SL recognition and newness: furries and goreans

I like new things. I'm a neophile (no, that is not something naughty). Second Life is to many their first virtual world, and to many more their first social/creative virtual world. I'm an old mudder, so I've seen virtual worlds before. Much of Second Life is therefore a feast of recognition and not particularly new, though of course old things do take new shapes. Much of it is new to me, too, though, enough to keep this neophile busy. This will be the first of a series of posts where I discuss what I recognize from before in muds, and what is new to me.

Recognition: Furries

I'm no Furry. I'm afraid I sometimes giggle over Furry peccadillos. I think that's okay though; I laugh at my own peccadillos too.

I'm sort of used to Furries. Years ago, in the early nineties, I visited FurryMuck once every while. I was just exploring yet another mud. This one was interesting as it was always quite busy, even during the mornings and afternoons in the Netherlands when many muds were empty. The dominant nationality of people on the internet at the time was the US. Most mudders were Americans. This meant that muds would typically be most full in the evenings in the US, when Americans had time to play.

Here in the Netherlands I am 6 hours or more later than in the US. During my afternoons, it'd be early morning in the US. During my mornings, it'd be deep in the night in the US. I would usually go online during my days. For muds, this would often mean they were pretty sparsely populated. Just a few people there. But Furries apparently never sleep, and there was always plenty going on in the place, no matter what time of day. It featured dozens of active people at any time of day.

The other, more obvious thing about FurryMuck that is interesting is of course the Furries. At the time I had no idea what Furries were. The FurryMuck startup screen told me Furries were anthropomorphic animals. I thought this was some roleplaying thing. It was that, of course, at least to a certain extent. I didn't realize at the time there's a whole special culture associated with Furries.

I had a few nice conversations with people there. At some point I even ran into a researcher from Australia; just the day before I'd read a paper by her on muds and she was following up on that. Quite a coincidence: it made me realize it was a small world, especially the Internet back then.

Some things in FurryMuck unsettled my geeky, somewhat innocent and somewhat shy 20 year old self somewhat. Not mudsex, or "tinysex" as it was called in some muds. I had run into this phenomenon before I reached FurryMuck. I was sort of over being unsettled by it.

FurryMuck had sex of course, like in any mud. Online sex chat was probably invented 5 seconds after they invented online chat. Furry sex was a bit stranger than usual as it involved tigers and dogs making out. They even have their own verb for it: to yiff, though I don't recall hearing it being used at the time. Hm, the FurryMuck article says they invented it there. Perhaps that was invented later. I do remember scritch (meaning 1), evidently also invented in FurryMuck. Anyway what the heck, I'm Dutch, and we're not easily shocked, otherwise we'd have kicked out Amsterdam long ago.

No, what unsettled me bears a bit of explanation. In muds, things have a description. When you enter a 'room', you see its description. Something like this:

You are in a park. There are many trees here.
You see Alpha here.

The people in muds often delighted in writing very involved descriptions. Besides scripting, creating and describing objects was the main creative thing to do. In social muds, people could describe themselves. So, if you ran into someone called Alpha, you could look at them to see their description:

> look Alpha
> Alpha is a beautiful lady smiling happily at you.

And then you'd say hi, of course:

> say Hi Alpha!
You say, "Hi Alpha!"

This was all text, so the only avatar you'd have in a mud is a name with a description. Many people liked to write longer descriptions of their avatars, along these lines:

Alpha is a beautiful lady with sparkling blue eyes and long brown hair. Her mouth is curved into a faint smile. She is wearing a tall forest-green dress and is wearing no shoes. She is of indefinite age: she looks young but in a timeless way, as if she has seen something of the world already. She looks in your direction now. Perhaps it is time to strike up a conversation?

Often these descriptions would be longer still, and with far more adjectives. Some people in roleplaying muds seemed to think extensive use of arcane adjectives was a mark of good roleplaying. But I disgress...

People in FurryMuck typically made very extensive descriptions for themselves, enough sometimes to scroll off one page when you looked at them. They had a good reason: they had something more to say than the typical description of a human, as we'd be dealing with a person that was also a dog, a cat, or a dragon.

Not unsettling by itself. Still not unsettling! Beam, what was the unsettling bit? Get to the point! It was initially a bit unsettling to run into an anthropomorphic horse equipped with, I believe, multiple sets of both male and female genitalia extensively described. This description is extreme of course, but one would run into quite explicit descriptions like that with some regularity in FurryMuck.

But hey, I thought, if s/he want to be like that, let er. I'm sure s/he'd also be welcome in Amsterdam, after all. By now stuff like that won't make me raise an eyebrow. My eyebrows aren't flexible enough to do that anyway. I need Spock-practice.

So when I saw Furries in Second Life, I was not at all surprised. I'd known about them for a long time by them. They certainly add to the interest of Second Life. They are a familiar sight. The nice thing about Second Life is that they mix with other people in a larger world, instead of in its own mud by itself. They add to the pleasant diversity of Second Life.

I hear sometimes people in Second Life go and badmouth Furries, and even attack them. I imagine some people react violently because they are new to the phenomenon. And they're not Dutch. And they haven't been online much. Where have they been? Or perhaps it's simply because they are amused at seeing people upset, and Furries are easy to target. Strange.

FurryMuck still exists! I just checked! I connected to it and typed 'WHO' in its startup screen, and it has 250 people online. Still a busy place, at least for a mud. FurryMuck never dies. Yay FurryMuck! Yay Furries! I suspect there is quite a bit of overlap between Furries and computer geeks, which would explain both the antiquity of FurryMuck, and its continued maintenance and existence.

New: Goreans

I had expected Furries in Second Life. I hadn't expected Goreans. I'm not surprised by regular, boring, run-of-the-mill BSDM stuff. After all, I had expected sex to be present in Second Life, and was not wrong (proposed heading for a future article: Recognition: sex). I had even expected Furry sex. But not Goreans.

I am a voracious reader, interested in strange new thing and love science fiction, so I'd at least heard of Gor, unlike many people. I knew some guy called John Norman had written a series of many novels featuring the fantasy world of Gor, where men are men, and women are their slaves. At least that's my impression. There are probably many subtleties I am not aware of. There seem to be different kinds of female slaves indicated by the color of the silks they wear. I regularly check out the profile for a female character to see their correct silk color stated there. I guess this must be handy when they are wearing a differently colored outfit temporarily.

I hadn't realized, but in retrospect should have, that these Gor novels had sparked a whole community, and that of course this community was on the Internet. There do not seem to be any communities not represented on the Internet. Sometimes it seems the Internet has more communities than actually exist. Humans are tool-using, community-building creatures, and the Internet is a tool to build communities. No wonder it's so popular! I love the Internet!

So there were Goreans in Second Life. I heard you are welcome to visit their lands as a tourist, but to make sure to wear a tourist nametag, especially with a female avatar, or you might be enslaved.

It is all very interesting, but I haven't gone and visited them yet. Perhaps I should go there and to ask some questions. One thing I wonder about is how many of the Goreans in Second Life have in fact read the Gor novels. I imagine just like me learning about Furries in FurryMuck, quite a few of the Goreans in Second Life have joined this community after learning from it in Second Life itself, as the Gor novels are fairly obscure in the mainstream these days. I know, as I know about Gor, and the things I know about tend to be obscure.

The most intriguing question I have is how this Gorean male-master female-slave philosophy interacts with the fluidity of gender online, especially in places like Second Life. Anyone can claim to be a female. Anyone can claim to be a male. It's quite possible, even likely, that right now, this minute, some Gorean male avatar is interacting with his slave, a female avatar, while in fact their real life genders are in reverse. This has got to affect Gorean philosophies about gender roles somewhat, right? Do Goreans frown on online gender bending? Or do they embrace it? John Norman would be spinning in his grave (were he in fact dead).

This concludes my observations for today. I hope I have offended no Furries or Goreans. It's just I like to observe humans (and anthropomorphic sentients) in general and, um, you do sort of stand out.