TW: sexual assault - http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html

I’m terrible at summarizing so I won’t really try, but it does a fine job of sharing a terrible event, how it affected people, and the changes that happened after. It also touches on what it means to make a society and shape a culture in this shared hobby; for as terrible as the event is, it’s also heartening to see how things can grow and change through player influence.

@Pavel and @L-B-Heuschkel Yes! Thanks for mentioning that, that’s an issue I had been planning to get into. As a hobby, not only is it (usually, standard online messiness withstanding) welcoming to all kinds of folks, because it’s text-based it works really well for people with some kinds of disability or neurodivergence, and because it’s semi-anonymized RP you can use it as a kind of prototyping for self-actualization, a way for people to explore and invent who they are and want to be. I’ve got so many trans friends for whom MU*s were a safe space in which to figure themselves out, that’s probably the angle I’d come at it from mostly since it’s the one I’m most familiar with, Absolutely a point I think it’s important to hit on.

Saying that, there’s also a dark side to MU*ing (not exclusive to it of course) which I feel it’s a duty to bring up at the event, so anyone who does take up the hobby will be equipped to respond in case they’re playing and, you know, someone get weird, as someones sometimes do.

I reFUSE. it’s made from nuts!!! come on

And it looks like we have more votes for “mooing” than against, so there we go, now I’ll be able to feel a little less silly saying it onstage (though still silly). Thanks!

I feel like such a yokel for it but I’d always said “Muh.”

it made sense to me! there was only one “oo” codebase, but now I’m questioning everything. do y’all say “moods” and “mooshes”?!

As for things to see included, I would probably want to see something describing the… egalitarian nature of the hobby. Sure we have work to do, as all sectors of humanity do, but it’s a fairly accessible hobby to people of basically any slice of humanity you’d care to identify. LGBTQIA++? Absolutely. Disabled folks? Definitely. Culturally and linguistically diverse communities? Absolutely, though most MUs do require an elementary level of English literacy. Basically every slice of humanity can find a place here without too much of an issue.

The main thing I struggled with while writing that was that MUs vary so much. Even among MUSHes, there’s so much variety that it’s hard to describe anything in generalities. When you include MUDs/RPIs, it’s even worse. It may be easier to do a case study example of the specific kind of MU you’re familiar with (like WoD).

The wikipedia MUD article has a good breakdown of the history of the hobby as a whole.

Yes, I also pronounce it “Moo”.

I’ve been given the opportunity to put on a talk about our hobby, from its earliest 80s MUD days to the current state of field today, exploring it as a hobby, as a videogame, as a piece of computer history, as a community, as a form of art.

You might check out these three essays from 50 Years of Text Games, if you aren’t already familiar:
https://if50.substack.com/p/1980-mud
https://if50.substack.com/p/1990-lambdamoo
https://if50.substack.com/p/1997-achaea

How the heck do you pronounce “MU*s”, anyway? “Moos”?

Yes.

@Jihgfed said in Intro to MU*ing Event:

How the heck do you pronounce “MU*s”, anyway? “Moos”? “Myoo-stars”?

“MOO” was/possibly still is also a server family, standing for “MUD, Object-Oriented.” So I wouldn’t go with that one, just to minimize the possibility of confusion.

Despite the potential ambiguity, “Moos” is still how everyone I know says it out loud, so it’s the correct pronunciation for me.

How the heck do you pronounce “MU*s”, anyway? “Moos”? “Myoo-stars”?

“MOO” was/possibly still is also a server family, standing for “MUD, Object-Oriented.” So I wouldn’t go with that one, just to minimize the possibility of confusion.