A little creepy

Well, I initiated my "relationship" with Caroline yesterday, and I wanted to record my first impressions before I check my email (the "other one" that I gave to calm my fears of being spammed) to see how things have progressed.

All in all, I was more than a little uncomfortable with onlinecaroline. The friendly to neurotic tone was too much for me, and the snapshot intimacy was far from something that I could see developing into a friendship. In much the same way as tophat1, I browsed suspiciously through the website and found myself put that much more on the defensive at each cheerful greeting.

Two things were particularly outstanding to me. For one, while Caroline claims to be reserving some things for later in our relationship, the amount that is being offered to a total stranger felt like too much. Now, I see myself as something of a tough nut to crack, and perhaps I just want everyone else to be an introvert like me. However, the lack of reserve was a bit much.

My second thought was on the interface. The "about you" survey was interesting, but it felt too much like information mining. I am waiting for the name of my best friend to show up in an email, and questions about fidelity seem geared towards eliciting responses from me later on. Again, I will allow that I am coming into this with a high degree of skepticism, but the plot seems to be taking shape already, which sounds more like "game" than "story." The main thing that the interface lacks for me is openness. A human interaction requires the ability to respond in more than entry blanks and checkboxes, so my first conversation was far too impoverished for my taste.

And, for this, I am not sure exactly where my anxiety is coming from. I know that I bring a lot of "baggage" in the form of my biases about friendship and technology, and I am expecting an incompatibility before one appears. We'll see, but I think that Caroline and I are starting out on the wrong foot.