After I experienced Second Life, IMVU, Avakin Life, and Occupy White Walls, I have decided that communicating face to face is the best way to have smooth conversations. There are a couple of reasons for it.
As I mentioned before, a lot of networks and virtual communities let you meet people with similar hobbies and interests. However, because of lack of time, even though I could find a few genuine people there, our interactions couldn’t develop into friendships. If I could play it for more than a month, maybe I could find someone to trust and feel myself around.
Another reason is that I saw a lot of people who ignored my messages and kept talking about whatever they wanted. Sometimes, it was rude and disturbing. Some people were looking for dating, and I was willing to explore new interpersonal relationships as friends. For this reason, our desire didn’t meet, which made our conversation awkward. The communication style was a monologue, and it made me feel that the conversation was not fun. At this point, I stopped pursuing friendships.
I liked to see people online and make good friends, but overall, I thought that maybe the virtual reality games that I described were not good for me. In addition, the obstacles in communication are going to be reduced in the face to face situations, so all the experiences of virtual communities made me feel grateful for face-to-face conversation. However, I’m still willing to find people who have the same interests as me in the virtual world.
Overall, learning about communication in this class was interesting. And a lot of the terms we covered, especially SIDE, are very useful to enhance our communication.
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