Zac Angeline
Foundations of College Writing
7 May 2013
Visual Argument: “Hey There Delilah” and Long-Distance Relationships
It amazes me how couples can be in relationships without seeing each other for
weeks or months at a time or in some cases without even meeting each other in person at
all. I just recently got out of a long-distance relationship due to the fact that it wasn’t
working out.. I was also in one a couple of years ago but, as you might have guessed, that
one ended as well. With the technology these days’, long-distance relationships can be
much easier than they used to be. These days, you have cell phones to text and call
someone from anywhere, laptops on which you can communicate in more ways than you
can count and you have Skype which allows you to video chat with anyone, anywhere,
live. With all this technology, though, it makes it easy for people to lie straight to you
right over the Internet. It happens way too often that people lie about who they are online
and that’s because it is too easy to grab someone’s picture and pretend it’s you. The
music video “Hey There Delilah” is about a long-distance relationship and while it does
talk about a long-distance relationship you have to research and look more into the video
to find the deeper meaning of it.
During the music video, lead singer Tom Higgenson is playing the guitar in an
empty apartment. This is a split screen shot, with a girl supposed to represent Delilah
DiCrescenzo. The music video shows her living her life while she is away from him. You
can see by the way he’s singing that he misses her and want to be with her. The video
goes on switching back and forth from him singing and playing the guitar and
DiCrescenzo living her live away from Higgenson. This is basically what goes
throughout the whole music video.
Someone who watches this music video and really listens to the lyrics can
understand how hard it is for him to have this long-distance relationship. I sent e-mails to
the producer, director and the band themselves to get their point of view on what they set
out to make the video about, as expected thought they did not respond to me. Now
someone watching this music video might get the impression that he thinks they are in a
relationship, but the girl’s life does not portray many of the different relationship issues
that couples can experience. If you look into the background of this music video though,
you will find out that Higgenson only had met DiCrescenzo once before writing this song
about her. This suggests a problem with people falling for someone right after meeting
them and not knowing who they really are. The producers of this music video most likely
meant for this just to be a music video about a cute couple that was separated, but if
someone looks deeper, they might find the hidden cultural issues the video entails, such
as the strain long-distance relationships can put on a couple. It also opens the door for
even more issues that will be brought up in this paper such as all the negatives that a
long-distance relationship can cause as well as the problems that can happen having a
long-distance relationship if you never met the person, which is known as “catfishing”.
The world is more connected than ever these days and the amount of people in
contact with each other will only keep growing. According to the World Internet Users
Statistics Usage and World Population Stats, from the years 2000 to 2012, the world’s
Internet usage increased an incredible 566.4%. That represents a jump from 361 million
users to over 2.4 billion users (World Internet Users). The Internet only plans to get
bigger as time goes on though, according to Carolyn Marsan of Network World, who
predicts that by the year 2020,Internet usage will include more than 5 billion users
(Marsan). This would be a huge jump and would represent almost the entire world’s
population. Not only is the Internet growing and helping keep the world in
communication, but cell phones are also helping keep everyone in constant contact.
According to the Huffington Post, at the end of 2011, there were over 6 billion cell
phones in use worldwide. To put that into perspective, 86 out of 100 people had a cell
phone (Goldberg). James A.(who? Last name?) from GSMDome: The Mobile News
Factory stated, “Finally, in the long awaited year 2020, we’ll reach an international
interactivity between all devices and users, so everyone will be interconnected through
mobile handsets, having constant access to online services” (A. James). James is very
confident that in the year 2020 everyone in the world will have a cell phone or be
connected somehow through the Internet. The fact that the world is achieving such a high
degree of connectivity is a great thing for everyone, but even with all the good that comes
out of it, problems can occur as well.
One of the problems that can arise from the increase in Internet usage is the
increase in long-distance relationships. Statistics provided by Statistic Brain RSS indicate
that the average distance for a long-distance relationship is 125 miles away, the average
times visited per month is 1 and a half times, average days in between phone calls 2.7
times and the average time before couples move closer together is fourteen months (Long
Distance).
Now that some facts have been stated about long-distance relationships, it’s time
to look into how they can and do work. One thing that can really help a long-distance
relationship is using technology. As stated by Jenny Cetlin in the article “It’s Almost Like
Being there. Almost”, “There’s rarely anything that happens to me or to him during the
day that I don’t hear about almost instantly, or he doesn’t, it feels like he’s right here with
me” (Teitell). As you can see, technology can really help a long-distance relationship
work out. In the same article, Beth Teitell said “But some long-distance couples are
“together’’ so much it’s almost as if they’re, well, together” (Teitell). A couple Teitall
interviewed, Laurie Davis and Thomas Edwards, said they have Skype date nights, where
they both dress up and drink wine. So it is possible for long-distance relationships to
work out, and while a good amount of them do, there are negatives that can come along
with them.
One problem with long-distance relationships is the fact there is no personal
contact involved. Distance can really put a strain on a relationship. Matt Wallaert, a
behavioral psychologist at a New York based Web product development firm stated that
“You can talk to them every day, but you can’t give them a hug. If you couldn’t talk, you
may be able to distance yourself from the need for a hug, so in some ways, technology
can highlight what you’re missing” (Teitell). cannot give someone the satisfaction of
having their significant other with them. Another problem is the issue of trust. Wallaert
stated “It’s easier to lie via technology, when you’re not seeing the face or hearing the
voice” (Teitell). This has become a huge problem with using technology to communicate
with a significant other while in a long-distance relationship. Teitell also mentioned that
“Unreturned texts, calls sent directly to voice mail, missed Skype dates, all are new
sources of friction” (Teitell). Now that people can be in constant contact it can lead to
trust issues because if a person does not answer the significant other back right away, the
significant other might automatically assume he or she is are being cheated on or their
friend is trying to hide something from them. Supporting this, another girl Teitell
interviewed named Rachel Kiichli said “A letter, you get to read it at your leisure and
write back at your leisure, but when you can text, you wonder why he didn’t text back
right away” (Teitell). There are clearly many in relationships who would agree and say
the same thing. Overall, experts agree that technology can cut both ways – helping people
in good relationships keep connected when they are apart, or exacerbating negative
behaviors or feelings like cheating or jealousy (Teitell).
As Wallaert proposed earlier, it is much easier to lie to a significant other over
technology but another thing negative consequence of long-distance relationships is
someone could be subject to “catfishing”. According to Paula Fleming, catfishing is when
“a scammer assumes a persona on a social networking site and then creates an entire false
identity using the pictures, hobbies, interests and even friends of someone else … (in
many cases a?) scammer will be able to ask for and receive money from their
unsuspecting love interest” (Fleming). She then illustrates the steps or the average
patterns that cat fishers follow. First they will meet a random person online, then they
will engage in a whirlwind romance that quickly progresses from emails to texting and
then onto phone calls. Finally, they will schedule a couple of meetings, but then the
scammer always cancels them unexpectedly due to a made -up family emergency,
medical issue or other ailment. During the period of them talking, when the victim
believes an intense relationship has been created, the scammer normally starts asking for
money to pay their bills and other monetary obligations (Fleming). This is becoming a
bigger and bigger problem as technology and the amount of people using it to
communicate to people they do not know or just met online, continues to increase
Catfishing could happen to anyone, even to celebrities. One of the most wellknown and heavily publicized cases happened to Manti Te’o, a former linebacker of
Notre Dame, who was publically embarrassed by someone catfishing him. In this case,
Manti T’eo met a girl named Lennay Kekua on the Internet (Goodman). Over the course
of their “relationship”, they communicated for about two years. Over these two years,
their relationship followed a lot of the characteristics of a catfish relationship. First they
had many planned meetings, but they all fell through. One incident that particularly stood
out to the media who covered this story was when Te’o was supposed to go to Hawaii to
meet her but she unexpectedly left before he had the chance to see her. Another strange
event happened as well. When Te’o’s grandmother passed away on September 11, 2012,
within 24 hours his girlfriend Lennay was reported to pass away as well. The fact that she
would have passed away so close in time with his grandmother was strange enough, but
what made it stranger was that Te’o skipped her funeral to play in one of Notre Dame’s
football games. It wasn’t until Jan 16th 2013 when Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who turned out
to be a guy, ended up coming clean about his involvement in the hoax (Conway). It ended
up that Tuiasosopo used a girl’s picture to pretend that he was Lennay and kept the ruse
up for over two years. In the end, Te’o ultimately got catfished in the most public way
possible.
Another thing is a show recently came out about catfishing, called Catfish: The
TV Show. This is a show developed by Nev Schulman who was catfished himself. Before
the show he made a movie in which his brothers friend, Max Joseph, went around and
filmed him meeting a girl that he met online. After this movie was a huge hit MTV
offered him a TV show. This show every week has a different person who is currently
talking to someone they met over social media whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, etc. He
then meets up with these people who are talking to the person and help them meet the
person they have been talking to. Schulman and Joseph then end up bringing this person
to meet the person they have been talking to and they find out if they have been catfished
or not. This show has been a huge hit averaging over two million viewers per episode
(Catfish: The TV Show). As you can see catfishing has become such a problem that they
have come out with a movie and a TV show all about it. This has become a huge problem
and the United States and will only continue to get worse as technology becomes more
influenced in our everyday lives.
“Hey There Delilah” was originally just a cute love song written about a girl the
lead singer had met, but it really does provide much more insight with a little more
poking and prodding. Many cultural issues can be brought up just by one music video.
While the world is becoming more technologically connected at a rapid clip, this
evolution creates, or exacerbates, certain problems. The problems include more longdistance relationships that come from the increased technology use. These are harder on
people and just make relationships harder to make workout. There are good thing that
technology has done fore long-distance relationships such as providing the ability to stay
connected constantly but ultimately technology cannot replace seeing someone face-toface. An additional negative consequence is it can cause people to lie more to their
significant other because without having to be face-to -face with the significant other,
they can more easily lie. This also increases the incidence of catfishing, as thousands of
people get catfished these days now that it is so easy to do over the Internet. The fact that
it occurred to Manti Te’o, who is one of the most-talked about football players, illustrates
the dangers and negative consequences of technology in general, and on long-term
relationships, in particular. It suggests that even with the advances and conveniences of
technology, we are all more exposed to a certain degree.
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