[MUD-Dev] Guilds & Politics [was Affecting the World]

[Matt Chatterley]

On Mon, 8 Dec 1997, Jon A. Lambert wrote:

> On  7 Dec 97 at 13:04, Marian Griffith wrote:
> > On Sat 06 Dec, Koster, Raph wrote:
> > 
> > > There are lots of papers on "psychological disinhibition" in a virtual 
> > > setting that offer great insight here.
> > 
> > Are those papers saying that there's a certain percentage of people
> > who will behave anti-social when they belief they can get away with
> > it?
> > The whole problem with jerks (and worse)  on muds  seems to have to
> > do with psychology more than with the game itself. The later merely
> > provides a convenient playground for those types.  At least that is
> > how I interpret the behaviour of a significant portion of the play-
> > ers who misbehave themselves.
> > 
> 
> As a sidenote. Are there more genuine misunderstandings and bad 
> feelings generated between persons on a mud than in RL "because of the 
> medium" in addition to anonymity. 

*Absolutely*
 
> In particular:
> Does the lack of visual perception of the person communicating via text
> cause misinterpretation?
> Does the increased chance of being overheard cause gossip to be more
> rampant?
> Do mistakes in text communication cause more conflict than normal
> would?

A bit of all three. Also, the lack of 'reality' in a sense (and thus lack
of consequence) leads us to be more aggressive in some respects than we
would normally, and many social graces go out of the proverbial, and
digital, window.

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	ICQ: 5580107
"I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world." -Einstein