Cyberlove in Thai Cyberculture

Abstract

Cyberculture is a new domain in the comparative study of societies and cultural practices, and it’s a challenge in the field of behavioral science. This study explores the understanding about the beliefs and love lives of the 460 Thai participants who have used the internet for pursuing love. It aims to investigate to what extent these 460 Thai participants believe in a soulmate, why they believe they can find their cyberlove, how their cyberlove begins, and why it sometimes ends. The results of this study reveal 91.3 percent of the participants are familiar with the concept of a soulmate and 83 percent believe in this notion. Soulmate beliefs, significantly shaped by Thai Buddhism and the unique characteristic of internet dating are main reasons for their belief in finding cyberlove. There are three versions of falling in cyberlove: love at first sight, chemistry development, and the principle of similarity or like attracts like between couples. Furthermore, deception and being thwarted by obstacles and behavioral change as time passes are the most frequently mentioned reasons for the breakup of online romantic relationships. Cyberlove thus has become part of the normative structure in Thai cyberculture. People fall in love, fall out of love and are in love online. Future research would benefit from further exploring this line of research in other social networking sites and expanding the research scope into a comparative study.

Keywords: soulmate beliefs, cyberlove, online dating, thai cyberculture