Internet Persona vs. Real Life Persona - Which is the Real You?

Throughout the years, since internet (TCP/IP version) was invented back in 1983, countless people had used and are still using it to socialize. There are various platform for socializing such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, gTalk, Friendster, Facebook, Twitter, Tagged, Bebo or even through blogs. I believe most of us, at a point, thought that the people we are chatting with on those interactive sites are their real selves. But what if they're not?

In fact, more than 70% of the identities used on the internet are deceptive or to put it simply, fake. You might think you are chatting with a charming man or woman. But in reality, they might be looking like this...

Creepy? Yes, it is.

From my experiences of interacting with people in the virtual community, I have gained lots of friends. Only a handful of them are people whom I really know in person though. And even they are quite different from how they portray themselves in the virtual world. They can be very out-spoken in chats but they are actually very meek and quiet in real life. Take one of my real life friend for example. She is a soft-spoken young lady, intelligent, quiet, and a bit indifferent. But when you interact with her on the internet, you'll never believe you are actually 'talking' to the same person.

Like many others, I have used different kinds of persona on the internet myself. It all depends on my mood, really. Sometimes I 'play' as a bubbly-bordering-on hyper character...sometimes as an ice queen. But most of the time, it's just me as in the real me. When I am using one of the online personas I have created, those characters are not mine yet not entirely fake. Whether I do it consciously or not, I also disclose the real me when I'm interacting with people on the internet behind the facade of the 'created persona'. So, it's fair to say that deception and self revelation coexist in the virtual world. After all, even in the real world people put on various masks in their interaction. So, how about you? Which portrays the real you, virtual persona or real life persona?

Putting on different kinds of persona might be a channel of expressing one's self. But not everyone use those identities to express themselves. In some worse cases, people create personas in order to deceive. Some are just attention seekers but mostly they try to cheat you off your money. These people are the so-called scammers. One of the famous scammers that ever existed is Kaycee Nicole Swenson. She's an online impostor who attracted many friends online by pretending to be a young girl dying of cancer. The truth was revealed when 'Kaycee' was announced dead of a brain aneurysm on May 15, 2001. Kaycee never exist actually. She was just a product of scamming by a forty-year-old woman from Kansas, Debbie Swenson. (read full article on Kaycee scam at http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Kaycee_Nicole_Swenson/ )

Do you think that internet can be a dangerous place now? I've been wondering how I can avoid falling prey into such scams since I heard about all those impostors and fraud cases. I came across an interesting article on how to verify online personas a few days ago. I think it's quite useful for us, the loyal net-users. Take a tip or two from this article written by a law student in Texas, Stephanie Dube. You can find the article here --> http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jan2009/db20090112_238713.htm.

Although communicating in the virtual world can be dangerous because of the different personas people adopt, you can't deny that it plays a big part in our lives. To be frank, I don't think I can live without my beloved laptop and internet connection. I suppose the only thing we can do is to be really careful. Be wary of what you disclose on the internet. You never know when a psychopath or a criminal is lurking behind the friendly face they put on...

Media Agenda - How Effective It Is

When you talk about media, you'll also talk about the media's influence on us as the public. The media always has certain agenda embedded in each coverage. Experts came up with the term Agenda Setting Function Theory to explain this characteristic of media. Agenda setting here refers to the media's ability to make people think about certain issues through repeated news coverage. The more certain issue is being repeated, the more important it is. But it might not be true in reality. It's just the way how media 'prime' the audience's mind. The media 'direct' people on what is important for them to think about and what not. The media agenda alters the importance of an issue to the public.

Let's take recent news reports for example. These reports on NTU student who stabbed his professor and committed suicide afterward (http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_345314.html --> notice the links to other articles on the same issue) has been floating around in Singapore media services. The coverages on this issue has been going on for quite some time. The media kept repeating about this issue be it on newspapers or television. Thus, it made people 'talk' more about this issue than others such as Lin Yisheng court case (http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_345510.html).

But how great is the influence of those agendas on the people at the receiving end? One thing is certain, people don't always follow the media's agenda. But it doesn't mean that the media doesn't have any influence. The media influence is dependent on the public's own experiences in regards to the issue raised by the media. That is what the experts called, Obtrusive Effect and Unobtrusive Effect.

Obtrusive Effect describes how the existence of direct experiences on an issue will lessen the influence of media. If you experience something directly, you wouldn't believe whatever the media said about the same issue. Sometimes you might even contradict what the media said since you have some well-built understanding on the matter. For instance, friends of the deceased Indonesian student, David Hartanto Widjaja, would not totally believe what had been reported in the news since they knew the deceased in person. The same thing also happened with the professor's colleagues. They would not believe the speculations about the professor being guilty of provoking and was the cause of David Hartanto Widjaja's tragic death.

Meanwhile, onlookers who don't have a clue on what was happening would be influenced greatly by what the media reported. Take me for example. I didn't know anything about NTU and its students, much less about this fellow Indonesian student, David. So, when the news about his death came about in Singapore's media, I believed what had been reported. The reports itself became my 'base' or standard for evaluating this issue. That is what Unobtrusive effect theory is talking about. It explains how the lack of direct experience and understanding on an issue will increase the impact of media agenda.

To sum this article off, regardless of what the media agenda is, what determines the degree of influence is the public's personal experiences on the issues raised. The more you understand about certain issue, the less you will be influenced by the media stance. And the lesser your understanding, the greater the impact of the media agenda.


P.S. Added a link to an article about the NTU incident for you to think about. Might shed a new light on how to judge whether the mainstream media articles were biased or not. --> http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/03/stabbing-incident-in-ntu-is-it-really-an-attack/

Culture Builds A Barrier in An Intercultural Commnucation

When communicating with someone from different culture, inevitably there will be some obstructions in conveying the correct message to the other party. We are, after all, talking about difference in culture here.

Culture will affect our communication in five different ways. They are Perception of reality, Understanding of Role Relations, Goal-oriented Behaviors, Sense of Self, and Language.

When someone who has different perception or different interpretation of reality, it will result in differences in opinions. Sometimes, if you are the only one who has different view in a group of people with same mindset, communicating will be hazardous. I will take my own country, Indonesia, to compare with Germany. In Indonesia, coming late for an appointment is our daily bread (not for me though...). Some people even comes an hour late for an appointment with their business associate (atrocious, I know)! But for the Germans, time is extremely essential. If you are late even for only 5 minutes, they might not tolerate your tardiness and will leave without you. So, imagine when a tardy Indonesian guy has a meeting with his crush, a German girl who has a no-nonsense attitude in regard to punctuality. Poor guy...

Second point is the differences in understanding one's role in a society with certain culture. It affects how you behave towards other, considering their age, rank and position in the circle you are in. For instance, the Japanese geishas. Take a look at these pictures.

This picture at the left is of a geiko and a maiko making their round in a street in Kyoto for a festival called Hassaku. Geiko is a term for addressing a senior or a full-fledged geisha, And Maiko is for addressing an apprentice geisha who is training to be a full-fledged geisha under a geiko who is considered as their own "sister". Did you see how the maiko walks slightly behind the geiko? (Maiko is indicated by their elaborate kimono and hair pins) This is a symbol of status which lets us know that the one in the front has higher rank than the one at the back. But look at the picture on the right hand side.The younger sister walks side by side with her older sister. There's no differences at all in their position when they are in public. If those sisters are in Japan, especially in the Gion district where most geishas dwell in, the younger sister might be viewed as impolite. Differences like this might cause some misunderstanding between the two culture.

Third, differences in goal-oriented behaviors. What did you conclude from these two comparison? Asians often put eduaction as first and foremost. Parents and teachers expect the children to study seriously and no playing when in class. While in the Western culture, studying is usually accompanied by having fun. What they want is for their children to have fun in growing up. I'm not saying that Asians education system is not fun, I'm just making an example out of the stereotype. The same in communicating. Some people whose culture adopts pragmatic principle might differ from those who don't. They may communicate only when there's some benefit while others communicate just for the sake of communicating.

Fourth, differences in image or sense of self. It is how and what your culture expects you to portray yourself, how you build your personality and image. Typical Asian culture expetcs the females to dress and behave more conservatively. While Western culture gives more freedom to the women. I know that changes had been made and Asian cultures are much more lenient now towards the women's image but there's still some that keep this expectation, for example the Middle-East countries. If people who doesn't know the expectation of how one dresses in the Middle-East and they go there wearing revealing clothes (picture on the right), they might be ostracized because they are considered as 'bad girls' in the local culture, although they didn't mean to.






Now, we come to the last point, differences in laguage. Let's take a look at this joke from a frend in Indonesia. (Relax...I will translate... :> )




One day, there's a British man who rides a bicycle to a department store in Indonesia. He parked it in front of the store and went inside without locking his bicycle. When he came out of the store, he found that his bicycle is no longer there. So, he asked a man named Donny who stands near the spot where he had parked the bicycle.


British guy: "Did you see what happened to my bicycle? Did you see who took it away?"
Donny: "Yes, he use to table square-square. Worth he fast-fast go without any wet expire."
British guy: "What the?!"




Okay, so what Donny meant to say was "Yes, he use checkered shirt. No wonder he goes away quickly without any greetings at all." In Indonesian language: shirt = kemeja [ ke=to, meja=table]; checkered = kotak-kotak [kotak=square]; worth = pantas [pantas = no wonder -->can also means worth]; quickly = cepat-cepat [cepat=fast]; greetings/small talk = basa basi [ basa(h)= wet, basi=expired]. So, you see how languages can be a barrier in communication?

Natzi and Group Think

A few days ago, I happened to come across this article after clicking randomly at one of the Google ads. You can access the article at http://www.natzi.com/. The content of the article is not something I do not know. In fact, everybody already knew what Natzi is all about, isn't it so? What captured my interest was the last three sentences of the article. It says, "How could so many human beings take part in such cruel and inhumane acts? How could humanity stand by for so long to allow such things to happen? The answer to these questions may not be very hard to find." Those few sentences struck a spot inside my head and forced me to ponder upon it. What exactly was the reason behind the faithfulness of Natzi members towards Mr. Hitler's causes and goals? What made people listened to his every single word, even for those that commanded them to do such immoral, inhuman acts?

Many things ran through my mind; power, fanatical beliefs, invincibility, unity, glory, pride, petty-minded, discrimination, and many other things to relate to the answer for the questions the article had put in my tiny little mind. Then I found that those points all came together as a phenomenon called "group think".

According to Irving Javis, group think is "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when members' striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action." Okay, I know it sounds very complicated. Basically, it is a thinking mode in which people lose their own identity in order to keep the majority's opinion intact and in order to keep themselves in the group.

There are several symptoms of group think: illusion of invulnerability, believe in group's own morality, shared stereotypes, collective rationalization, self-censorship, illusion of unanimity, and mind guards.

But how do Natzi comes in when we are talking about these theories? First, Natzi is a very united and committed group to their cause. They believe too much on their own morality and stereotypes to the border that they no longer accept opinions and beliefs from outside their circle. They believed that their race is the most superior - other races are all beneath them - and Jews are trashes they should eradicate from their ancestor's land. Their senses were so obstructed that they didn't think holocaust is a crime. For them, that is their justice.

And like many other communist, the flow of information in the Natzi circle was controlled. Things that will disturbed the unity of the Natzi regime was to be destroyed completely. They have implemented mind-guards so that they could stay faithful to to their so-called holy cause. And so, the members started to censor their own mind. They banished all thoughts that go against the group's beliefs. And I think I had found the answer to why they allowed themselves to perform such cruelty and threw away their humanity. It's all for the sake of keeping the group together.

You see, sometimes clinging too hard to a group is not necessarily a good thing. But I am not saying that thinking as a group is a sin either. What matters is how you manage your own mind and keep your own personality instead of throwing yourself fully into a group's mentality. Group think might bring harm to both your group and others. The Natzi is the perfect example for the negative effect of group think. So, I would like to advise you guys for being careful in managing a group work, lest you develop the same group think like the German's stain in history.

Why Do People Quarrel?

Have you ever wondered why would people in a relationship quarrel? Oh-ho, I know you can give me millions and billions of reason. "He's annoying!", "She's such a nag!", "He never listens!", "She always tidies up my room!", "He always forget our anniversary!", "She's too demanding!" and so on...and so on... But what actually is the base of those 1001 reasons? Wait, don't give me that look. I know what you are thinking, "Reasons are reasons. What could possibly caused a reason?". But, there are causes behind causes.

First of all, in every relationship there always are challenges. Those are what the expert called Relational Challenges. People in a relationship face them all the time. And when they cannot overcome these challenges, conflict arises and quarrels happen. If a couple is unable to survive them, eventually they will end their relationship (worse case scenario). What exactly are those challenges? Here are some examples of relational challenges that might happen.

Differences

When two beings are (too) different, problem might arises as the relationship goes on. I'm not saying that people must have identical views to be able to maintain their relationship. It's just that some differences - for example, races or religions - sometimes proved to be a great hindrance to keep a relationship going.

Aversive emotional state

Who in the world would like an emotional man or woman as their partner? Uh-oh, I can see some protest from you, "Hey! Anyone can be emotional!". True, but this is an aversive emotional state which means it is unreasonable. I believe no one could stand a partner who has emotional outburst all the time.

Poor communication skill

Personally, I'll feel the contempt to hang my husband upside down if he does that^. I think in a relationship, communication is the most important thing. You can't even start a relationship if you didn't establish any communication at all. And you can't maintain a two-way relationship if you failed in communicating. So, poor communication skill is one of the biggest reason why some relationships just don't work out.

Deception

The illustration above shows it all. "Goodbye" if you lied to me. I know that in some cases, lies are inevitable and it might result in positive situation. But a lie is a lie; a deception no matter how you phrase it. And in some social circles, deception is something unforgivable. And deception ends up in a horrible outcome most of the time anyway. So why risk it?

Actions that undermine trust

Imagine you are Dino and Mario Bross is your partner. How do you feel and what action will you take? The little voice inside my head (she's such a know-it-all...) says 99% will end their relationship. And 1% will try to salvage the relationship but most of the time to no avail because trust had been shattered. And relationship, whether it is romantic or not, cannot be built without trust.

According to Messick & Cook (1983), another thing that will cause conflict in a relationship is the Equity Theory. They said "Individuals in relationship seek to maintain a balance of costs and rewards that are relatively equal to those of their partners." To make it simple, "You get this amount of benefit, I want the same amount as well". If the balance is not met, the viability of the relationship will be affected.

The under-benefitting party will suffer, both mentally and physically. While the over-benefitting party will rationalise, meaning that they will try to rationalise that it is normal to receive more benefit because they have the upper-hand in the relationship. All I can say is that this kind of relationship is not healthy. I surely don't want to be in the same position as the hamster guy...

So, folks...These are the reasons behind the 1001 reasons that I wanted to share with you. But one thing to clarify, although it's easy to say "I'm so not going to do these things to my partner", it's difficult to avoid it altogether. There will be some points at which you might encounter these challenges. All you have to remember is try to solve it as well as you can and that no one is perfect. So, make an effort to overcome these challenges. And last but not least, Happy (belated) Valentine!

Telling Story Without Speaking

Communicating is something we do every single day and even every single moment. We never stop communicating to the world (except maybe when we are asleep). It might be through what we speak or noises that we make, and it might also be our gestures, face expression, body language and so on. So, we can conclude that communication can be done through two ways. One is through verbal cues and the other is nonverbal cues.

Believe it or not, we always combine these two cues when we are trying to communicate ourselves to the outside worlds. The verbal and the nonverbal cues are intertwined together but not dependent on the other. What I'm trying to say is we can use only verbal cues or only nonverbal cues when communicating. But the meaning we're trying to send would be conveyed better if we use both. Let's take a look at this video I found in Youtube.



What do you think of their conversation? Does it seem boring or lively? Is the message each family member is trying to convey clear enough?

There's actually a lot of nonverbal cues used in this video which enhanced the quality of the message each person was trying to convey. Look at the opening of the video where you can see all the 'Fuplers' trying to think of some words to put on the scrabble board. Wait, wait a minute! How do you know, how do I know that the Fuplers were thinking? It's thanks to their expressions and gestures, isn't it? The father was frowning and emitted a "Hmmn" sound, the mother was looking at her tiles and the scrabble board, the brother was fiddling with his tiles and frowning, and the little sister was looking back and forth between the dictionary and the scrabble board. All these small gestures and expressions showed us what they were doing and maybe also what they were feeling. We can conclude that they were thinking and maybe they were a little confused. And this is an example of nonverbal cues which is used alone without the verbal cues. The nonverbal cues substituted the verbal ones.

Let's move forward. Take a look at the part in 1:08 where the brother asked the father, "You're gonna challenge me?". Look at his facial expression then. The raised eyebrows and mocking smile. What do those expressions and the sentence "You're gonna challenge me?" showed us? It showed that the young man was confident, right? Imagine if he said the sentence with stutters and flickering eyes. He would look like someone who is not sure whether his answer is correct or wrong. So, attaching different nonverbal cues to a single verbal cue will change its nature. This is why the experts said that nonverbal cues complement the verbal messages.

And then look at the scene in 1:09. The father said "Yes!" and nodded his head. The nonverbal cues he used, which is the nod, repeat his verbal one. Compare it to the scene in 1:04-1:05. He said, "Kevin, it's not a word." Yet, he nodded his head. Both are nod and both emphasized what he was trying to say. But the general function is different. For the 1:09, the nod repeated the verbal message while the one in 1:05 contradicted the verbal message. So, there's actually different kind of functions that is attributed to nonverbal cues. It can repeat, contradict, substitute, complement, accent, and regulate the verbal message.

And usually we use more than one nonverbal cues at the same time with our verbal cues. Like the scene in 1:08, you can see more than one nonverbal cues were used.

Well, I think life would be painfully boring if there's no nonverbal cues in this world. Our communication would be very plain. And we won't be able to communiacte with people who don't understand our language, right? I believe there's not a single person in this world who doesn't use nonverbal cues. So, what do you think?

The Deceitful Perception

Perception, perception. How deceitful you can be. After attending today's lecture, I have a new discovery. That is how human's mind and perception can be very subjective. It's in the human nature to have certain tendencies in percieving things they experience.

When I was in the second year of high school, I had a friend who was a trouble-maker in the class. From all my classmates, he was the one who creates ruckus and talk-back to the teacher the most. He was the most irritating and stubborn person I've ever met in my whole life. Nobody really liked him that time.

But nearing the end of the year, when final exam was just around the corner, he was a totally changed person. He became so quiet and attentive in class, jotting down notes diligently. Later on, I and my friends discovered that his mother was lying in the hospital and her condition was critical. His mother's wish was for him to pass the exam and get into the final year of high school. And that changed how we viewed him as a person. This problem never get to the ear of the teachers because he didn't want everyone in the school to know about his mother's condition. He was so bent on keeping this a secret from the teachers that we couldn't do anything about it, except to comply with his wish. The teachers noticed his changes in behavior but brushed it off as something temporary. They put it off as the threat of failing final exam doing magic on him.

After the final exam was over and the marks had been graded, something bad happened. Apparently, the boy's scores caused an uproar between the teachers. His scores were unexpectedly brilliant but all the teachers couldn't believe that he had gotten those good marks just counting on himself. They suspected him cheated during exam just because he had a bad reputation in class before. He denied those accusations but none of the teachers believed him.

But as his classmates, we knew that he had been working extra hard for this exam and he certainly earned those scores himself. Two weeks before exam, he nearly fainted because he lacked sleep, forcing himself to study throughout the night, and because he had not been eating well for the past weeks, trying to save money for his mother's hospital fee.

We were furious when we found out about the accusation and the teacher's refusal to believe him. But do you know what was his reaction when we wanted to protest to the teachers? He told us to leave it be. He said no matter what we were going to say, the teachers wouldn't believe a word because he really had been a very bad student in the past. He said he didn't mind the accusation, he was used to it. It wrenched our hearts when we heard what he said. He must be feeling very horrible inside but he still flashed us a smile, a weak smile.

Thinking it over again, the teachers' reaction wasn't that unpredictable after all. People tend to judge others before getting to know all the facts. In the communication term, it's called Fundamental Attribution Errors. It is the tendency to judge and assume that the cause for behavior is the person, not the situation. And Persistence of First Impression also comes into play here. Those teachers just couldn't believe the boy's innocence because the memory of his delinquent behavior was already glued like a a scotch tape on their mind. I know it wasn't fair. But we couldn't really blame those teachers for not believing. After all, no one is perfect. Besides, perception is a very tricky thing, isn't it?

Well, are you curious about what happened later on? In the end, we couldn't just stand on the side and do nothing about it. After he went home, the whole class stood up to defend him. We all signed a petition requesting the teachers to listen to our part of the story. The teachers agreed, then we all sit down and talk it over. We told them about his mother's condition and how he had worked really hard in order to fulfill his mother's wish. Then some of our classmates even owned up that they cheated in the exam but they could vouch for him that he did not even look away from his papers during the exam.

After hearing what we have to say, the teachers held a meeting and they decided to believe us. They apologized directly to the boy and even granted him some financial support for his final year. When he knew that we all stood up for him, he was so touched that he hugged each and everyone of us with tears trickling down his face, and kept saying "Thank you" over and over. It was an extremely touching scene to see him like that as he is not someone who expresses his emotion vividly.

Now, his mother had passed away in peace after seeing him graduate from high school with remarkable results. And he moved away to another town right after our graduation party. Wherever you are now, Kenny, kudos to you! Your experience sure has taught me a lot about human's perception and how prejudiced it can be.