Language and the Internet

190 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET

features more than others – using unusual ASCII symbols, for ex-
ample, or comic smiley sequences. Whatever the rules a particular
MUD has devised, they are there to be bent and broken. MUDs like
ElseMOO, which depend heavily on emotes, will start playing with
them – Cherny found several examples of byplay with emotes, and
also of what she called ‘null-emotes’,^27 in which a character delib-
erately breaks the rules of the discourse:

Lenny says, ‘what’s weird?’

Tom

(In other words, Tom is weird.) This is somewhat like the deviant
‘knock-knock’ joke:

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

Doctor.

Doctor Who?

Oh, you guessed.

As with all fashions in joking behaviour, different MUDs can be ex-
tremely critical of what they consider the puerility of other groups’
play.

An evolving world

MUDs operate in a curious, Alice-like world, where anything can
happen. Two players may find themselves doing logically impossi-
ble things. Player P might decide to pick up a piece of chocolate and
eat it, and tells everyone she has done so; simultaneously, player Q
decidestopickupthesamepieceofchocolateandeatit,andtellsev-
eryone he has done so. People can be killed and become alive again
within a turn or two. Objects can change size, shape, and colour.
Time-travel and teleporting are normal. With incompatibility a
possibility, the associated language begins to be stretched in ways

(^27) Cherny (1999: 104ff.).