Like other technorhetoricians , I first encountered MOO space by visiting the Tuesday Cafe on MediaMOO . A colleague had told me of his wife's experience on a MOO in which she had borrowed his character to connect. In an interesting confusion between MOO reality and physical reality, some MOOers asked her why she was pretending to be female, when obviously she was male, since her character had a male gender. They felt hoodwinked, as if she were pretending to be male to mislead them. My friend's early experience of gender-bending in MOO space suggested the unique character of the environment, especially its ability to allow imaginative play and exploration.
People can describe themselves as they wish, setting their gender to one of many possibilities.
Since such identity clues are manipulable, the environment relies to a strong extent on trust. I choose not to, however, because I don't wish to mislead the people who share that space with me. I also want others to treat me with respect and honesty. Cafe tends to promote serious dialogue, although because of the many possibilities for play on the MOO, verbal jocularity never recedes too far into the background. Conversations then proceed at a rapid pace, with voices struggling to be recognized amidst the copius contributions of other attendees.