I got to thinking about what a relationship really is today. The dictionary defines it as “a state of affairs existing between those having relations or dealings.” Or “a romantic or passionate attachment” I define it as having an emotional and spiritual connection to an individual. In the case of a romantic relationship it goes further then that and adds physical and dependency aspects.
So what happens in today’s age of computers and global communication? What type of relationship, as I define it, can you really have with someone you only know online? Is it possible to form feelings for a persons mind, and intellect without ever even seeing the physical person? Jeremy Stangroom at sophists.org had this to say on the matter.
“The significant point about internet relationships is that the characteristics we rely on to make judgements about people in the non-virtual world are largely invisible in the virtual world. The irony here is that it is precisely that facet of internet communication that makes gross deception possible – the absence of a face to face relationship - which undermines our tendency to stereotype. It would be possible to overstate the significance of this fact. Even in relationships conducted entirely via the medium of the written word, we still make judgements about people which go beyond the evidence. However, it is likely that we do so largely on the basis of the actual content of our communication with a person, which, arguably at least, is more likely to be indicative of those aspects of a person’s character which they themselves consider to be salient.
The corollary of this point is that in our internet relationships we have greater control over which aspects of our character we present to other people than we do in our everyday relationships. Of course, this is why people worry about deception on the internet. And it is a real concern - the individual who adopts a false persona in order to procure a sexual encounter with a vulnerable person behaves badly. But it is only part of the story. If by controlling which aspects our characters we present to people online we are able to avoid the more pernicious effects of our tendency to make judgements on the basis of unwarranted stereotypes, then it is possible we will develop online relationships which are, at least in some ways, less distorted and more real than most of our everyday, embodied relationships.”
