How much of our initial "knowledge" about another person is fantasy?

I think we make educated assumptions about people, I would not call it fantasy. We generalize about a person as we gather information about them. First we might make asumptions by observing what they wear and how they look, this I think has some merit, but can be very very innacurate. Then, as we get to know where they live, their profession, what they think on some topics, we start to make more guesses and generalizations about how they might think about other topics. When it comes to dating I think people who care a lot about physical attractiveness are more likely to ignore signs of incompatibility in other realms. For me, when I am attracted to someone and then find out the person thinks very differently about topics that are important to me for an SO they lose their attractiveness. Love at first sight is the luck of being physically attracted to someone and then finding them to be in sync with what you desire in a companion, otherwise he was just some handsome guy you met once (or girl).

I never take first impressions as fact.

I’ve been in relationships where first impressions were correct and in relationships where I found something out later that the person was very good about concealing from me…all we hope for is that they won’t hurt us but people do…our fantasies are our own fault but it’s okay to construct them…you should never build castles without solid ground with a person first and you should be careful about all these dreams you think will come true…but it is possible…and if I have to choose I’d choose the ‘what if it works’ over the ‘what if it doesn’t

I think we have very sophisticated inbuilt systems with which to analyze appearance, posture, body language, tone of voice, eye movement, and many, many other parameters both small and large whenever we meet someone.

I would not say it is comprehensive, but it is no fantasy. If you have had the experience of meeting someone in person whom you have known for a long while on line, then you know what I mean when I say a face to face meeting counts.

I think this is the classic “fact is fiction? tv/Internet is reality?” question. I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.

I think in some ways, meeting someone first online vs. in real life would tend to be more forgiving because you aren’t initially deluged by a bunch of external white noise. I think a lot depends on the 2 people, and how open they are online of course. Also, what type of personalities they have.

Getting to know someone online certainly makes it possible to connect with someone intellectually whom you might not have had the chance to meet in real life. The serendipitous factor of that can be very romantic ...

I think if you’re talking about meeting someone in real life whom you’ve been romantically involved with online, it would probably be surreal at the very least when you first meet them!!

I second @ChazMaz motion.

Something I read only yesterday and although it is referring to the heart I think it could be applied more widely.

The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own ~ Willa Cather

I know you didn’t ask for quotes specifically but this was the first thing that came to mind when I read your question

You might be interested in reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell – it’s basically about intuition, and how we go about forming those first impressions of things and people, within the first few minutes of seeing them.

I just started it yesterday, but from what I’ve read so far, it seems like @pdworkin is right – our unconscious is built to take in all of these tiny signals that we don’t consciously know we’re seeing, and somehow it forms them into a fairly accurate first impression. It’s not always accurate, of course, but the statistics on how often it is are pretty stunning.

@sdeutsch So would that intuition be impaired by the narrow bandwidth that the internet provides, thus leading to more mistaken impressions? Or would it be just as good as intuitions developed on the basis of real life meetings?

I have had many experiences where people I’ve met on the internet not only thought they liked me, but that they could love me. I shared those notions about those people I met. We were all mistaken. Almost everyone I’ve received feedback from online seems to think I’m someone I think I am not. I am not intentionally deceiving anyone. We just have very different ideas about who I am. Since I have much more information about me than anyone else does, it’s hard to see how they could be more right than I am.

@daloon I would guess that intuition would be somewhat impaired by the internet, since a lot of the unconscious signals that we pick up on are tangible (tone of voice, facial expression, etc.) With a much smaller amount of information available (most of which is being parsed consciously, since you’re reading it), I imagine it would be harder for your unconscious to get an accurate idea of what the person you’re talking to is like.

You have to fill in so many blanks for yourself when you meet someone on the internet that, unless you spend a lot of time talking to them and making an effort to find out everything about them, you really have more of a guess as to what they’re like than a real understanding. Probably if the people you met were video chatting with you, their understanding of who you are would be better, since their unconscious could jump in and start interpreting things for them behind the scenes. This is just my guess, though, having read about 50 pages so far… ;)

The reason I used meeting an on-line friend in real life as an example was to suggest how very much more information we have available to us to process when we meet in the flesh.