Re: Disappointing take-up of Gather.Town

John Scudder <jgs@juniper.net> Thu, 30 July 2020 19:11 UTC

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From: John Scudder <jgs@juniper.net>
To: Adrian Farrel <adrian@olddog.co.uk>
CC: "ietf@ietf.org" <ietf@ietf.org>
Subject: Re: Disappointing take-up of Gather.Town
Thread-Topic: Disappointing take-up of Gather.Town
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Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2020 19:11:17 +0000
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On Jul 30, 2020, at 7:30 AM, Adrian Farrel <adrian@olddog.co.uk<mailto:adrian@olddog.co.uk>> wrote:

Is the problem that Gather.Town makes you run all sorts of scripts that
might be a bit icky? Or are we all really just antisocial?

I consider myself reasonably social, by local standards :-), but by that I mean in meatspace. Back when MUDs were a thing, I took a look once and didn’t see the appeal. I just dipped in to the gather.town space and, quite apart from the tumbleweeds blowing through, I also don’t feel drawn to the simple pleasures of navigating a chunky-pixel avatar around gamespace, when I could be doing something else. It’s not like we lack for ways of connecting with one another when we want to, so hanging out in a rerun of Ultima II doesn’t seem like it brings a lot to the table.

I see the value of trying to recreate casual, spontaneous social interaction in the virtual setting, emphasis on “trying”. It would be wonderful if it worked, but as far as I can tell, it don’t. Not everything physical works virtually. Not everything virtual works physically. At least, not at this point in our technological evolution.

Never mind me, I’m just a curmudgeon.

—John

P.S.: I reserve the right — of course — to change my mind!