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MUSH and a Brainwash
Posted on July 2, 2003 in Book of Days
Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.
Today’s topic: These were the frequently asked questions.
I ran a MUSH* some years ago and I was glad to get out of doing it. The favors people asked were too much. “Could you make me all powerful?” “Why do I have to accept the result of the die roll?” “Could you give the MUSH to me?” “Could you make me your co-god?” “Could you give me unlimited building points?” “What are you saying about me behind my back?” “Why do you hate me?”
I think part of the problem was the age of the people who frequented the place. Kids swim in the brainwashing bucket: they believe that unlimited power and money can be had just by willing it. They believe that they must never compromise. I remember an argument that I had with a fellow who wanted a vampire-priest. I asked him what he knew about Catholicism. Nothing. He didn’t think it was necessary to know much because, after all, wasn’t all that was necessary a Roman Collar and a compassionate look? I told him no. Nevertheless he tried to bully me into allowing it. It was tiresome and even worse was that he recruited friends to badger me about it.
You’d think that they’d vote with their feet and just leave, but remember this was Gen-X, the kids who squandered their vote on electing the “take all protections away except those that make us a lot of money” Republican Congress and George W. Bush. They thought that a world where employers could kill you was pretty cool: and they wanted to be the employers, never the workers.
I saw America’s future in that MUSH. For all I know George W. Bush played there. His antics as governor suggested a similar state of mind about power. Remember how he chortled about the woman who begged for her life? They would have thought that was cool, ever so cool.
* A Multi-User Shared Habitat or Multi-User Shared Hallucination, depending on who you talk to.
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Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: Write about the inevitable.
