MUDs and virtual personas
Posted by learningleads on March 5, 2008
The term MUD was foreign to me until I read Sherry Turkle’s article, “Who am We?” which discusses how MUDder’s roleplaying influences self exploration and identity and Juliann Dibbel’s “A Rape in Cyberspace” which discusses a MUD community’s response to an online rape and the incident’s effect on the victims.
My experience and understanding of MUDs is limited, but I’m having difficulty accepting the communities, which I understand to be fictitous, as a means for authentic exploration of self. In one respect, I can see how the graphic rape experience that Dibbel presented carried over to the MUDders’ realities, so the potential emotional investment is evident. I’m also considering the personas we project in real life and how we adjust in our varying personal and professional environments to maintain social code. But are these codes and standards so engrained in us that they continue to drive the MUD communities and participants’ interactions?
