I heard that sentence so many times when I was younger. AOL was the first online service I ever used, and I spent a lot of time changing my "You've got mail!" voice to something different (usually Star Trek related). Anyway, I obviously chose option one for this assignment. I saw this movie years ago, and it was fun watching it again. It's obvious that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have a lot of chemistry and affection for each other, and it's always so much fun to watch them together on screen.
In You've Got Mail, Joe and Kathleen became friends through the internet. Both were already in relationships, and both had their own lives. I'm not sure that they actually recreated their identities online. I think they were just more careful about what they said than they would have been normally. At the very basic level, both Joe and Kathleen expressed their feelings honestly and openly online. However, the drama came in when they met in person, not knowing who they were actually meeting. Unfortunately, Joe was less than forthcoming when he met Kathleen the first time (not telling her his last name), which caused Kathleen to feel angry and embarrassed for criticizing Joe's bookstore to Joe himself. Kathleen also saw Joe as a threat to her beloved bookstore, once she learned who he was. They ended up arguing and slinging insults at each other. When Joe discovered that Kathleen was the woman he had been corresponding with online, it really shook up his perception of her real life persona. All of a sudden, he had to reconcile his distaste for Kathleen in real life with his knowledge of her true personality, which he found very attractive. It took him a while to figure out whether or not he wanted to get involved with her outside of the online world, and once he made the effort to get to know her in real life (and let her get to know him better, to help her see past her anger and hurt feelings), things improved for both of them. They eventually ended up together, supposedly living happily ever after.
The premise of the movie was that you should be prepared for the possibility of meeting a person in real life who is important to you online. I do think it would be harder for this to happen now than it would have been in 1998, when the movie came out. In 1998, digital cameras were not commonly used, and people did not routinely place their pictures online for everyone to see. That has definitely changed, so most people meeting online should know what the other person looks like from the beginning.
A little thing that I caught when watching this movie was how the character's computer choices tied in with the story line. Joe was using an IBM Thinkpad, a common business computer at the time. Kathleen was using an Apple Macintosh laptop, which were far less common in 1998 than they are now. It emphasized the differences between them--the big business (IBM) and the underdog (Apple).
This movie does tie in with our Wood & Smith readings this week, which cover the history of the internet. You can see the fairly primitive AOL interface, and you can hear the sounds of the modem connecting through the phone lines. For the younger generation, dial-up internet is probably incredibly quaint and outdated, but at the time, that's all we had.
As far as society is concerned, this movie goes back to last week's discussion about how computer-mediated communication leads to discomfort when people meet in real life after forming a relationship online. How can you reconcile your online persona with your normal personality? How can you get used to someone else's little personality quirks when you actually meet? What do you do if you become very interested in someone online who turns out to be physically unattractive in real life? All of these questions are related to the fact that the people you meet online are only showing their best sides, just as you are minimizing your own flaws when you chat online. It will be interesting, as we navigate through this societal change, to see how we as a society will deal with the profound changes in our interpersonal communications.
1 comment:
AOL was sort of an intro to the internet. It was my first experience with surfing the web, email and IM. Even today, I often think of people who are unfamiliar with the internet using AOL because it's so user-friendly. I remember having dial-up internet with my AOL, and being so anxious to hear "you've got mail". It was new and unfamiliar territory at the time, and I felt so sophisticated and technologically savvy. This movie I thought was sort of ahead of its time. Now though, you’re right in that people are using digital pictures and various forms of deception with online communication. I liked your observation of the laptops and how they related to the characters.
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