Author Archives: Lisa

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.

I have recently belonged to Note, a website that I make personal blog posts on, since I took a break from Instagram. Compared to Instagram, this network doesn’t require much interaction with others, so I would say that users don’t have strong connections. The only actions the users can make are to push a like button and to comment. You may have seen a lot of both positive and negative comments on social media, such as Instagram and YouTube. However, the Note is different. Whenever one tries to comment on another post, a system pops up on the screen and suggests that you think carefully before you comment. This announcement is to prevent offensive and hurtful comments or harassment. I have seen more positive comments on this network, but I think maybe this notification hinders some user’s connections more than on other social media platforms. When I wanted to comment to show my reactions to a post and saw this popup, I decided not to comment. This system has made me carefully interact with other users.

On this website a few of my friends, from my Instagram account, and I mutually follow each other. With those friends, I can frankly interact with them in the comment sections because we both know how we interact with each other normally. Also sending some likes can maintain our connection to show my recognition as an ambient presence. As I mentioned before, this network is not as interactive as other social media, but instead, we can maintain or build another social relationship in a healthy way by respectfully interacting with other users and sending some likes.

My self-presentation is almost the same between the virtual world and real life. I think because I try to be honest in both environments. My identity is always the same; born in Japan, read novels and comic books, watch TV, and play video games. However, there’s some difference between my identities in virtual reality and physical life. In today’s post, I want to talk about the different identities presented in a virtual environment and the real world.

I think of myself as an ambivert in real life because I sometimes feel very nervous in certain situations, such as the first day of school. However, I become talkative and enthusiastic when I meet someone who has the same interests as me. In the physical environment, it’s hard to randomly meet someone who shares the same hobbies, so I think a lot of people may think that I’m quiet until we discover our common interests. On the other hand, in the virtual world, it is a lot easier to find users who have the same preferences. For this reason, I think people might think that there’s a gap in how I behave in the real world and the virtual environment because I will be so delighted when I see someone who has the same taste in music, comic books, and games, whereas I act more calm in real life.

Continuing with the last post, I want to talk about the experience in Second Life as well. Throughout virtual reality, the virtual world setting had more options. Detailed settings in this game facilitated our conversation and made it easier for us to open up about ourselves. Although there were many positive aspects of Second Life, this time, I want to talk about a negative experience in virtual reality. 

As I mentioned last time, I could smoothly have a conversation with people. However, there was a man who was rude to me. Since I was planning to play the game for the assignments in this course, I didn’t carefully set up my profile and avatar’s appearance. Then the man taught me how to change those settings, so I tried to follow them. I was waiting for his instructions, but his suggestion was to follow his Instagram account. He said this is the easiest way to set up your profile, which sounded very suspicious. I didn’t feel like following him because we just met and had a few small conversations about our demographic information, such as ethnicity, gender, and age. I told him that I had logged out of my social media account for a while, which is true, and rejected his instruction. After the conversation, he insistently asked me for my profile picture and determined that I have a strict boyfriend. We hadn’t talked about our personal relationships, and I was not willing to share my personal information, so I just didn’t reply. He also determined my religion because I didn’t show my profile picture, which was disrespectful and made me feel uncomfortable. He also said that there’s got to be something wrong with me since I didn’t want to show my face. Then he mentioned to me that I must have criminal records. At this point, I had no idea what he was talking about because he was making assumptions and claims about me. I was aware that people could say some mindless things to another person on the Internet; his statements weren’t hurtful at all. Overall, I learned that it is inevitable to avoid communication difficulties with people in virtual reality and to have conversations that participants can always make sense of.

The biggest impression I got playing the Second Life is that I can normally communicate with people. I was surprised that all people I talked with were genuinely nice. In today’s blog, I want to talk about a person whom I felt close to the most.

I met a person who told me that she’s interested in Japan, and I felt delighted to hear that. After we both shared our general demographic information and personal preferences, it turned out that she is also familiar with Anime and Japanese comic books. During the conversation, I tried to follow what the textbook mentioned: responding as quickly as possible, using natural language, and so on. I’m honestly not sure if any of these facilitate our communication, but meeting her was a nice experience. It was my first time talking about my interests and hobbies with people in virtual reality. When I last time played other virtual games, I couldn’t even find someone who has the same preferences. Much more, our communication didn’t go in-depth and last so long because some people were rude and just tried to curse at me. I felt uncomfortable and didn’t fit in the environment, such as IMVU. However, playing Second Life gave me a much better experience and I had some decent conversations with other people. The biggest difference between Second Life and IMVU is that people are more respectful, and many more people try to keep communicating. The environment helped me talk about my personal information and ask about it to others in turn. I thought that I won’t be playing virtual games because of reasons I experienced before, but I might keep playing Second Life outside this course.

The biggest differences between my real and virtual identities are enthusiasm. I think the way I behave in virtual communities, and how I behave in real life is different. However, it depends on where I am and who I’m with.

In the virtual world, it’s easier to directly find people with the same interests by searching hashtags. In my case, I always look for someone who has the same comic book and music tastes as me. On the other hand in the real life, it’s harder to find people who have the same hobby because we have diverse ideas, and personalities can’t be filtered before speaking to others. As my virtual identities on social media, I express myself more when it comes to my hobbies so that I can find other people who agree with me through hashtags. In this way, I can be very active and behave enthusiastically because it’s always enjoyable to share my hobbies with someone who agrees with me. I sometimes have difficulties talking with someone about a topic that I’m not familiar with. At this point, I always act like a triggered attending stance. This might give a gap that can make you feel that I’m quiet in the real-life, and active on social media.

To get closer to someone, I use social media DM’s, messages, and video calls in that order. Social media DM’s are easier than suddenly face timing with others without developing social relationships. For instance, a lot of my friends are using Instagram, so I use Instagram DM’s to frankly send messages. The DM’s are like a first step to starting a conversation. Once our conversation gets intimate, either one of us says that we should talk using different means, such as messaging and video calling. I think that this is how I suggest moving on to the next level, to imply that we’re getting closer. I think distance doesn’t matter in this situation because we can still share a presence in virtual communities.

When I use Hello Talk, a language app, a lot of people use it like the way I explained above. Maybe I learned how to enhance my relationships by seeing how others would act towards me. Usually, this way works for me most of the time, and I believe it depends on how much time you spend on each means: DM’s, Messages, and video calls. If you don’t develop trust, it might be hard to smoothly move on.

I have been thinking about the research paper and have focused on games that can develop interpersonal relationships, such as virtual reality and online games. Additionally, how those types of games can affect isolation.

The reason why I decided to talk about it is that I have recently been into playing games and have tried to contact other players online. One of the examples I can share here is about when I played Animal Crossing. When I started to feel bored playing all alone, I found that my favorite amateur comic artist said that she was going to open her island code, which is a number that you’re given to where you belong in the game. If you want to connect online without becoming friends on the Nintendo Switch, the shared code will let you play with other players. I was very lucky to be selected and to visit the comic artist’s island. A provided medium that we used while playing was text-based. Although there was an obstacle that hindered our communication, such as delayed responses, it was a nice experience to interact with other players. This event was the first time I’ve played an online game with others, and I experienced that there was a positive effect on my social life. Since the interaction, I started to search on Twitter for people that want to play with me in Animal Crossing. Then I found that many people shared their island codes with a couple of pictures of their islands. Whenever I felt attracted to their islands, I contacted them to see if I can visit. This time, we used a voice call while playing so that we can communicate smoothly. After I connected with them in the same game, I felt that it reduced my isolation due to the pandemic and found someone who I might be able to commit to an interpersonal relationship. I think, not only me, but other people may have experienced interaction through communications. Therefore, for this research project, I want to find more people who academically explained their experience with communities online.

Experiencing two different types of classes: in-person and online, there’s a difference in my identification throughout those kinds of classes.

My very first class since I transferred to the Salisbury university was in the spring of 2020. When I took one of the CMAT classes, individual students needed to briefly talk to the class. I knew what I wanted to talk about, but I used a Japanese term when it was my turn to talk. I mistakenly thought that the term was universal and everyone in the class could understand. It was a very awkward moment and I got embarrassed by knowing that I mentioned a strange word to others. After the mistakes in the in-person class, I was afraid of participating in a class and of being negatively misjudged because of the stereotype that Japanese, the out-group, can’t speak English well. Since then, I have tried to increase my English vocabulary to avoid using Japanese words. The thing is that I couldn’t prepare much time to figure out were what words would have made the most sense in the class.

After the start of the pandemic, our class has switched to online, there have been a lot of times that I’ve needed to express my opinions on the discussion board on My Classes. Additionally, unlike the in-person class, it gave me time to think about what I’m going to say. This online system has helped me practice my English and has let me improve my ability to interpret statements more clearly than before. Currently, I have more compliments from other native speakers that my English skills have developed. I also feel that my communication abilities have improved along with my language skill.

Since I started to have online classes, due to the pandemic, I’ve had a few impressions from classmates.

Since I transferred to Salisbury University, the very first class was held in person. At the time, I had no idea how other classmates will participate in class. During the pandemic, my classes were all online, and I started to learn how others attend and act in class. The huge impression I got is that students are very active, even during online classes. I can’t imagine this situation in my home country because the way we attend classes is mostly passive. When I heard that we were going to take all the classes online, I imagined that classes might be less active because I thought the style of online was abnormal to many people. However, I’m surprised that a lot of people engaged in a group discussion even if they haven’t met each other before. This atmosphere has helped me be involved in classes and to express my opinions.

I think the online style makes class feel more relaxed. I often feel nervous in any form of class, but when I see some students laying down, it impressed me how people can accept this as a way of participating too. I cannot feel comfortable enough to attend a class in that way because I haven’t personally communicated with other students. This is one impression that I got, and think that there’s a variety of ways to attend classes.