As the internet has
grown and solidified more of a foothold in our society through social media, I found
it harder to jump on the train and involve myself in all the new social networking
sites and apps. I don’t tweet, or send snapchat selfies, or post on an Instagram
and for that matter I barely use my Facebook account. Don’t get me wrong, I
love socializing and meeting new people but online isn’t really the way I picture
myself doing that. Socializing online especially in regards to forming relationships
has been paired with negative implications like heavy users will neglect existing
relationships such as those with friends and family to devote more time to the
internet. This form of socializing has also found some positive connections
such as larger social networks which enable the user to be in touch with more people
than the alternative. Through my personal experience, I can only think of one
time in my life where an online channel was one of the key ways in which I socialized
with the world, and that was through Xbox Live during the summer of 2008. For
those who aren’t familiar, Xbox Live was a community for all Xbox users to
connect and link up with your buddies to play games together, talking in an
in-game chat room with players from all around the world or to form “parties”
where you can get up to eight people and communicate using headsets while
playing different games or the same game.
During
this summer I had a small group of friends, about 4 people in total and we had
the same routine every day. We would meet at our local swimming pool when it
opened, stay until it closed and then all go home and meet back up on Xbox Live
where we would all team up and play other people from all around the world in a
game called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Every day was the same thing but as
the summer went on, each one us in the original group would introduce one or
more people into the group. We would all hang out at the pool but the new
friendships wouldn’t really expand until we logged onto Xbox Live where we would
spend hours bonding over our comradery as teammates in this warfare simulator
and slowly learned more about our new friends strengthening the relationships.
After not too long we wouldn’t be able to fit the entire team into one 8 man
party. With regards to forming relationships online, it has been found that
online relationships are similar to face-to-face relationships in terms of
breath (overall topics talked about), depth (how in depth the conversations
go), and quality (how happy with the interaction those involved are). I found that
this was very true after spending hours with these new friends in person at a
pool and then spending countless hours joking and conversing through an online
mediated channel. This was true because at a pool there wasn’t much conversing due
the constant shenanigans going on at the pool but Xbox Live was where you
really got to talk and get to know the person you’re teaming up with. In almost all cases, I’m still great friends
with these people that I would devote hours of my life to online and the credit
for these strong relationships would have to go to this online channel. As a friend
group we don’t use Xbox Live as we used to but it’s interesting that when reminiscing
about that summer, many of the topics that are remembered are from nights on
Xbox Live and not the memories of the pool.
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