When I Was an Avocado, I Tangoed Seductively With Ralphie:

An In-Depth Analysis of People's Obsession With MUDs

by Laura D'Afflitti

Patik licks Mary. Mary giggles and kicks him in the shin. Krista pirouettes and falls down laughing. Cislynx seduces Missworld. Ralphie shouts, "who wants to tango"?! I am not having a nightmare, and I do not live in a mental institution. I am simply witnessing the typical behavior of a Multi User Dungeon (MUD). MUDs have become all the rage in the rapidly increasing world of computer technology. MUDs put you in a virtual space where you can create an identity and "chat" with other people. In this virtual world, you are represented by a self-composed textual description: if youre fat, you can be thin; if you're beautiful, you can be plain; and if you're nerdy, you can be sophisticated. This anonymity allows you to express unexplored aspects of yourself, to play with your real world identity by trying out new ones (Turkle 12).
In addition to creating an identity, your virtual character can converse with others, exchange gestures, express emotions and rise and fall in popularity. You can even die in a MUD (Turkle 183). Essentially, you can be who or whatever you want, and you can say anything because your character exists only in cyberspace, as does everyone else who you encounter.
You might ask yourself why do people bother to spend hours, days and weeks interacting with virtual beings? Why don't these people get out more and try living in the real world? The answer is simple. On-line communication in a MUD is a unique form of interaction because it is the only place in the world where you can leave your "real" life, assume the identity of your dreams and behave as you like without leaving any negative impact on your non-virtual existence. People are obsessed with MUDding because it is an escape mechanism which allows you to ignore reality and live out fantasy.
This desire to escape reality is an understandable response to an overemphasis on who you are or to the problems of your real-world identity. As a society, we have created an immense pressure upon ourselves to have a "perfect" self-image. This "perfection" can range from wanting flawless skin and pouty lips to desiring a successful career and a happy family. The demands of creating and sustaining this perfect modern identity are becoming increasingly burdensome, and as your life centers more on maintaining this certain image the desire to escape from the image grows greater (Baumeister 2). This desire is precisely the reason why MUDding has become so popular.
For example, a forty two year-old nurse named Annette calls herself "Bette" when MUDding because, "Annette for all my life will be that sweet, perky Annette from the Mickey Mouse Club. I want to be a Bette, like Bette Davis. I want to seem mysterious and powerful. There is no such thing as a mysterious and powerful mouseketeer" (Turkle 208). Clearly, Annette is not happy with her "perky" real world persona because it does not allow her to express her desires for mystery and power. Because MUDs allow her to be who she can't in her real life, Annette finally knows what it is like to be a "Bette".
However, escaping your real self is only the broad psychological aspect of MUDding. As I went MUDding, I realized that this desire to escape is broken down into three more specific denials of reality: gender identity, sexual promiscuity, and death and violence. In today's world, men and women behave according to how society has modeled them to behave. In other words, society imposes sex-roles on people that can not be interchanged (Eysenck and Wilson 24). Just because society does not accept people who act as their opposite gender does not mean that people don't fantasize about what it would be like to be a member of the opposite sex. MUDs allow people to escape the endless pressure of gender identity without being shamed or ostracized by society. When MUDding, you can make yourself to be any gender or none at all. In MUDs, a significant number of the female characters are real-life men and vice versa. This ability to gender swap allows for the opportunity to explore conflicts raised by your real biological gender, and it encourages reflection on the way ideas about gender shape our expectations of people (Turkle 213). I was curious to see to what extent gender shapes the expectations of characters in a MUD, so I went MUDding as a six-foot, two-hundred-pound hunk named Butch; a slim, sexy woman named Luscious; and a little, green avocado. I chose these characters because they are nothing like my real world identity. I am not a gorgeous hunk, a sex kitten, or a piece of fruit. I also chose three different identities because MUDding allows for the creation of multiple identities--something that is not accepted in the real world. When MUDding, people adopt several different identities to accommodate several different needs and fantasies. This ability to have multiple personalities allows you to escape the real-world pressure of maintaining one consistent identity. After all, our personalities are not definable by one trait, therefore, why should we expect to act that way?
When I went MUDding, I found that gender did shape other characters feelings towards my stereotypical male and female identities. For example, when I was Butch not many people wanted to talk to me. Several people told me I was arrogant and stupid while others were too intimidated to say anything. It was hard to get conversations going, and I discovered what it felt like to be called a sexist womanizer. As Luscious, I got hordes of virtual males characters to talk to me, but virtual females were usually catty and rude. Males were constantly wanting to chat or "whispering" profanities in my ear, but females called me a bitch and excluded me from their inner circles.
My experience as a genderless avocado was quite different and it made me understand why people MUD to escape the pressures of gender identity. When I was a small, green piece of fruit most characters had no hesitations about chatting with me. I had conversations about politics and the changing nature of today's morals. I also let loose a bit and tangoed with Ralphie. Without gender weighing me down I found that most everyone liked me, which shows that in a MUD you can always be someone or something who can find people to appreciate you.
Gender swapping is not the only kind of sexual escape from reality in a MUD. Sexual promiscuity or "tinysex" is also quite common in MUDs. Sex is another aspect of reality that lots of people fantasize about. The stereotype is that only perverts have sexual fantasies, but in reality these desires are common among most men and women. Healthy people have kinky fantasies; they just don't express them in the real world because it is not socially proper to do so (Eysenck and Wilson 71). There is also the danger that if you do act on your fantasies they will affect your real life in an irreversible way. MUDding allows you to escape the sexual guidelines of the real world and make your fantasies come true.
For example, many people in the real world fantasize about sexual activity involving animals, group sex or homosexuality. In reality, they do not act on their impulses but in a MUD, where they are unknown and unaffected by others, people are not afraid to live out their wildest dreams (Turkle 224). This behavior is called "tinysex" and is quite common among experienced MUDders. There are no visual aides for this activity, only the words which you and the character whom you are "tinysexing" with type on the screen. The question is why would people bother with this form of sexual behavior? How can typing words excite anyone?
Tinysex is popular because sexual activity is composed of friction and fantasy where often fantasy is a better source of sexual arousal than direct sensations because fantasies are private and do not promote self-consciousness (Eysenck and Wilson 69). Since your real identity is unknown, it becomes very safe and very private to have tinysex with whomever you wish. Tinysex also allows MUDders to be sexually promiscuous without the fear of pregnancy or disease, two worries which are inescapable in real world sex. Since people MUD to escape who they are in the real world, and most people are not kinky sex fiends, it is only logical that tinysex is an important and popular aspect of MUDding.
The final denial of reality which draws people to MUDding are the virtual notions about death and violence. In the real world, people fear death because it means pain and loneliness. Some common emotions brought on by death are fear, sorrow, anger, and helplessness, all of which are negative and unwanted by most humans. Because of this fear of the unknown, most people avoid the mention of death and try to ignore its inevitable occurrence (Hinton 21). Like gender and sex, death can be an aspect of your real life that you wish to escape. MUDding can be used as an escape mechanism from your real world fear of death.
In cyberspace death and violence are not things to fear--they are trivial occurrences which can be fixed in a second. In MUDs there exists a whole system of survival involving endurance, weapons and points for longevity. You can be killed or maimed in an instant if someone doesn't like you and vice versa. However, because this is virtual, if you are killed you can jump back into a chat room as fast as your fingers can type. There is also no physical pain if you are hurt or killed in a MUD. Many people in the real world associate death with pain and suffering; thus they hope for a quick, painless death (Hinton 23). MUDding alleviates this fear because it involves no physical pain. MUDders feel free to kill and get killed, so they enact a fantasy of pain-free, impermanent death.
This ability to hurt without causing real harm is also beneficial because it allows people to get rid of their real-world impulse to kill or hurt. What I mean by this is that many people are seized with the thought of harming someone they know. In the real world, people recognize such unwanted and illogical impulses as foolish because it is not socially acceptable to think this way (Hinton 29). However, realizing that it is wrong to have these thoughts does not alleviate the desire to kill; it merely suppresses it which could be detrimental in the long run. For example, if you were annoyed with a friend and did not tell him or her your annoyance would escalate, possibly to the point of violent action.
MUDs provide the arena for people to act out their violent impulses without causing real harm to anyone. For example, a twenty one year-old male defends his violent MUD character by saying, "Violence is something that is in me; but quite frankly I'd rather rape on MUDs where no harm is done" (Turkle 185). Clearly, people have intense fantasies and fears about death and violence. MUDs provide an escape from having to deal with these emotions by allowing people to act on their impulses without harming their real-world identity.
No other place in this world allows humans to role play as MUDs do; therefore, they have become an obsession in many people's lives. However, pressure from society is not necessarily the motive that makes people want to escape their real-world identity. A person's internal dissatisfaction with who they are can be the cause as well. MUDding may provide temporary relief from your real-world persona, but it does not define whether this pressure to escape comes from society's demands or from the demands that you place upon yourself. No one is entirely satisfied with how they look, who they are and the way they behave. MUDding has become more than just a game to some people because it allows them to be what reality does not.


WORKS CITED

Baumeister, Roy F. _Escaping The Self_. U.S.A.: BasicBooks, 1991.

Eysenck, H.J., and Glenn Wilson . _The Psychology of Sex_. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1979.

Hinton, John. _Dying_. England: Penguin Books, 1972.

Turkle, Sherry. _Life On The Screen_. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

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