librarypunk - 011 - Preserving Gamer Rights

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

This week we’re joined by Mitchell Zemil from the documentary series Preserving Worlds on Means.tv! We talk about the series, gender online, preserving and interacting in open and closed online spaces, and material/virtual worlds.  https://means.tv/programs/preservingworlds  A.L.T. Doom WAD article: https://www.vice.com/en/article/paq5bz/alt-doom-mod-stalker https://twitter.com/MitchellZemil https://twitter.com/DerekLMurphy

I forgot my cold open. Oh, yeah. What's up, gamers? Welcome to Library Punk. It's your boy, Justin. My pronouns are he, him. I've said you. My pronouns are she and they, and I was muted.

I'm Carrie. I go with she, her. And I'm Mitchell Zemmel. My pronouns are he, him. So we have a guess. Temporary replacement, Jay. Mitchell Zemmel from the documentary series Preserving Worlds on Means TV.

Go watch it now. Yeah, thanks are having me. I don't know how long this will last, but I think hopefully I currently hold the record for like the least library adjacent person to go on the pod. So. Peter was. I don't know, man. Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. Peter and Louisa were both pretty out of it. Maybe. I mean, my job is freelance animator. So I just do drawings and stuff. Okay. Still.

Very cool. Mick drawings. And cinematical. And cinematography. I was going to ask, where do you go to school for video game cinematography? Right. Because I need to retrain. Right. I mean, I guess I got my filmmaking chops from live action film school. That's actually what I went to school for. And then I ended up doing animation because I liked flash animations as a kid. So it leaned more in that direction. But that's sort of where I guess I got my eye for it. And then also,

largely working with Derek Murphy on Sarasota Haffin Dream, a film we made before working together on Preserving Worlds. Yeah. I was going to try and not talk too much Florida stuff with you. Oh. Another time. Yeah. No, that's a really good documentary.

People should go watch it. Thank you. So Preserving Worlds is about multiplayer games with the social aspect and how they keep going and how they're preserved. And the documentary itself is kind of like a secondary source because, you know, in 10 years, those communities might be gone. So there'll be no way of knowing what the social aspect was. So there's, yeah, people really should check it out.

I talked about it all day the first time I watched it. Yeah, it like gets into you. I, like, wanted to tell everybody about it as soon as I watched it. But of course, I only talked to like three people. So, yeah, it gets in you. Yeah, that's great to hear. And yeah, I'll mention, I guess, sort of my tangential relationship to this archival work and stuff is largely through Derek Murphy, sort of my creative partner in crime on a lot of film

projects. And he has a background. He's got his master's in library and information science and has done some archival work. And I think he did some like UX study stuff as well at a time. But anyways, he knows his chops when it comes to this stuff. And everything I know, I mostly know through talking with him and collaborating with him. You can pick up a lot that way, though. Great.

Can't wait to drill you on this stuff. I'm excited, too. In all fairness. In all fairness. What have you learned? Derek and I, well, Derek unfortunately couldn't make it, which is why it's just me this time. But we talked quite a bit, you know, before I went on. So I'm prepped and, you know, we were on the same page with a lot of stuff.

You have talking points, yeah. I have just a few. Okay. I'll let you get them in. Yeah. I mean, I mostly want to know, like, about like the creation of the documentary anyway. Because like the, the archiving stuff, I mean, that's done by the different communities that are archiving it. So, like, the, what's the Lucas films one?

Uh, habitat. Habitat. Yeah. Now Neohabitat. I mean, that's, that's, there's probably a ton of like technical stuff that we could never get into. Because I, I have no idea how that probably even runs right now. And I've never done any doom wadding. Sure. Well, I have no experience with any of these worlds, but like, I was just fascinated by like what they say about the internet in internet culture.

So I feel like this, like, because I'm just kind of a student of the internet, I think. is how I think about what I do in libraries is I'm like just an internet nerd. So that was what fascinated me about the series was just what it says about the early internet, basically from its earliest, well, not from its earliest earliest, inceptions because it was a government tool. And then it was a university tool. And it was like a government university defense tool. But then like once it got into the hands of people through Netscape,

Navigator, what it became up until essentially the social media explosion. So I'm like really fascinated by like the comparisons we can make. Anyway, I'm so excited about talking about the internet. Great. Yes. I really enjoyed kind of the thread of like from then to now just because like it's so obvious that people just want to make stuff and then hang out with other people. And even like obvious in those sort of early days where it was. was just starting to become like a digital space thing all the way up to social media now and how

it's taken that turn from like I think Kerry in the notes you say something about like the closed internet or you say something about the open internet to the closed internet but I was thinking more of it as like the closed internet to the open internet because on in these games they're very self-contained and now all of a sudden we're all social media where everything is public and there's none of these like sort of in or what's the word I'm looking for? for sort of contain social internet forums and IIRC and all of that stuff. So it's kind of, I like seeing the threads back and forth between then and now. Yeah.

However you label it, there absolutely is that dichotomy. And I think we were really lucky to sort of capture a bit of the old internet in a lot of these games. That's something that I think we've noticed that a lot of people respond to is just this yearning for how the internet used to be, and there's a lot of qualities that we just don't really have anymore, but seem to live on in some of these niche communities. Yeah. I mean, it's really weird, the open and closed thing, because there's a thread that carry a link to, which was one of our friends talking about how everything in Discord is not going to be recorded.

But, I mean, that goes for, like, Twitch. That's a huge, like, cultural moment that in 20 years, like kids are not going to understand Twitch. It's going to be completely just foreign to them. And there's no archival project because you really can't. The platform is too locked down. So it's just going to be whatever people, if someone made a documentary about Twitch right now, that's basically what would remain,

what would remain? Because that's the archival. You could do it. Thinking, I'm thinking. I'm going to list all of my favorite Twitch streamers. I don't have big Twitch streams. You know about Peter? Twitch or stream, Pelotan.

I started watching it. His mic was completely fried and I couldn't understand the word he was saying, but he was in the middle of his bike ride, so. The dude riding a bike doing content is something I didn't think I would run into more than one place, but it's an interesting subgenre. Because Twitch was, like, created entirely for video game streaming, right? And now it's like Peter on his bike doing Peloton like streams. And it's, you know, kind of.

Yeah, exactly. It reminds me a lot of, oh, go ahead. Well, we've used it so much, like, in the music community for, like, concerts and stuff during quarantine. It's been so essential for, like, providing, like, especially in experimental music. Like, I played a tour on Twitch. So it's filled these voids. It makes me think of, you know, some of these worlds that you'd have explored in the documentary and how what they ended up being was nothing at all. like what the divergental developers were going for.

So it's like you never know how these technologies are going to latch on and take off. And there's just, there's no design way to encompass that. Like users are the ultimate wildcard in anything. And I think, I think that's wonderful. Other people probably complain, but I think it's great.

Yeah. I love that aspect of it too, especially. And I kind of couldn't quite figure out what was going on in the MIST thing. But like, I just loved it because it was the code. Like the fucking cone. It's the cones.

Yeah, it was great. Yeah, it was their sort of like proto meme. It's just the existence of these cones, traffic cones. Yeah, well, I think that's all over and that happens in all of these things is that there's a proto meme and all of these kind of in all this online discourse or like there's a there's like a visual language to each other. like the elephant heads in habitat or like the gender switch or habitat or like you know all these things have this meme quality to them and I think that's like the essence of the internet that's always been there is the meminess of it yeah absolutely it kind of makes me think of like um like richard dockins thought of like the meme as like a cultural evolution sort of thing and it's like this

like this Darwinian like there's something about like the natural selection of like cultural ideas that just like naturally moves towards meaming things and they just like, you know, spring out of, you know, environmental conditions. Yeah, it's the nature of community, which is something that's on my mind a lot because I'm at the library publishing forum this week. And so we're having a lot of discourse about what does the community want or a community or multiple communities fighting global capitalism. how are we going to have our own?

What do our communities mean in the face of that? So, interesting dialogue. So you were the editor of the series, and I wanted to know because it gets into a lot of heavy stuff in the second world, the second life episode. Was there anything you can talk about that had to get cut or can like tangentially referenced too delicately? Right, sure.

I mean, it's a tough question because out of the interviews we did, We managed to keep most of everything that we talked about and recorded. I mean, the large majority of stuff that we cut from interviews was like ums, hums, ahs, just, you know, things like that, repetitive answers at times. And thinking about the second live one, I'm trying to think of if there was really much of anything that, besides like whittling down what was there, there wasn't really a whole lot. Yeah, I mean, some of Artemis's answers went on for, you know, a bit longer, but, you know, we kind of focus things in, honed things in that way. And I think that's, I think that's it.

Like, when Derek and I make stuff, we kind of joke about having a kitchen sink approach to filmmaking, where we're just trying to cram as much breadth and range as possible into, you know, our topics and things that we're covering, you know, not, again, not to divert too much. But with Sarasota Halfen Dream, we really were trying to just, like, create, like, the widest, most holistic approach to, like, looking at our hometown in Florida as possible, like, going from, like, literally microscope footage and just, like, the smallest details that we could find to, like, super wide, like, getting up high and, like, filming down on the trees. I bet Jay wishes he were here right now. That's some powers attention. shit like I'm such a big Charles and Ray Eames fan and like the Powers of Ten film is like where they're like this is a picnic on

Chicago on a sunny day and oh yeah where they start and it's like 10 out and then 10 in and one of my favorite things ever that's absolutely if we could just like start every film we make like from like the Milky Way

or yeah yeah galactic cluster full powers of 10 every time Yeah, I just watched Mandy, and at the very end, they do a zoom out that's really good, where you start to like question the whole premise of the film. And just because they zoomed out, like slightly and showed the landscape. And you just go, what does this mean? I still need to see that.

My friend was like, oh, you got to see this film because it's got a great soundtrack by so-and-so. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I got to see that. It's really good, too. I thought it was silly. And then like, by the end, I was like, okay, this is a good movie. This is like a real good movie. Which means I'm going to- That's Nick Cage, right?

Right? Yeah, Nicholas Cage. Yeah, which means I'm going to love it. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't limit himself at all. It's very good.

As well, he shouldn't for a man that stole the Declaration of Independence. His real life is weirder than any of his characters. Have you ever seen interviews with him? He's like, yeah, I took a bunch of mushrooms, and I was staring at my cat, and he started talking to me. There was like a heist that happened at his house to steal the number one, the first first edition Superman comic. Oh yeah, he's a big Superman guy.

Yeah, there was a height. It's like a vault. It's called action comics number whatever, action comics number 39 because that's where they introduced Superman. Yeah, obviously it's what I meant. I don't know if that's actually true, but I know it was called action comics. Action Comics 39.

It's action comics 69. Welcome to a, drop. Welcome to a fun podcast. Super for, here. Uh-huh. Oh,

I didn't have that much new stuff. I just, like, went, I just found some weird shit. It's just like, he may be a communist. She may be a communist. Welcome to the show.

This went through old, old propaganda stuff. Damn. Okay, sorry. My mom just dropped a text bomb on me and told me that my dad has a favorite Gil Scott Harren song. I mean,

what is it? Oh. Winter in America, apparently. So. Not familiar with that one. Yeah. I didn't know my parents.

my parents were so hip. One of the J&XX ones, is it? No, I didn't know my parents were so hip. Sorry, just had to interrupt this broadcast. You can edit that out. I don't know. People should listen to Go Cloud Heron. His last album was really good.

Mm-hmm. I mean, all of his stuff is good. I like his poetry the most. Yeah. Whitey's on the moon. Mm-hmm. I lost my train of thought entirely. What?

Nick Cage? No, that's Peter. Oh. Oh, I don't know. No, just trying to try and. a refresher. Oh, yeah. No, I was going to say Jay,

Jay's not here to talk about movies because he's busy beating his boyfriend's meat. Or good, I guess. For Palomia, I don't know what you were all thinking. I can't believe he told us he was buying a meat pounder in the group chat for his boyfriend's birthday. And didn't expect I was going to bring it up. It just hit me when I realized. he wasn't in the group chat all afternoon. I'm like, he's beating meat.

He did say he was going to make chicken. Yeah, meat tenderizer. He's making chicken palomia. He's a good boyfriend. Carrie, you've got like most of the questions at the end. You want me to ask questions? Yeah, I mean, I was interested in like the gender expression stuff. Yeah, I think that's interesting.

Yeah, I mean, people changing their gender in second life. And in Habitat. I know as soon as I started. watched the second life episode earlier today and the second it started, I was like, this furry is trans. I knew it too. And that's what second life is going to be about. Because it's just as a queer person, it's just so obvious to me. Like, you can just change your gender visually and like, artistically whenever you want. Like, that's the dream. I was following my wife around the house telling her about it too. And she was just like, excuse me, I want to do that. So yeah, no, I, I, I, I, I, I, love that it was mentioned in Neo-Havitat too because that one is just so much earlier. And I feel like that's the kind of thing people would expect out of second life because it does have like that reputation as like the sex-strenched virtual world. I thought it was where you went to answer reference questions in 2010.

That's all the articles I read in library school were about. You know, I do remember some of that. I, in my reference class, I read, like, we did a whole unit on alternate reference services and I read some articles about Second Life. And friend of the pod, John Fink, has some fun thoughts on Second Life if you ever want to hear. Yeah, my university has a Second Life campus. Yeah. And that's why I thought it was so interesting that she started off by saying I started out in

Second Life as a university student and this is our campus. Oh, so it's actually even more bizarre than that. I think that's, okay, you're kind of refreshing my memory because that's one of the, the quick things that we kind of edited in just like, you know, time economy. But I don't think we actually explicitly stated that the reason that she used the University of Western Australia's Second Life campus was because it was completely deserted, which means that when you first load in, it's a lot easier to like quickly load your avatar or like get everything set up.

Okay. And by making that, like, her starting load in location, it made it quicker for her to, like, load into, like, where she actually wanted to go. Ah, got it. Okay. I didn't know that that was, like, the reason. So abandoned campus. Abandoned campus. Yeah, it was definitely just us there. And we went back a couple of times for B-roll. And I don't think anyone else was really using that. Although, we went back after finishing the series, and it looked like they were finally shutting the series. And it looked like they were finally shutting the showing. down that campus, like, very tragically. And as a result, they, like, you can kind of see some weird art installations throughout the episode that have been put in virtual art and stuff. And they had like a whole new show of that. Like, they brought in a bunch of people kind of like loaded in their art and kind of like set up a little virtual gallery space as a send-off. Very sweet.

The perils of the neoliberal university having to shut down the second life campus. Yeah, I really wanted to see if there were any articles about like how much university spent because I know mine spent $200,000 on theirs. That's wild. So I bet you that's pretty common. Yeah, I mean, the land is not cheap in second life, which is crazy because it's not even real land. But you can spend a hefty sum. And it was weird to me, now that I'm thinking about it, that they weren't even using the campus in the middle of the pandemic. Like they already had the, the, the, the campus set up in the architecture, but they just, I assume if they were doing anything virtual, it was probably through Zoom. Yeah, because, well, doesn't second life cost money to use

anyway? It's free to log in and like create a character and stuff. It's, you have to pay, if you're going to like buy certain items, you know, vendors can put a price on different costumes and stuff. And then the, uh, the land rental. Like, that's how Lyndon Labs made all their money is like by being landlords. Scum bags. Yay, capitalism. So there's the classic Eddie Murphy Saturday Night Live sketch, Mr.

Robinson's neighborhood. And he's like, it's Mr. Landlord. He's a scum bucket. That's the word of the day. Scum bucket. Do you know any? I bet you do. He must be a communist. One of the things that you kind of skimmed over in there that I was kind of like, that would be really interesting to explore was

the question of copyright in these virtual worlds because like nobody's going to see this you know donkey conong barrel or nobody's going to you know pull copyright on this like Mario world and stuff but like I was kind of like I can't believe they haven't already you know what I mean so that would be kind of that would be yeah someone made a second life like a copyright crawler for second life yeah I wonder if it if it's because it's not as popular as as it once was now or what. But yeah, no, I was like, that's really interesting. It's like fan fiction area sort of gray, but not quite as gray, I think. And it's weird because, yeah, like a lot of these things like Disney's like notoriously litigious their properties and stuff. I wonder if it was like there was that film that was done in Disney, like Escape from Tomorrowland. I was literally talking about this over the weekend.

And it felt maybe it's one of those things. things where it's like they don't even want to acknowledge that it exists. It's just like too like, you know. It's a too off brand to even acknowledge. Yeah, that it's there in the first place. Like you don't even want people noticing it. Yeah. Like a reverse dry sand effect.

Yeah, it could be. I think also it's it's the way that copyright crawlers and like investigators work. It must not be conducive to their workflow. It must be too hard for them to like. issue takedowns or make money from it because like if the law firm can't just issue a take down easily then like they have to find out who the user is how are they going to find the IP address how are they going to like they can't like extort them which is what they do they send mass amounts of lawsuits and get people to settle I'm surprised a lot of that isn't going

through like Lyndon labs because you would think they rent the space I don't know yeah some kind of like DMCA thing yeah because that's how like torrenting crawlers work as they work through ISPs. Yeah, I don't know. It's very strange that some, I mean, just so much of this copyright aspect to it, just video game preservation in general is just such a copyright bomb. Oh my gosh, yeah. That I don't want to get into it because I hate copyright.

Not today. I don't know why I made it part of my job, but I can hate everything about it. Poor choices. Oh, no. I can just, I get to tell people how copyright is bad when they expect me. to like it, which is always fun. I love that. Do you want me to ask my questions? The one about Doom Wads?

Yeah. I literally wrote this as I was watching the Doom Wads episode. So I was really excited about Map 13, which was the ALT, Map 13, which is like where everything just like constantly fuck shit up. But she like started talking about Stalker, the, the Tarkovsky movie, which is one of my favorite movies. And so as soon as she started talking about it. I was like, this is saying something really outstanding about the internet just like in general because I was like, okay, this like this level is something because it's like just a whole fucking trap. And then like her talking about stalker slash roadside picnic is also saying something. So like I went and watched stalker and it was just like a cathartic emotional

experience for me as it always is. And so then like I was just thinking like, okay, so the premise of stalker, right, is that like you have this guy stalker. Because like, like, everyone's just known by their alias. So you have stalker who his job is to like go into this contaminated zone that's held behind fence that no one goes into, not even the guards who guard it. They just guard it. And his whole thing is that like he goes into the zone and retrieves objects for money. And that's how he makes his living.

But like his daughter's disabled and like all this shit. And so like he has a writer and a scientist who like charter him for a trip into the zone because there's a room that will grant you your like deepish wish. and it's supposed to give you happiness allegedly. So like break into the zone. And the thing about the zone is that it acts on your basis desires. And like you must proceed very cautiously. And that's the thing about the stalker is that like he's just like the most miserable person.

Right. So he's the perfect guy for the job. Anyway. So I keep thinking about like the internet and how she brought this up. And like I think about the internet as like the zone in a lot of ways because it's just kind of like a landscape that praise on our basis desires. And you kind of see this time and time again with each of these like different programs like with like both how people interact with them and also how they ruin them. And I think you also see this with like other platforms like for instance,

YouTube is a particularly egregious example of this that like totally feeds on your basis desires. And Facebook has designed their algorithm to feed on your basis desires. Like I just keep wondering on this question of like, is the internet the zone? Is it praying on our, Maude has something to say about this too? Um, is it praying on our basis desires? Are we at its mercy? Is it both like granting us like what we thought would be happiness, but is actually like just our basis desires? I mean, while I'm thinking about an answer, that's a really awesome sort of formulation. Um, I will mention that Liz Ryerson, um, who we interview, in the Doom episode is just a brilliant.

Yes, I like, wonderful person. Yeah. Yeah, definitely check her out. And yeah, she also does like really cool, interesting musical stuff. Yeah, I look that up too. She's really, like, she did some of the music for your episode, for your documentary? She did not. We didn't end up using music for her.

For the Doom episode, we ended up using just music from like the Doom and Doom 2. original soundtrack and some of the custom maps had their own like custom media files and stuff so tried to use that well the music on the documentary is good too so thank you yeah but yeah for the uh you know i guess formulation of like the internet as the zone uh i think that's a really good idea like i'm i'm definitely inclined to agree with you um and for those same reasons like thinking about how a lot of your online experience is governed by algorithms and things that are designed to show you what you want. And it can feel good at first until it suddenly doesn't and you don't know how to get out of it. I guess the main thing I think about when it comes to that is that while the internet

has a lot of zone-like qualities, I think the reason it has those or has been injected with those is you can kind of point to larger, more general, sort of zonification of the material physical world, right? And it's how, yeah, got to bring in the materialism. Especially like your phone and like what it does when you go places. Yeah, and it's, yeah, to what extent are, like, to whose benefit is everything being, you know, made in this way, you know, to make you just kind of. like sucked into a very specific, you know, scrolling newsfeed pattern or, you know,

targeted advertisements, cookies and all that stuff. Like, I've definitely purchased things that I wouldn't have bought had it not been for like highly targeted advertisements sent my way, making me think I need more like pins and patches and a cool sweatshirt. They know your weaknesses. They do. And it's, yeah, they know everyone's weaknesses, which is, we kind of just gave that to them. Oh, so willingly. Yeah.

One of the things that I liked was how many of the people in like your episodes talked about how like, you know, there was this period of time where people were being really shitty. And then some of them, I think it was a Neohabitat one where it was like, no, everybody's generally really great. And, you know, there hasn't been any of that internet drama that you see. And it's kind of like we went from like, hell is other people to. hell is an algorithm, you know? It's like went from having to deal with the messy, interpersonal stuff that the internet was initially like sort of based around to, how do you get yourself out of the hole so you can go back to being messy and interpersonal with people, you know? I don't know. It was a conversation I was recently

having about people being messy and how to sort of deal with that instead of, yeah, this very simplistic, we know your basis desires and your absolute weaknesses and we're just going to funnel that to you all day long if you don't look up from your phone kind of thing. And the quality of like, yeah, old school sort of internet decorum and just being like a teenage edge lord. I think there's something to that that also relates back to that whole idea of like open versus closed internet.

And like I guess the way I think about it is that for the vast majority of human history, We were more so, you know, operating under like closed forms of communication, right? Like, it was like, if anything got preserved, it would be like private, you know, correspondences over letters and stuff. But like not a lot of like public form sort of stuff that's just like set in stone right now on the internet. So I think that, you know, my pet theory is like that's a big reason why like there was so much messiness.

Like when the internet first became like a thing where you could talk to somebody on other side of the world instantaneously. And also we were letting like 12 year olds do this unsupervised. And now people are starting to like understand there's some sort of, there, there's a, you know, sort of what am I thinking of? Like hygiene, digital rules. Yeah, like code of conduct. Or yeah, there's a way of conducting yourself online.

And we're starting to learn like what that is. But now that we're starting to form that, one of the big things about going back to sort of more closed spaces like Slack and Discord, like as nice as that is and as useful as that is for certain groups, you don't need to have every conversation open for the entire world to see. So I think there's value in it. But the main problem right now with platforms like Slack and Discord being the main space where that happens is that those are. are just, you know, independent companies, corporations that can on a whim just like wipe everything, right? And so that's, I guess that's new, right? Like, as opposed to like if you're sending letters, you're not really expecting like, oh, any day the post office could just, you know, burn all your letters. Yeah. Or even like if you, like, I've been on a few forum, like people have

build their own forums that I've been on. And that's still something that, like, I'm on at least one forum that, like, is maintained that someone has built themselves still. And it's still really special to have that, like a message board. Like, that's awesome. I fucking love message boards. Like, I hate Reddit. I hate Reddit so much because it's like, this isn't a message board.

This is too big. But, like, small message boards that are, like, really small communities is, like, something really small that I miss about like early 2000s internet like late 90s early 2000s internet that that's kind of like what this all reminded me of like with open closed kind of stuff but I mean like that stuff gets archived but not quite in the same way do you think that that was part of the reason why these people were like willing to like talk about stuff on the documentary or like why they were going to these links like Neo Habitat and, you know, what was it, ZZT to like go to lengths to preserve

these sort of like communities and old technologies? Like, do you think the nostalgia? Well, obviously the nostalgia plays into it. But like, do you think that's sort of, I don't know, I completely forgot what I was just about saying. But yeah. I think I understand what you're saying and agree. Like I think there is a big social component, like incentivizing people to kind of like keep

these spaces and communities alive. Like whether it was the general camaraderie or, you know, I, you know, wouldn't be surprised, like a lot of people, you know, have specific friends, you know, like, this is my ZZT friend. And, you know, we hang out and make ZZT games or like play them together. You know, the, the missed community is also like super tight knit. And, you know, a lot of people know, a lot of other people through just, missed in the Cyan world's franchise of games. And so I think that was, yeah, a big reason why these places still exist is because

people were trying to like hold on to each other as the new internet was trying to rip everyone and sort of like relocate them to, you know, Twitter, Facebook. Yeah, people try. And the problem is if you try and build something independent, like there are non- on World Wide Web-based communities still. So, like, I think one is based off Tor or something. It's a certain type of browser that you have to build, and you can build your own website, basically, in the browser.

And then it connects to other locally hosted browser websites, and it's all entirely off the web. It's just basic old protocols. But I doubt many people use that. And it's impossible to archive any of it because it's not really attached to a domain. So how would the Internet Archive ever crawl it? So there's it's always a problem when you try and create an independent space like that

because just maintaining it is hard. I feel like I got the feeling like that for Mist. Like a lot of people were there just to maintain and like they were interested in archiving the preserving world's, the world's guy also was a, you know, amateur archivist and made it like his personal quest to go around and just preserve things, which is an understandable inclination people have. I don't have it. I just throw everything away and delete everything.

But it makes what makes me good at library stuff, willing to throw stuff away. You always have to have that one person. Sometimes just slap that book out of your hand. It's safe. Throw it in the dumpster. Yeah. It's done. That is a 1964 Chevy manual.

No one needs this. Throw it away. Yeah, Sadie's question leads to something I was wondering, which is where did you find these people? And why the platforms that you chose and how did you track them down? Yeah, did you choose the platforms and then find the people? Or did you find the people and then choose the platforms? I'm kind of interested in that. It was kind of a mix of both.

And this is something that Derek was largely responsible for. So I would defer some of it to him. But we had a few specific, I guess, guidelines or things that we were looking for in getting, you know, some of these different places. Besides trying to kind of catch a cast of wide nets and have a variety of different games that covered a variety of different topics, we mostly tried to find games that had a lot of emphasis on user-generated content, which essentially all of them do except for Neohabitat. But Neo-habitat was also super interesting because it's basically the earliest example of an online game being brought back. sorry, being brought back from the dead

and was also such an important project in that its very creation allowed for an exception in the DMCA, which was super cool. So, you know, we definitely wanted to cover that. We tried to find games that were visually interesting. You know, an example of a game that we looked at but just didn't end up working out, it's called Gemstone,

and it's kind of an old-school RPG online, and it's entirely text-based. And so Derek and I explored it. We tested it out, and it was mostly just, go west, go northwest, go west. And it's like, you arrive in town. And we're like, this won't work for a visual medium. But, you know, who knows, maybe in the future, because it's got some interesting stories.

And absolutely, you know, looking at especially older sort of games, things that have become defunct and aren't, you know, super actively engaged with by the original developers these days. So those were our guidelines for the games. And then sometimes the person would also come before the game. So for example, Doom wasn't necessarily on our radar at first until Derek, you know, shared with me an article that Liz Ryerson wrote about the alt. Is that the vice article? Yes, that's right. I actually read that, yeah, today.

Exactly. And so that's what Derek sent to me and tried to convince me, like, we could do an episode on Doom. And I was like, I don't know if it's a multiplayer game, kind of. And he's like, but it can be, like, you know, whatever. But he ultimately convinced me. And now I think it's like one of the coolest episodes that I really enjoyed making. So, you know, in those cases.

And also the missed online, our interviewee for that episode, was my roommate of five years, who I knew is like one of the biggest like Miss nerds. I loved his origin story of like, yeah, my parents were really into Mist. Yeah, he's like a bonafide mist baby. Yeah. It's like the people who grow up like watching Star Trek because their parents were Trekkies. Like I knew a guy in college who's like parents named after James T. Kirk because they met at a Star Trek convention. and he used to have Star Trek Night at the local dive bar.

That's the kind of people. I was thinking like Grateful Dead people, Grateful Dead babies. It's completely outside of their generation, but they know everything because their parents were deadheads. Little Jerry, little Phil. I'm not going to get any Grateful Dead references. Those are the only Grateful Dead references I know. Yeah, that only is on my mind because I have a friend who was. one of those babies.

And what were their thoughts on fish? You know I didn't get to ask. I'll ask next time I talk to her. There's a correlation there. What you're saying about games that are text-based and no longer available, that just threw me through like a couple decades unwillingly to forum games, which is role-playing in forums, where you would basically just be like,

it was like little kids playing imagination. Like I, like what I'm thinking of is someone who described being in like a Dragon Ball Z forum where they would have custom characters and they would battle and be like, and they would have judges. And so they would be like, I throw a command may and it's like, well, I dodge it.

And it's like I, and then we get scored and like, uh, and you would like trade like forum gold or whatever for like upgrades and like minions and stuff. And it was all just like, role play. And like, that's, you know, that wouldn't be visually interesting, but that was just like, just weird little communities of play games. I bet that would suck so much time too. Like, you just spend an afternoon playing text in with your buds. Yeah, it's all done by middle schoolers.

This is like prime middle school age. Like, when everyone has that one weird project they did in middle school, like I started writing like surreal comedy. Like other people that, like the Walmart comic on Tumblr. Yeah. That's just like that really long, like you're in a Walmart. art. And it's like, I wrote this in eighth grade. And someone's like, you were in eighth grade. I'm like, yeah, man, that's when kids get weird. Yeah. I don't want to talk about what I did in eighth grade. I did a little bit of that. I think that what's funny to me is that my experience doing weird forum role playing was on a BBS forum that was dedicated to custom Zoo Tycoon content. Oh, that's so cool. So, like, yeah, people would make, like, custom, like, animals that you could download and put in your game and, like, other stuff, but mostly the animals.

So. And it was a completely, like, off topic. Like, it didn't have anything to do with, like, the zoo tycoon. But it was just, like, in the off topic section. It was just, like, we're going to do a fantasy, like, roleplay thing. Never had anything to do with the original forum. All roads lead to RP on the internet. Yeah.

I used to do that for fan fiction. So, like, it's there in every corner. So I was a big roller coaster tycoon fan. I'm still am. Like, if I get really stressed out, I will still throw down on some roller coaster tycoon. And they've integrated Zoo Tycoon into the roller coaster tycoon package for Mac. So, yeah, I still throw down on some Zoo Tycoon.

Wow, that's exciting. Yeah. I didn't know that you could do both in the same game now. Oh, yeah. Like, I play some levels where they make you. keep animals and also build roller coasters. So you have roller coasters and animals going simultaneously and you have to keep track your zookeepers and stuff. Like, oh, it's a, it's an administrative nightmare.

But that's about as, that's about as close to administration as I can get now. So anyway. I'm worried you're awakening something in Mitchell. Like, he's just going to like not emerge from the internet. Also, Mitchell, I used to work at a zoo when I was in college. Oh, the best. I gave tickets on the camel rides and I loaded the camels. Nice.

I'm just still thinking about like the shuttle loop roller coaster just like next to like the lion exhibit or something and making the coaster like jump over. Oh yeah. You can do a lot of things with some exhibits. I'm really into building some custom coasters. That's like one of my favorite things to do is build custom roller coasters in roller coaster tycoon. Like now they have like the sandbox feature. where you can just like build custom coasters, but I still like to do it live in the game for the challenge.

Yeah, definitely. I need to know people like what I build. I like that we were a bit worried at the start about like getting two in the weeds about Florida stuff. And now we're just. But like that's the only video game I've ever really gotten into except Donkey Kong country and Super Smash Brothers for Nintendo 64. Also, we usually do this with films when Jay's here.

Fair enough. Get really in the weeds. Wow. We have the exact same taste in games, it sounds like, because that's also my Super Smash Brothers game. Yeah. Also, I don't know if anyone ever fucked with Yoshi's story. Did you unlock all the, all the, yoshies, the black Yoshi, the white Yoshi?

I unlocked every single level on Yoshi's story when I was in eighth grade. That was what I did in eighth grade. That was my weird thing. Yeah. Now you know, I was a gamer for Yoshi's story. No, you're really flashing all the credentials like Superman comic and video games and grateful dead. This is where you find out I'm not actually cool. We've known that for a while now.

Yeah. With the sleepover stories. Oh, yeah. I would stay up all night at the sleepover because I had insomnia. You were the bad kid, but just for misbehaving. For practical reasons. We usually end on a question about just, I, idealism, so we get away from being very serious people for a minute.

And so I always ask, I always ask like a utopian question, which is like in fully automated luxury gay space communism. Could we abolish second life? Like you want to and you're waiting for that to happen? I mean, if the people who hacked like the gas pipeline could also like take on London Labs, I'd also be fine with that. I would propose, can we make second life? anti-capitalist as opposed to hyper-capitalist.

Yeah, I like that sort of framing of it because I do think there's a lot of value in having places where you can exist digitally, but like with some sort of physical relations to things. Like, that's the main thing that I noticed, the biggest differentiation to these games versus like being on Facebook or on Twitter or anything like that. is that you are like physically in a space, you know, like Artemis goes into in the Second Life episode, like being able to move and sit and like do all these things. Touch things. Yeah. It feels really good. Yeah, you can you can touch digital grass. And it's not the same thing, but it's close enough. Especially like thinking about the difference between that

and, you know, I've been teaching the past couple of semesters like over Zoom. And I love my students, but I hate Zoom. I'm so fed up of being in a box, and it's so freeing to be able to walk around and stuff. So I think there's a lot of value to the idea of a virtual space like Second Life. Obviously, the main problem with it right now is, you know, in lieu of all the freedoms that it gives you, there's, you know, one really big restriction is that you have to pay to play

in a lot of different ways. and it feels completely arbitrary. Like I think, you know, Derek and I would agree that it's just there so that Linden Labs can make a buck. And if there wasn't that profit motive, you could just make a space that had even more freedoms. You know, you could allow people to do custom whatever, you know, honestly. And you would have to, you know, employ some sort of moderation, but that's also, you know, you know, not inherent to like capitalism. You can, you can take care of people's needs and still

have a really fun experience without requiring people to pay money to do sorts of things. Just like max out everyone's digital credit cards. Like Habitat is actually an interesting example of that, at least with the new one, the way that it works is there's basically UBI where your wallet will just naturally accumulate money up to a certain point. So, you know, if you can't afford like the super expensive thing, which you don't even need to survive, right? Like you're automatically given like a home of your own in habitats, your own sort of property and, you know, basic sort of get up. And you can buy most things off the bat. But then if you spend a lot, it's just, you know, you can wait a little bit and then you'll be able to afford this or that.

And so there's a lot of ways that you can organize a digital world. It's not limited by nearly as many material factors as the real world is. So why not make something that's, you know, the most fun for the most people? Yeah. And as you were talking, and we were talking about earlier, the differences between digital and physical spaces. I think the pandemics probably sped that up quite a bit where we'll have more augmented spaces in the near future. Like before they were kind of kitchy and dumb and like, you know, you would put like an iPad on a on a Rumba and it would walk around and like yell at you. But I think now like, you know, if we go to conferences in the future for like library shit.

Go to Teams Together mode. There's going to be more. Yeah, Zoom has a product that it sells for in person conferences. It's like a schedule booking thing. And that's just one step away from, oh, you can't make it to the physical one. you can go to the online one. Or like how comedy in New York City is like starting up again, but they're now also streaming on Zoom,

which was something they never did before. So all these physical spaces are now more hybrid. I was just listening to the horror vanguard and they were talking about the movie The Black Tower, which is like an art horror film that like no one's seen. But it's like it's a black tower that follows him around. And they were talking about how we don't know anything about the physical structures around us.

There are towers in our towns that were like, what goes on in there? Who knows? And so he's like haunted by this tower that's following him around. And it just like haunts him until he dies, I guess. It's a very abstract, surrealist kind of movie. I need to watch it. I was just listening about it. But that's what I've been thinking about is like places that kind of follow us around in the digital world.

And they're going to follow us in the physical world. And then my next question is, Carrie, what the fuck are you writing in the notes? There's just in all caps Can you fart in second life And then underneath it Linden Labs make a buck come and fuck You were typing this while Mitchell was talking and answering a question

I don't know why you're writing this I just had the thought And I need to be like a lot of Just coming up with some second life slogans There's probably a place where you can do that because there are specific furniture in Second Life where you can do custom animations.

Derek and I visited a place that it was like a weird kink thing, but you could custom like get your head guillotine chopped off. That's pretty cool. Yeah, just I just want to be able to fart in Second Life.

So there's probably like a place. Like someone's probably invented like a stool like a bungeal. Like you can interact with and it's like fart on or Can I buy a farting butt in Second Life? If you can dream it, it can happen. I'm going to go to Second Life and design that. That's going to be how I make my millions.

I'm shocked that you don't get like creepy DMs because of the shit you say on this podcast. Every time you say something, I'm just like, she's going to get a DM about this. Like someone is going to come across this and just be like a complete weirdo. Yeah, I just live my life like a weirdo. So I don't know. Like my DMs are closed. That's really it. Mitchell, thanks for coming.

Do you want to plug anything? Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I'll plug Means TV, which is where you can find preserving worlds. If you're not a subscriber already, Means TV is a worker-owned streaming service. There's a lot of custom content, like original series, like, preserving worlds. They also do weekly shows, news, documentaries, comedy, fiction, all kinds of stuff. It is also pay what you want. So you can choose to pay anywhere from zero to $10 a month. So that's really cool as well. And you can find, I mentioned you can find preserving worlds there. You can also

find Sarasota Half and Dream, which I mentioned is this feature-length documentary that Derek and I also made. And it capsulates growing up in Florida very well, I think, having done that. Is Derek on Twitter? So if we have any follow-up questions, we can lobby them at him, or is he offline? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Derek's on Twitter. He's at Derek L. Murphy, and I'm at Mitchell Zemmel.

So you can find us there. Yeah, I'll put all this in the show notes, of course. And the link to Means TV, you can watch Preserving Worlds without a subscription, but you should get a subscription because you should also watch Sarasota Half in Dream because it's really good. I didn't come up with anything good to close out.

I mean, is can you fart in second life not a good leadout, Justin? I was trying to give you leadouts, man. Yeah, a great lead out. Good night. Smoke, smoke, smoke,

meat. Damn, son, where'd you find this? Smoke, smoke, smoke, meat.