Stress Fracture

Which is to say, it’s social mudding. Or more specifically, DinoMUSH. (And possibly others, but that’s the one I know the most about.)

Okay, I realize some number of you don’t know from social mudding, or any other mudding, so here’s a brief description before I list out my points. Muds were and are, in general, text-based multi-user games where people can both interact and, sometimes, do other things. What things vary. Think of them as the grandparents of MMORPGs and you’re not entirely far off; social muds, of course, didn’t really have the roleplaying much less the combat and so are, I guess, the grandparents of Second Life. That’s something of an ugly thought. Which doesn’t make it inaccurate.

Anyway, the analogy will, I hope, become clear as I describe DinoMUSH, which is what essentially replaced the last of my own muds many years ago. It has evolved a certain way of doing things, and I’m going to ignore the trivia (like humorous abuse of your friends and acquaintances) that don’t relate to what I’m getting at, and focus on the routine that does.

When I log into DinoMUSH and enter the “hangout” I have done the equivalent of pulled up a social networking site: Facebook, Livejournal, Twitter, whatever. I’ve gone where the communication is. I’m now in the thick of it and as people say things I will see each new item. Clear enough so far, hopefully.

Now, the first thing I do is check the private message system (a “robot” named Xandra, but never mind that) for new messages. And indeed, ideally this should be the first thing I see on a social networking site. And yet it almost never is; I’ve entirely overlooked the little number count for new messages on Facebook, Twitter likewise shunts it off to the side, and Livejournal doesn’t bloody tell you at all if you go straight to your Friends page as many do (and this is why I don’t.) All three rely on email to notify you of the private messages, which may or may not make sense and I’m willing to hear arguments either way. On the one hand, I don’t want these sites in my email, but on the other hand, it does seem reasonable to notify me ASAP about private messages. Still, if someone wants to get to me before I check the social site, why not just email me in the first place?

Next thing, I check the MRD, which stands for something like Magic Recording Device. It’s basically just a logger; I check it and it shows me the last several lines (10, by default, I think) and I know what’s generally going on right now. Notice that I don’t have it show me, say, all the lines since the last time I was logged in. And yet that’s often how we use social networking, I think — try to follow it all, going back page after page after page. If I need something farther back for context, I’ll search for in the MRD. Searching for specific content on many social networking sites is terrible, and frankly, they should be embarrassed about it. It needs to be fixed.

If I stay idle for too long, perhaps while eating lunch, a lot of output may stack up waiting for me to read it. (My client I use to mud has a built in paging function so it doesn’t all scroll by.) Frankly, I don’t want to read it. I use the client’s ability to skip past it all, and start with just what’s still on my screen. Once again, why would I do differently with social networking — say, Twitter, for example? No need to feel obliged to catch up the 38 tweets that went by while I was busy. Just check the current list and let it flow from there.

This analogy feels liberating, at least if I choose to apply it. In addition the above, there are ideas like “gagging” content I don’t want to see, “highlighting” content I particularly want to see, and so on. One theme that runs throughout is not sweating it if I don’t see everything. It’s okay. No lives depend on seeing every tweet, every facebook status update, every livejournal post. They’re just there for some communication — but not too much communication.

Mudding. It’s the way of the future, I tell you.

R