5: Option 1 -- More attractive in the MUD.

My first experience with the internet was in 1992, involving a near obsession with a Multi-User Dungeon called Muddog. I wasted many a night over the span of a year and a half as I spent every free moment working on quests and building experience points in an effort to become a wizard. I developed a community of friends on the MUD, several of which I would eventually meet in real life. It was in this space that I met my first serious girlfriend, "Aude." My online romance exemplified several of McKenna's (2007) relationship facilitation factors and demonstrates how Computer Mediated Communication can influence a relationship in ways that Face-to-Face interactions cannot.

This unlikely pairing could have only manifested itself in a CMC environment like the MUD -- a Jewish kid from Chicago and a Baptist girl from southern Georgia with virtually nothing in common except for an invented reality and meaningless gaming adventures together. Of course, at the time these experiences were far from meaningless. Upon first meeting anyone on Muddog, users shared the immediate bond of being committed on some level to logging in and playing this odd game. Both Wallace's Common Ground factor of Attraction as well as McKenna's Connecting to Similar Others is evident here. Both of these emphasize the attraction to those with whom we share something in common. We could all identify with each other having a common obsession. And further, upon first meeting anyone in this environment, the shared interest in playing the game became the only thing that we knew about each other. In accordance with the Law of Attraction (which focuses on the idea that the proportion of what we have in common will lead to attraction and relational development,) it's no surprise that intense relationships were commonly formed on the MUD.

Several other of McKenna's factors are evident in my experience with Aude. The Removal of Gating Features proved to be a very powerful factor as we began our relationship. Gating features are obstacles which can determine whether or not we want to interact with each other. McKenna observes that in text-based online spaces, gates are not so clearly defined. This was absolutely the case with Aude. In retrospect, I'm fairly certain that there would not have been much attraction if we had met for the first time in real life. In this environment you can choose your own description rather than actually see each other, and we clearly showed what we wanted to see. I also believe that we avoided the gate of shyness because the anonymous nature of the game.

The anonymity of mudding brings us to McKenna's Identifiability factor. As was the case with most "mudders," we relished in the fact that nobody knew who we were beyond our character profiles. I'm sure that McKenna would agree that this was conducive to increased self-disclosure, which in turn benefits relational development. This effect probably decreased as we got to know one another and lost our anonymity, but the eventual anticipated FtF meeting kept our motivation high.

Over several months our relationship grew online and we expanded to a richer media of regular telephone conversations. Aude and I eventually met FtF and tried to further the romance, but it was a short matter of time before the relationship ended. It was obvious that our connection didn't go much further than the game, and the experience effectively ended my days as a mudder.