Sans Fig Leaf
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"Getting to know you"
4 January, 2007
I first met Cindy in 1996. She seemed like a level-headed, polite, occasionally irreverent but reasonable person. We shared interests in certain types of books, movies, and so forth. I enjoyed discussing those things with her. She offered sympathy and support when my husband, Ray, died in 1997. I congratulated her on the birth of her child the following year.
Except I didn't meet her for real until 2004--at a science fiction convention. Because our initial meeting, and all of our subsequent interaction had been correspondence over the internet.
My impression on meeting her in person was very different than what I'd gleaned from our years of correspondence. I would have said she was just as surprised about me, except she claimed she didn't remember me. After several awkward moments of conversation I was able to jog her memory enough that she vaguely recalled some of our exchanges, but only just. As I observed her behaviour over the next few days I came to see her as neither polite nor reasonable, and far from level-headed. Subsequent meetings and interactions in the years since have only verified the latter impression. I found myself becoming grateful she didn't remember who I was.
On the other hand, I first met Ann around 1981--via snail mail. We were involved in the same fan club and began corresponding quite regularly. We collaborated on several projects. My impression of her was of a witty, charming, civil (though quite capable of cattiness when the situation called for it), and fun person. When I finally met her face-to-face 1988 that impression was reinforced, rather than contradicted. We remained friends for years after meeting in the flesh.
At least part of my misapprehension with Cindy was in confusing certain types of correspondence. I had unconsciously lumped everything I read by her together--whether it was a direct reply to a message from me, or a more public posting to a forum or newsgroup. My subconcious had treated them all the same. It felt, therefore, as if we had corresponded a lot more than we really had.
In the actual exchanges, I was just one of many faceless screen names she would occasionally respond to. She never connected all of those comments, responses, and messages from me together as being from the same guy. To her, each was a single isolated communication from some random person.
Other parts of the misapprehension came from the nature of our exchanges, because the written word doesn't always convey tone of voice and so forth. Some outrageous statements she had made over the years I had taken as jokes. They weren't jokes, she was dead serious. Other statements which had seemed like concessions to people who disagreed with her had been intended as sarcastic or flippant.
Ann, being a far better writer than Cindy, had been fully aware of the limitations of the written word. She employed little tricks to signal what would have been a change in tone of voice in a conversation. Other times she'd simply add a parenthetical statement that she was being sarcastic or making a joke. Misunderstandings could still occur, of course, but they were less likely.
Getting to know another person is a complicated process, whether or not it's a long distance acquaintance. After all, we can live with someone for years and be completely oblivious to some sides of their personality.
A lot of what we think we know about a person is a combination of feelings and beliefs rather than facts. Those feelings and beliefs are inferences we've made during our interaction with the person. They may only mostly correct, completely wrong, or somewhere in-between. Our emotional self isn't good at distinguishing the differences between our inferences and objective facts. Similarly, that emotional self doesn't differentiate between information we learn directly or indirectly. We "feel" as if we know the person really well simply because we have so much personal information about them in our head.
It can be quite disturbing when we discover inaccuracies in our perception of someone we know--as in my face-to-face encounter with Cindy. It is equally upsetting when we learn that someone has an inaccurate impression of us or our relationship with them. All of these problems can alos lead to things quite worse than hurt feelings or disturbed sensibilities--just ask anyone who has had to get a restraining order against a stalker.
By no means was Cindy the first person I experienced this sort of misapprehension with. I try to keep it in mind in all my interactions, be they virtual or face-to-face.
The imperfections in our understanding of other people are often unimportant. We should never forget that they are almost certainly there. Just as others never know us completely, we never know other people as well as we think we do.
It's one of the reasons life is full of surprises.
--Dame Edna Everage
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