"Multi-User Dungeons and Alternate Identities"--Howard Rheingold

In “Multi-User Dungeons and Alternate Identities,” Howard Rheingold discusses MUDs. MUDs are Multi-User Dungeons, which are make believe worlds in computer databases. Through these worlds, people “use and program languages to improvise melodramas, build worlds and all of the objects in them, solve puzzles, invent amusements and tools, compete for prestige and power, gain wisdom, seek revenge, indulge greed and lust and violent impulses,” (149). Through MUDs, people develop an alternate life. This is good for people who are not of high social status in the real world and may not have a “glamorous life,“ but want to. These people can use MUDs to develop an alternate life to live. MUDs can also serve to form marriages and romances.

Although these may make MUDs seem only beneficial, MUDs also pose some serious threats. MUDding can become seriously addictive. Some people spent 70 to 80 hours a week. MUDding, which can harmfully affect their social life as well as school work. In addition, MUDding increases telecommunications traffic as well as using a lot of computer memory. Lastly, some MUD users lie about their gender and also pretend to be other people in real life. These harmful threats that MUDding has caused, has led to the ban of MUDding in college campuses.

Curious on how MUDding becomes addictive, I read an article about it. In this article, a woman explains how people who are slowly becoming addicted to MUDding spend all of their available time MUDding and even start to cut out activities to spend more time MUDding. The woman discusses how people who become addicted to MUDding can lose their marriage, education, and job. This woman then describes how her husband became addicted to MUDding. She saw the signs of his addiction at the beginning when she knew she had competition with MUDding for his time and attention. The woman was jealous of the time and attention he would spend MUDding. However, she never knew the extent to which it would affect their marriage and lives. The woman then explains how she doesn’t know how she will eventually handle her husband’s addiction to MUDding. His addiction has lasted three years and she doesn’t know if their marriage will be able to last through it. Before I read this article, I didn’t really think it was necessary that universities banned MUDding. However, now I see the extent to which people become addicted, and why it should be banned across universities.