MUD; MULTI-USER DUNGEON, DOMAIN, DIMENSION

-multi-player computer game

-role-playing games

-chat rooms

...Everything done on Virtual World...

MUDS has a different setting compared to many online communities. Instead of a science fiction setting, MUD presents a more fantasy setting. MUD has attracted the "interest of acdemic scholars from many fields, including communications, sociology, law and synthetic economies." MUDs are usually hobbies for individuals and it is free for everyone. There are options for donating and purchasing items on MUD.

-- GENDER ON MUD --

Mudding can help people stimulate life and allow players to have a sense of freedom through expression which can be somewhat difficult in real life. There are many ways you can experiment with your persona, either in a good way or bad. Changing their persona can also include changing their gender and experimenting how the other gender is portrayed online.  Women and men have expressed their feelings on changing their gender on MUD. Whether it is to see

how it is be the other gender or simply because, as Turkle says  "From my earliest effort to construct an online persona, it occurred to me that being a virtual man, might be more comfortable than being a virtual woman." This is why we can possibly see

why changing gender is so widely seen throughout MUD. Not only that but people have become addicted to the MUD world, much like other online communities such as Myspace. An example is of Case, "He's happily married to a co-worker and is currently MUDing as a female character." Can this be a problem? We will discuss this after we review the risks and complications of gender online.