relationships

In many of our lectures, we've discussed the effect of different types of media on relationships. In the New Media lecture, we talked about the social penetration theory and the model that discusses how new media relationships start with facebook friends, then IM, texting, and phone calls. That reminded me of a friend that I had a couple of years ago. We had a friend in common, who gave him my number. He called me once. After that, we became facebook friends. We wrote on each other's walls all the time. After awhile we started to text back and forth a lot. Eventually, we started to talk on the phone a lot. I just thought it was kind of funny to see this situation using that theory, because, really, we wouldn't have been friends without the new media (we actually hadn't ever met until after all that went down).

I was also thinking about how media probably can drive us apart a little bit. I kind of laugh when I see the way my roommate and I are with each other. We're both a little bit obsessed with our computers and the Internet. Most of the time we spend in our room we are both sitting in front of the screen, looking our own stuff up on the web. The other night, we both stayed up really late on our computers. She told me, "I'm so glad you're awake too, it gets so lonely when I'm the only one up." It was kinda funny, because we weren't even talking to each other. I'm also reminded of a guy that I used to date. I got really frustrated with him because I felt like every time we hung out, he would be on his computer or watching football on TV or something. A lot of times I feel like media drives a small wedge in relationships when someone pays more attention to the media than to you when you are with them.

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