“Virtual Love” by Meghan Daum: Critique.
Meghan Daum, born in1970 in California, is an American author, essayist, and journalist. Her article “Virtual Love” published in the August 25-September 1, 1997 issue of The New Yorker follows the author’s personal encounter with cyberspace relationships. Through this article the author presents to us the progress of an online relationship that after seeming entertaining and life changing at the beginning becomes nothing more than a faded memory. In fact she even ends the text stating that “reality is seldom able to match the expectations raised by intoxication of an idealized cyber romance.”(Daum, 1997, P.10) Daum concludes that online-dating or virtual love rarely survives the physical world when confronted by its obstacles such as its pace, idealization, and mainly expectations. However, although the message of the author is true, yet the way by which it was conveyed is found faulty.
The title, “Virtual Love”, is good for it correctly defines and restricts the subject and the general field of the article. It also doesn’t give away directly the author’s stance; at first we don’t know whether the author is against, with or simply explaining virtual love. However, it is so simple and unoriginal that it doesn’t attract the reader. A more creative title could have been something like “Love is blind; literally” in reference to how her love for PFSlider disappeared the moment she met him face to face although she was deeply attached to him during their online conversations. It could have also been: “My Prince Charming lives online” in reference to the fact that she created a perfect mold for the person she was talking to online. This explains why that person, no matter what he really is, w...
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...er-relationship through the lens and personal experience of the author Meghan Daum. After being exposed to the ups and downs that left a deep scar in the author, she concludes that the physical world stands as an obstacle in front of online-relationships. Overall, the author did a good job in presenting her idea and supporting it using personal experience and detailed descriptions. Yet she fails when restricting her support to her personal encounters and lacked power due to the many logical fallacies presented earlier such as her constant generalization, emotional appeals and finally the lack of counter argument. In the end, the reader is left with questions concerning virtual love, the physical world, and the ultimate desire to attain happiness since it’s quite hard to imagine that someone would be convinced with the idea of Daum simply due to her own experience.
In “Modern Romance,” Celeste Biever describes romantic relationships in the Internet community. She describes how people can romantically be involved on the Internet and how the Internet teaches one to learn about a person from the inside out.In “Cyberspace and Identity,” Sherry Turkle also expresses her interest in the Internet and how it allows for the act of self-exploration. Even though their focus on what the Internet is used for are different from the perspective of one another, Biever and Turkle both see the Internet as a place for exploration in a general sense.
Harrington, Brooke. Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2009. Print.
Individuals conceived between the years of 1980 and 2000, as indicated by this article, experience serious difficulties finding their actual self due to the online networking outlets; they regularly depict another person life of a fantasy dream American life on the web. As today’s more youthful era makes the transition to adulthood, trying to accommodate between online and offline characters can be hard. “Van den Bergh asked 4,056 individuals, ages 15 to 25, when they felt they were or weren't being genuine online or logged off, with companions, folks, accomplices or employers.” Through this research he found,
The practice of online dating has become an increasingly popular and acceptable method of dating in modern society and looking at this social behavior from the perspective of a functionalist and a symbolic interactionist would involve very different focuses.
Love has been around since the beginning of time and for as long as romantic relationships have been around; people have tried various ways of meeting one another. The mid-1990s marked the start of online dating and since then has evolved into a much more common method of dating. Online dating is typically taken advantage of in one of two ways. Some people prefer to create their own profile and rely on themselves to choose their mate choice, while others allow the online dating services to create matches between the online subscribers. In a recent study conducted by Pew Research Center they found that one in ten American’s are using an online dating site to help them locate a spouse or a long term partner (Smith 1). Due to the advances in technology in recent years, online dating has developed into a resource that has become culturally accepted and has advanced in many ways, but with that comes mate choice, safety concerns, and the outlook on online dating.
Barbara Lee Fredrickson, a psychologist, introduces a new conception of love to the readers. She tries to simplify the perception of love most people have known for their entire life. The special bonds and magical bond that continues the love for eternity are all myths and lies. Something that poisons our minds to be committed to one another. The definition of Fredrickson’s conception of “love” is more scientific than emotional. When defining love, it is more dependent on the activity of the brain, “positivity resonance”, and love hormones. The claim that Fredrickson makes in Love 2.0 does give a critical point of love, that it is simpler than you think. However, not every conception of love does Fredrickson explain it to be biological. The
Daum writes, “Email provides a useful antidote for my particular communication anxieties. Though I generally send and receive only a few messages a week, I take comfort in their silence and boundaries” (Daum2).Through the internet, the narrator is able to express her ideal self and presents a false sense of herself which is misinterpreted by PFSlider. Particularly, the narrator states that, “I take comfort in their silence and boundaries”, which imply that the internet allows her to express herself without having to face the reality and anxieties of being face to face and not knowing what to talk about. The narrator 's ideal self conflicts with her real self because she puts more effort into creating an online persona which conflicts with the image of her real self that is filled with anxieties and loneliness. According to the narrator 's statement, she implies that through the computer was where her and PFSlider could confide intimately with each other without having to face the predicament of being in the real world and having to engage physically. Technology provided an outlet for them to be whoever they wanted to portray themselves as which allowed the narrator to view PFSlider with her desirable characteristics. In turn, this displays how technology complicates intimacy because the computer gave them an outlet to express themselves without having to deal with the reality of being able to talk in
The Internet has always seemed like a completely separate world, very different from reality. There seemed to be so many endless possibilities. One is the new online dating craze, which has caught my attention a number of times. One rainy afternoon, curled up in a blanket at my computer chair, I decided to investigate it. I learned that as many of the baby-boomers start to become widowed or divorced, many are looking for mates, along with many others who are looking for companionship. With the new Internet-Age, many of these individuals turn to their computer to find someone. Online relationships are a growing phenomenon in the United States as well as internationally. After doing some research I could not develop an opinion on how I felt about this new trend. I found a group of specialists who had devoted some researching to it and I invited them over for dinner to find what their opinions were and why.
Online dating is not a recent phenomenon. Ever since the internet became widespread, it has improved and expanded the scope of human communication and this lead to the ability to selectively connect to people near and far for specific purposes. Online Dating, and it’s outlets, have become an arguably effective tool in finding viable partners for romantic relationships. The activity is so widespread that, in 2015 according to Rosette Pambakian, each day, there were at least 1.5 billion ratings on Tinder alone, which resulted in more than 22 million matches worldwide in the span of 24 hours (Loresco, 2015). Considering the nature
Whitty, M. T (2008). Liberating or debilitating? An examination of romantic relationships, sexual relationships and friendships on the Net. Computers in Human Behavior [Online] 24 (5) p.1837–1850.
The human need for affiliation creates the challenges and rewards of finding acquaintances, forming close friendships, as well as intimate relationships. Through technological advances cyberspace, or the internet, has become a place of multiple opportunities for people to be able to fulfill that need for affiliation. Websites, chat rooms, and online communities are just some examples of virtual platforms for people to seek others, come together, and find that special someone. These opportunities can result in positive outcomes allowing people to achieve what or whom they were seeking, but they can also result in harm to themselves and others, resulting with damaging consequences. Cyberspace does not come with a warning label. People who use the internet as a means to seek relationships are at risk of being exposed to positive as well as negative results. Being made aware of some of those risks and dangers, and realizing that forming relationships on the internet is not all fun and games, may be ways to help promote a positive future for cyberspace as a place to form successful relationships.
Rosen, Christine. “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism.” What Matters In America. Third Edition. Gary Goshgarian and Kathryn Goodfellow. New Jersey: Pearson, 2012. 52-60. Print.
Around the world people love. They live for love, they write for love, the sing, eat, cook, die and kill for love (ForumNetwork, 2009). Since the beginning of recorded time, people have wondered why love is such an intense and universal feeling. There is no culture in this planet that does not have love (ForumNetwork, 2009). This essay will only talk about romantic love were sexuality and attraction are involved. Romantic love, is one of the most powerful energies on earth (ForumNetwork, 2009), it is indeed one on the most addictive substances we can experience at least once in our life. The rush of cocaine and the rush of being in love depend on the same chemicals in our brain (ForumNetwork, 2009); we are literally addicted to love. The feeling of being in love does not depend whether the other part loves you back or not, it will help you feel more happy that is for sure, but the intensity of the feeling loved or heartbroken is the same, they both depart from the same principle: the love and desire of the other. Love remains in the most basic system of our brain, under all cognitive process, under all motor impulses; it is placed in our reward system, the most ancient systems of all (ForumNetwork, 2009).
Furthermore, Internet users who use the internet for their relationship will tend to lose patience to conduct social relations in the real world. People who commu...
Online dating has gained popularity since 1995. After its inception, the service has been increasingly been used by different people. Both the young and the old people use the service in order to find partners. Online dating can be defined as the use of dating services such as websites and other portals in order to get a short-term or a long-term partner for romantic purposes. There are some relationships which have been started through the online dating services and they have been sustained while others have not lasted. Online dating can be said to have both positive and negative impacts on the society. In history, people who have been using online dating for the purposes of finding love have faced numerous incidences