If You Can Get To Buffalo

There’s a play on in Baltimore this week by Trish Harnetiaux called “If You Can Get To Buffalo” about Julian Dibbell’s 1990s Village Voice LambdaMOO article, “A Rape in Cyberspace”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_in_Cyberspace

You can read reviews here:

http://citypaper.com/arts/stage/what-a-tangled-web-1.1492872

http://www.dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2013/05/23/if-you-can-get-to-buffalo-an-exploration-of-a-rape-in-cyberspace-by-amanda-gunther2/

There’s an interview with the playwright here:

http://www.baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/new-baltimore-play-tackles-totally-weird-1990s-cyber-culture/

And the theatre company’s page about the production is here:

http://www.theacmecorporation.org/content/current-shows

This isn’t the first dramatic presentation of LambdaMOO, another example is this short film scripted from chat logs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqR_xM_50vk

Dibbell’s article was expanded into a book. It is a sometimes salacious but ultimately insightful examination of life on the MOO. You can read it here:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/julian-dibbell/my-tiny-life-crime-and-passion-in-a-virtual-world/ebook/product-17492539.html

A more comprehensive insight into the operation, history and geography of LambaMOO is “Yib’s Guide To MOOing”, available here:

http://www.yibco.com

And a more ethnographic study of MOOing with lots of interesting historical and cultural details is Lynne Cherny’s “Conversation and Community: Chat in a Virtual World”, which you’ll have to buy a copy of:

http://cslipublications.stanford.edu/site/1575861542.shtml

LambdaMOO is still here and is well worth exploring. You can install a Telnet client on your computer or mobile device (there’s one already on MacOS X) and telnet to:

lambda.moo.mud.org 8888