in an online environment and not even leave their house. This continues to lead the reader to the second trouble of her soul by setting them up emotionally. In this instance Turkle is trying to elicit a reaction of feeling sorry for the people reading her essay.

Through the use of stories, Twenge successfully uses emotional appeals to capture the reader’s attention. Twenge begins her article with an anecdote of a 13-year-old girl named Athena. In the story, Twenge questions Athena about her social life and what she likes to do with her friends. Athena’s response is that very infrequently they go to the mall with her parents. According to Twenge, Athena and her friends are more likely to communicate through social media than physically. Twenge recalled the times she would go out with

Virtual relationships are becoming more and more popular, due to social media. Along with relationships, Lambert brought up a comparison between modern intimacy and pre-modern intimacy, which states that modern intimacy is privatization and pre-modern intimacy is obligatory relationships. Because virtual relationships are becoming more popular, these types of intimacy may not matter as much because virtual intimacy could become a social norm. Since everything is on the internet, there is no such thing as privacy. Young people are so prone to the idea of having social media that they do not think twice about posting a self-promoting status or

Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari, is absolutely a relevant study for this project. This is because of its relationship to new media, which relates to the course, and dating, which relates to all of society. The book applies to the course in several ways; first, the overall theme of the book relates to people in younger generations becoming more and more reliant on social media and dating websites to try and find love. Ansari delves deep into different aspects of media used in dating, as well as putting in serious research on social sciences to to analyze the cultural impact of new media, which is reaches much farther than one might think. There are several concepts we have learned in this course that relate to the book, including the units

Living in an authentic world is nearly unimaginable when there is technology everywhere. Busyness has taken control over people’s lives. Adam Gopnik’s “Bumping into Mr. Ravioli” and Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together” give reasons as to why humans are absorbed within technology and busyness that they neglect what should be really important to them in their life. Turkle believes that people are misusing technology and the negative effects that come with it. She quotes how adults aren’t actually engaging with people in real life, but instead would rather connect through the internet. The adults then feel a sense of loneliness since they are too tangled up within technology. Turkle believes that the younger population are more so to connect with colleagues but are not quite sure as to whether or not they would like to be loved or wanted by those around them. She points out that robots should not replace the way people form relationships, but instead be accepted as another type of pleasure and love. Gopnik writes about Olivia, his three-year-old daughter, and how she has an imaginary friend named Mr. Ravioli. Olivia always says that Mr. Ravioli is too busy working and has no time to be with her. Gopnik worries that Olivia’s real like is reflected onto her imaginary friend. His worries bring him to a psychologist, his sister, and asks if this behavior is normal. Although his sister says she has never

We live in a world where the internet and social media plays a big role. There are constantly becoming less and less physical contact, and fewer face-to -face relations. This is demonstrated by the fact that we keep in touch with each other over Facebook, shopping takes place over the internet, we keep up with our economy whit online banking and meet friends and lovers over online dating sites. In late modern society, we are always available. But are we really missing out on a lot of important stuff, and is this necessarily a bad thing? This is also the theme in Jonathan Franzen’s essay, “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” from 2011. The focus in this essay will be on how Jonathan Franzen

Throughout his book Modern Romance, Aziz Ansari the author develops and explains concepts that are involved in romantic relationships. In his arguments he describes certain points that explain how romances were modernized with the advancement of the technology. The growth of technology has created new sources of communication like for example socials networks and other websites in the internet that allow people to have an easier search to find a partner when they are looking for one. One of the biggest arguments that author talks about is when he describes how technology has played an important role in romantic relationships. The use of technology that exists in the present day has become excessive and it is a good argument to discuss in the essay. Up to today the online services and socials networking sites have become important factor s in the search for that “perfect someone” that people want to share the rest of our lives with, but at the same time it becomes a dangerous weapon that disappoints, lies and destroys romantic relationships. It’s not really that technology influences bad things; but it is more up to the responsibility of people and the purpose they use it for. The fact that the technology has become a very helpful tool to date someone is something very common to do nowadays but also it is dangerous because people do not really know who they are talking to or who is behind the computers monitors. Although

By spending inordinate quantities of time in the interactive, virtual, two-dimensional, cyberspace realms of the screen, she believes that the brains of the youth of today are headed for a drastic alteration.” (10) Numerous youth that interact online come in contact with people who are pretending to be someone that they are not. That causes the “pretenders” to lose touch with their personal identity and reality. It also causes the youth that they chat with to falsely learn about people. How could you possibly have strong relationships with people that you don’t really know accurate information about?

In today's world, the expectations to fall in love have perhaps become "online". This is because dating sites are no more regarded as a tricky way for getting in touch with and bonding with new people. Instead, online dating is now gaining immense popularity as information technologies and digital media have congregated. The contemporary virtual social media has increased the evolution from vital matchmaking sites to sites that make it possible for anyone to "date" in reality online without even leaving their places. Even though face-to-face dating has not disappeared completely, the social media has enhanced the process of online dating tremendously (Brown, 2011).

We believe No degrees of Separation to be unique and valuable to the American reader because it shows how deep one can go in a relationship online, a practice that has become increasingly common in the United States. The couple exchanges personal experiences at a very high level, and the conversation includes philosophical musings, ancestry, curious traits of American and Brazilian societies and inherited immigrant roots. And, of course, sex and passion openly shared in poetic prose, following the long tradition of Tantra and Song of Songs, on the opposite track from today’s shallow and ubiquitous

I still used my devices for ten to twleve hours a day, but instead of angry, I was just depressed and sad. I had given up on school, any relationships, and all I had was my phone and occasionally I would use my brother's computer. I dropped out of school because I had just given up and my whole life revolved around an online communitity or a game, and I did not care about anyone else that I actually had contact with. This is still current, except for the fact that I am here taking this HiSet test, and hopefully moving on with my life. I only just started to slow down and somewhat limit my screen time, and I am now in counselling. The second passage speaks about older children making relationships online being a positive thing, but I see it as purely negative. Children who pursue those online relationships abandon their real families, their old friends, for what? Something that could disappear tomorrow because maybe one day your online friend will cease to come online anymore. Then all that time you spent dedicated to them is wasted and you are left feeling empty.

In recent years, social penetration theory has been the focus of many online studies,and has been applied to, or adapted, in the context of online relationship studies, such as sexual self-disclosure, online friendships, and online social networks. (Tang & Wang, 2012) The social penetration theory as Joseph DeVito writes in The Interpersonal Communication Book is a theory not of why relationships develop but of what happens when they do develop (DeVito, 2016, p. 237). While there are a few concepts that are encompassed in the definition of social penetration theory, there are two prominent parts and they are, breadth and depth. The breadth of a relationship refers to the amount of topics you and your partner talk about, and depth refers to the degree to which you penetrate the inner personality—the core—of the other individual (DeVito, 2016). In simpler terms, “how do you let people in,” and “how much and how in depth do you go into a topic?” Let it be known, however, that there is such thing as a withdrawal between the amount of breadth and depth communicated between individuals in a relationship. Such a concept is known as depenetration. While there will be a fairly low amount of attention paid to this concept, it’s important to understand that this contrast of social penetration exists.