home outlines MUD Identity Sociodramatic MUD research links mail
by Yosef Salvay
Psychology 103, Section 001H, Honors Professor Joseph Matthew Pirone Fall 2001
This paper has been prepared according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) Fifth Edition, 2001. Identity and the Internet: The Effects of Virtual Reality on The Self.
Identity and the Internet: The Effects of Virtual Reality on The Self.
The era of the internet is changing our conception of identity. As Sherry Turkle (1995) points out, “We come to see ourselves differently as we catch sight of our images in the mirror of the machine” (Turkle, 1995, p. 9). The relationships we form in virtual spaces on the internet, called MUD’s and IRC’s, are forcing us to rethink who we are (1995, p. 10). MUD’s, or Multi User Dungeons, are text based games derived from the 1970’s fantasy game ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ (1995, p. 180). In a MUD, “one’s body is represented by one’s own textual description, so the obese can be slender, the beautiful plain, the ‘nerdy’ sophisticated” (1995, p. 12). Internet Relay Chats (IRC’s), are virtual chat rooms in which users converse with each other through lines of text (1995, p.14). IRC’s “have much of the appeal of MUD’s - a combination of real time interaction with other people, anonymity... and the ability to assume a role as close to or as far from one’s ‘real self’ as one chooses” (1995, p. 14).
When individuals log on to a MUD or IRC they create a ‘virtual personae‘, or online identity. As Elizabeth Reid (1994) asserts, “How one MUD player `looks' to another player is entirely dependant upon information that they choose to give” (Reid, 1994, online). An individual MUD player can create more than one virtual persona. Thus, argues Turkle, “MUD’s imply difference, multiplicity, heterogeneity, and fragmentation” (Turkle, 1995, p. 185). This changes the whole notion of Identity, as “Traditional ideas about identity have been tied to a notion of authenticity that such virtual experiences actively subvert. When each player can create many characters and participate in many games, the self is not only decentered but multiplied without limit” (1995, p. 185).
Due to the anonymity of the internet, people in MUD’s and IRC’s engage in a variety of activities such as ‘gender swapping,’ virtual relationships, virtual friendships, virtual romances, and ‘virtual sex.’ As Howard Rheingold (1993) confirms, “Once inside a MUD, you can be a man or a woman or something else entirely (Rheingold, 1993, p.148).
This paper, then, will analyze how the virtual reality in MUD’s, IRC’s, and Chat rooms affects the way we perceive our identities. It will illustrate how the self evolves through the use of multiple-online-selves to engage in virtual sex, gender swapping, and other activities, some of which are not socially acceptable in real life.
Multiple User Dungeons, also referred to as Multi User Domains, evolved from a famous fantasy board game of the 1970’s called ‘Dungeons and Dragons.’ In this game, “a dungeon master creates a world in which people take on fictional personae and play out complex adventures” (Turkle, 1995, p. 180). Thereafter, the term ‘dungeon’ continued to mean virtual space. Hence the term Multi User Dungeons refers to “virtual spaces... that many computer users... share and collaborate within” (1995, p. 180).
MUDding is not, as one might think, uncommon in today’s society. Howard Rheingold reports that “By July 1992, there were more than 170 different multi-user games on the Internet, using nineteen different world-building languages” (Rheingold, 1993, p.145). Amy Bruckman (1993) exposes the exponential growth that occurs in the MUDding community. “As of April 16th, 1993, there were 276 publicly announced MUDs based on twenty different kinds of software on the Internet” (Bruckman, 1993, online).
MUDs are not just computer games created for fun. Rather, asserts Rheingold (1993), they are objects to think with:
MUDs are living laboratories for studying the first-level impacts of virtual communities-- the impacts on our psyches, on our thoughts and feelings as individuals. And our attempts to analyze the second-level impacts of phenomena like MUDs on our real-life relationships and communities lead to fundamental questions about social values in an age when so many of our human relationships are mediated by communications technology (Rheingold, 1993, p. 146).
According to Bruckman (1992), “While every MUD is different, there are two basic types: those which are like adventure games, and those which are not” (Bruckman, 1992, p. 5). In the adventure type MUD, the object is to “kill monsters and obtain treasure in order to gain experience points. As a character gains experience, he/she/it becomes more powerful” (1992, p. 5). In non-adventure type MUDs, sometimes called ‘social MUDs,’ the object is to have fun, interact with other players, and in some cases, “help build the virtual world” (Turkle, 1995, p. 181). Players ‘build’ the virtual world by creating “objects, and rooms, and write programs to make objects function in interesting ways” (Bruckman, 1992, p. 5). In both types of MUDs, the fascination is in operating one’s personae and interacting with other personas (Turkle, 1995, p. 182).
The first thing a player does when logging on to a MUD is create a personae. Bruckman explains that “The person selects the character’s name and gender, and writes a description of what the character looks like. It is possible for a character to be male or female, regardless of the gender of the player” (Bruckman, 1992, p. 4). Most people will not give their true names when creating a persona (Reid, 1994, online). Instead, reports Reid, “Most choose to manifest themselves under a name that forms the central focus of what becomes a virtual disguise” (1994, online). These names range from conventional ones to those that are borrowed from characters in books and other media. Still other names “such as Love, funky, Moonlight and blip, reflect ideas, symbols and emotions, while many more, such as FurryMUCK's felinoid Veronicat and LambdaMOO's yudJ, involve plays upon language and conventional naming systems” (1994, online). By creating an online persona, explains Rheingold, “you help create a world.... identities affirm the reality of the scenario” (Rheingold, 1993, p. 148).
MUDs have introduced new concepts of body and gender. With a few lines of text, “It is possible to by-pass the boundaries delineated by cultural constructs of beauty, ugliness and fashion” (Reid 1994, online). A character can be male or female regardless of the player’s actual gender. Bruckman (1992) reports that “In many MUDs, a character can also be... plural. A plural character could, for example, be called swarm_of_bees or Laurel&Hardy” (Bruckman, 1992, p. 4). Another, initially confusing gender orientation is a neuter, or gender-neutral character, referred to by some as an ’it’ (Turkle, 1995, p. 210).
Once people log on to a MUD, they are inside a virtual room. When players log on to a popular MUD named LambadaMOO, they are ‘in’ a coat closet (Turkle, 1995, p. 182). The description of this virtual room reads, “The Coat Closet. The Closet is a dark, cramped space.... you keep bumping into what feels like coats, boots and other people (apparently sleeping). One useful thing you’ve discovered in your bumbling about is a metal doorknob set at waist level into what might be a door...” (Turkle, 1995, p. 182).
Reid (1994) insists that the coat closet serves an integral purpose (Reid, 1994, online). “It may be small and cramped, but it provides an initial point of reference in the LambdaMOO world and it furnishes the newcomer with a host of information about the cultural nature of the world he or she has entered” (Reid, 1994, online).
By typing the word ‘out’, the player ‘exits’ the virtual closet and enters the virtual living room. A description of a nice, homely living room appears on screen (Turkle, 1995, p. 183). The living room, the anteroom in many MUDs, is important for a number of reasons. Reid (1994) explains that “Along with virtually physical centrality, the living room provides social centrality. It is the main meeting place for LambdaMOO inhabitants” (Reid, 1994, online). Once in the living room, players are free to socialize with other people who are in that virtual room (Turkle, 1995, p. 183).
There are no rules regarding how players on a MUD should interact. “The MUD system provides players with a stage, but it does not provide them with a script. Players choose their own actions within the context created by the MUD,” reports Reid (1994, p. 26). Commands such as ‘say,’ ‘emote,’ and ‘whisper’ allow players to interact in a realistic manner (Turkle, 1995, p. 183). Turkle (1995) illustrates this idea with an imaginary conversation between her character ‘Turk’ and a player named Dimitri. “If I type ‘say Hi’... the screens of the other players will flash ‘Turk says Hi’.... If I type ‘emote whistles happily,’ all the players’ screens will flash ’Turk whistles happily.’ Or I can address Dimitri alone by typing ‘Whisper to Dimitri Glad to see you,’ and only Dimitri’s screen will show ‘Turk whispers Glad to see you’” (1995, p. 183). In a MUD, facial expressions are conveyed through “typographical conventions known as emoticons... For example, :-) indicates a smiley face and :-( indicates an unhappy face” (1995, p.183).
MUDs provide anonymity that causes people to feel freer than they do in Real Life. According to Reid (1994), this makes the players feel safe because they are “Protected by computer terminals and separated by distances of often thousands of kilometers... the likelihood of any of their fellows being able to affect their 'real lives' is minimal” (Reid, 1994, online)
This loss of inhibition in MUDs manifests itself in different people in divergent ways. Players are allowed to act out their deepest fantasies and explore their curiosity. While some males present themselves on MUDs as females to explore what it feels like to experience what it’s like to be perceived as a female, others are acting out their sexual fantasies (Curtis in Rheingold, 1993, p. 166). Pavel Curtis (1993) postulates that, “...such transvestite flirts are perhaps acting out their own (latent or otherwise) homosexual urges or fantasies, taking advantage of the perfect safety of the MUD to see how it feels to approach other men” (Curtis in Rheingold, 1993, p. 166). Many players on MUDs use their anonymity to explore their human drives. One such case, reports Turkle (1995), explains his aggressive personas as, “something in me; but quite frankly I’d rather rape on MUDs where no harm is done” (Turkle, 1995, p. 185). Online personas allow people to explore parts of themselves that cannot be explored in Real Life. As another case reported by Turkle (1995) asserts, “I’m not one thing, I’m many things. Each part gets to be more fully expressed in MUDs than in the real world. So even though I play more than one self on MUDs, I feel like my self when I’m MUDding” (1995, p. 185). Turkle describes this aspect of MUDding as “what the psychoanalyst Eric Erikson called a psychosocial moratorium” (1995, p. 203). The moratorium, which is a time for experimenting “facilitates the development of a core self... This is what Erikson called identity” (1995, p. 203).
As a result of the anonymity on MUDs, there is also widespread deception. Men pose as women, women pose as men, and men pose as women posing as men. In “The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover,” Lindsay Van Gelder (1991) describes a case of deception where a character named Joan developed deeply intimate relationships with many female members of a CompuServe CB channel. Joan, who’s character’s name was “Talkin’ Lady,” claimed to be a “New York neuropsychologist in her late twenties, who had been severely disfigured in a car accident that was the fault of a drunken driver” (Van Gelder, 1991, p. 365). Joan formed deep friendships with many females, and provided support for many disabled women. Consequently, reports Van Gelder (1991), there was extreme shock and outrage when “Joan was revealed as being not disabled at all. More to the point, Joan, in fact, was not a woman. She was really a man we'll call Alex--a prominent New York psychiatrist... who was engaged in a bizarre, all-consuming experiment to see what it felt like to be female, and to experience the intimacy of female friendship” (Van Gelder, 1991, p. 366).
The ability to have more than one online persona raises questions regarding the multiplicity of the self and MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder). The use of multiple personas as a means for self exploration is making us reconsider our view of the self (Turkle, 1995, p. 260). Turkle explains that when people create a new persona, “Some feel an uncomfortable sense of fragmentation, some a sense of relief. Some sense the possibility for self-discovery, even self-transformation” (1995, p. 260). However, this fragmentation of the self is not to confused with Multiple Personality Disorder, argues Turkle (1995), for in cases of MPD “The parts of the self are not in easy communication” (1995, p. 261). In sharp contrast, there are no communication barriers between the multiple online personas that a player creates. Thus, the idea of multiple personas has introduced us to the concept of a healthy fragmented self (1995, p. 261).
While in some MUDs players must choose a gender of ether male or female, there are MUDs that let players choose from “many genders--male, female, plural, neuter, hermaphrodite, and several unearthly genders lifted from the pages of science fiction novels (Reid, 1994, online). Paraphrasing West and Zimmerman (1987), Jodi O'Brien (1999) exposes how MUDs separate biological gender from the gender of the mind. Since players do not have the ability to see what people in a MUD look like in real life, they must create new ways of conceptualizing and categorizing gender (O’Brien, 1999, online). Despite the wide array of gender orientation that is available on some MUDs, Lori Kendall (1997) contends that “the view of gender as a strict polar binary persists” (Kendall, 1997, p.23).
Bruckman (1993) shows how integral gender categorization is by citing a series of comedy skits performed on Saturday Night Live. In these skits, a character named Pat seems to have no gender. In an episode where Pat gets a haircut, the audience tries to guess Pat’s gender by the price of her haircut. A sign tells us that men’s haircuts are $7 and women’s are $9 (Bruckman, 1993, online). “The audience waits in suspense: when Pat goes to pay, his or her true gender will be revealed. The humor of the series lies in the fact that those hopes are constantly foiled; in this instance, Pat leaves $10 and says to keep the change” (Bruckman, 1993, online). With this anecdote, Bruckman (1993) points out how essential it is to people to classify people by gender (Bruckman, 1993, online).
Although gender deception is so widespread in MUDs, Turkle reports that when she encounters characters in a MUD, she habitually checks their gender. O'Brien (1999) explains this common preoccupation with gender by citing social psychologists who claim that “we are unable to interact with someone else until we have been able to categorize them in a meaningful way. Before we can position ourselves, we must first ‘name’ the other” (O'Brien, 1999, online).
The notions of gender swapping, and virtual cross dressing, while disorienting at first, are safe mediums for different for self exploration. Men who gender swap learn what it’s like to be perceived as a woman, while women learn what being a man is like by playing male characters in MUDs. Men who play female characters come to realize just how much attention women get (Bruckman, 1993, online). Bruckman (1993) explains that “Unwanted attention and sexual advances create an uncomfortable atmosphere for women in MUDs, just as they do in real life” (Bruckman, 1993, online). Turkle (1995) reveals that playing a male character appealed to her because men are not expected to be active participants in MUDs, whereas women are (Turkle, 1995, p. 210). Turkle (1995) postulated that “...playing a male character might allow me to feel less out of place. I could stand on the sidelines and people would expect me to make the first move. And I could choose not to” (Turkle, 1995, p. 210).
Virtual sex, also referred to as Tinysex, “consists of two or more players typing descriptions of physical actions, verbal statements, and emotional reactions for their characters” (1995, p. 223). Much like phone-sex, players describe - in lines of text - what they are ‘doing’ to the other player. The practice of Tinysex demonstrates the truth of the idea that ninety percent of sex takes place between the ears (1995, p. 21). According to Reid (1994), Tinysex, which is very common online, “falls into a realm between the actual and the virtual. Players can become emotionally involved in the virtual actions of their characters, and the line between virtual actions and actual desires can become blurred” (Reid, 1994, online).
A most interesting phenomenon occurs when players who are pretending to be of the opposite gender engage in virtual sex. Though it is not that common, there are women who pose as men and have sex with men (Turkle, 1995, p. 223). Turkle reveals that “In the ‘fake lesbian syndrome,’ men adopt online female personae in order to have netsex with women” (1995, p. 223). Bruckman (1993) declares that although extreme, gender swapping is an “...example of a fundamental fact: the network is in the process of changing not just how we work, but how we think of ourselves - and ultimately, who we are” (Bruckman, 1993, online).
Throughout, it is obvious that online personas are tools that can be used to investigate and explore the idea of self. The emergence of our identity through online personas, insists Turkle (1995), is like the construction of the self that is formed in psychoanalysis (Turkle 1995, p. 256). “It too, is significantly virtual, constructed within the space of the analysis, where its slightest shifts can come under the most intense scrutiny” (1995, p. 256). Kenneth Gergen argues that in this new age, technology is exposing people to many more ideas, perspectives, and ways of living (Gergen, 1991, p. 6). The thoughts of a whole society “...become part of us, and we of them. Social saturation furnishes us with a multiplicity of incoherent and unrelated languages of the self” (Gergen, 1991, p. 6). Rheingold declares that in the world of MUDs the ‘saturated self’ is free to express itself by exploring all the facets of its constitution (Rheingold, 1993, p. 170).
Having analyzed the different ways MUDs and IRC’s make us think about our identity, it is clear that MUDs are not just games. Instead they are tools with which we can think about and re-conceptualize our ideas of the self. Being able to create a persona that does not resemble that of its player allows for exploration of the self that would otherwise never be revealed. The anonymity enjoyed on the internet allows players to explore their sexuality, and aggressive drives. The ability to deceive other players raises questions of accountability, while revealing our deceptive nature. Multiple online personas are forcing us to reconsider our traditional notion of the healthy person as centered. Neuter and plural characters are adding to the range of genders that we are used to, thus forcing us to redefine our categorization of gender. Playing a character with the opposite gender allows us to explore what it is like to be perceived as such. Engaging in virtual sex gives players the freedom to explore their sexual fantasies in a safe manner. MUDs support the idea that the self is saturated with the minds of society, and allow for exploration of those parts of the self. MUDs are not simply games, or even objects to think with; rather, they are the spaces, where identity can be toyed with to achieve a coherent sense of self.
References
Bruckman, Amy (1992). “Identity Workshops: Emergent Social and Psychological Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Reality.” Master’s Thesis, MIT Media Laboratory.
----- (1993) “Gender Swapping on the Internet.” http://www.media.mit.edu/pub/asb/paper/gender-swapping accessed 11/10/01.
Curtis, Pavel and David A. Nichols (1992). “MUDs Grow Up: Social Virtual Reality In The Real World.” in The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, H. Rheingold. Mass: Addison-Wesley.
Erikson, Eric (1963). Childhood and Society. 2nd rev. ed. New York: Norton
Kendall, Lori. (Forthcoming). "Are you Male or Female?" in “Gender (Re)Production in Online Interaction”
Gergen, Kenneth (1991). The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic.
O’Brien, Jodi (1999). “Gender (Re)Production in Online Interaction”
Reid, Elizabeth (1994). “Cultural Formations in Text-Based Realities”
Rheingold, Howard (1993). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the
Electronic Frontier. Mass: Addison-Wesley.
Turkle, Sherry (1995). Life on the Screen. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Van Gelder, Lindsay (1991) “The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover” in Computation and Controversy: Value Conflicts and social Choices. (eds.) Charles Dunlop and Rob Kling. Boston: Academic Press.
West, Candace and Donald Zimmerman (1987). "Doing Gender." in “Gender (Re)Production in Online Interaction”
home
outlines
MUD Identity
Sociodramatic MUD
research links
mail