On virtual socialization: From face to face to cyberspace

       It is very common nowadays how people socialize and try to share their ideas in the internet. But looking at the past, most of the rich and famous people had only documented themselves just by self portraits. These paintings usually suggest how they have lived and also suggest their professions, traits and attitudes.

         Nowadays documented profiles are upgraded into digital and virtual forms. These profiles are carefully manipulated and improved to get attention. This is created to find friends or to find people of the same interest. This form of socialization has boom significantly. The face to face conversing is then influenced and changed through the creation of a virtual world where many people of different locations can meet up, mingle, talk or even share ideas. According to a study entitled: Virtual Socializing Takes Over The Real- Taniel, people are spending more time on the web socializing than in actual real life. It also pointed out that out of 10,500 people that took a survey 6% of those people say that they spend an average of 10 hours a week online, and the majority of the users that get online are signed up for Facebook, Myspace, and other popular networking websites. Creation of personal profiles varies from one person to another some are motivated to meet opposite sex or to meet partners. Some intend to have these socializing accounts to advertise or to make groups with same interest. One can easily find friends that can even develop into deeper relationship. It is not unusual that most of the people find their partners over the cyber world.

Through the virtual world one can freely express his ideas and thoughts that come up to his mind. Shy and timid people can now socialize without any hesitations, this is very evident in the movie, “The Social Network” where Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the social networking site, “Facebook” is not very good at expressing himself in person. He actually created a campus-based site that allows the users to rate the hotness factor of girls on campus. Revolution in communication, site connects students, describes what drives life in college, who's single, and how to hook-up with girls.

           But virtual socialization can be tricky, sometimes people tend to make false profiles just to fool people and make money out of it. Some just want to make fun, earn some trust for business purposes through advertisements. Unlike the actual or face to face form of socialization, misunderstanding is a common scenario in virtual environment. Interpretation of messages might be different and usually the real essence of the message is connoted differently.

        Whether it is in a real or virtual world, it is important to be careful and responsible in socializing or interacting with other people.