Friday, May 13, 2011

"Internet Dating" Critique

Internet Dating is a movie starring Katt Williams, in the role of Mickey. Mickey is a down-on-his-luck fast food employee, who begins using an online dating service in hopes of meeting a woman. On the website, he chooses to lie about himself to make him seem more appealing to women. However, the women he meets are often disingenuous too, making it difficult for Mickey to find a soul mate.

The movie, despite its oft-flat humor, portrayed quite well the issues of cyber personas and trustworthiness online. Similar to real life, characters in the movie could pretend to be someone completely different online, and only get caught when met in person. This raised my awareness of Internet personas as “illusions”- pretenses that are ruined when brought outside the cyber and into the real world.

An interesting phenomenon I noticed in the movie was in regards to the mentality of those who lied about themselves online- they thought they were the only ones lying. That is, when Mickey lied about himself, he never thought someone would lie to him, especially when it was someone claiming to be an attractive girl. This supports my belief that in the cyber, people are willing to believe something to be true if they wish to see it as true. The movie also helped me with my research topic, as I observed ways people project themselves online, as well as differences between true personalities and online personas.

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