Some people brought up an interesting point on the LYSTS today.
It was about the many facets of the Community, and the labels that we slap onto ourselves.
They made some interesting points. (As always! - These people, I tell ya!) ;o)
How does one truly assign a"label" to a growing, changing, organic, mass of people who group themselves together under a common bond, and this common bond changes and brings in new people that are unfamiliar with the original bonds?
I suppose referring to The Community under the name of the original game that drew some of us in the beginning, is the most basic and logical thing to do. I myself, choose to call our Communitiy many things at many different times, mainly so as not to offend or leave any one out.
Call me a wimpy mom.;o)
For me, I just call it The Community because, as someone pointed out, there are so many facets to it now, and I think this is a good and healthy thing.
There should be many different avenues of involvement, and opportunities for people to praticipate, that way every ones needs get met.
Participating in the forums may not work for me, and there are many people there that I never meet, unless I go to a Mysterium to meet them. There are many people in the Community now who have never layed eyes on Myst or Riven, but came in via Uru, and may not naturally fit under the MYST community label, but for me, I don't really see the need to label us.
I don't think the game developers or the publishers really have a care one way or the other about what the fan community calls itself. Nobody can own a community anyway. I think the interested companies are as happy to be along for the ride as we are. :o)
We are what we are, I guess.
And we know who we are without really having a "corporate name/logo."
It's funny.
There are people that need to have a label, or an "Umbrella" to gather under that can easily allow them to be defined. There are as many people who hate the very thought because it also allows others to pidgeon-hole them. I guess it's all a matter of perspective.
At least that is my take on it for the moment.
Cyber Town:
If you look at a town, it grows and becomes a city.
Neighborhoods sprout up.
The give themselves a name.
It is similar in The Community (as I will here on out refer to it).
We had MYST.
We had RIVEN.
We had...etc blah blah blah all the others.
The tiny town of Myst has grown in to a thriving city with suburbs.
You can identify your "City."
You can also go into greater detail defining the "neighborhoods" you typically reside in, such as:
The Lysts,
CC,
UO,
MC,
GoG
and all the ones I am not naming.
They are all valid identifiers for those that "Live" in the "City."
But it seems that our city bears a nebulous "name."
But then again, I personally am of the opinion that, in our case, no name is a good name.
:o)
And now I am reminded of the Mysterium event, as another example of different people, different expectiations and different needs.
There are many who look at Mysterium as an oppportunity to go and do things as one, massive collection of people.
Sometimes that's been a possibility, but Mysterium was never meant to be that, necessarily. And by now, it has grown too large for everybody to do all the same activities at the exact same place and time as one.
One observer put it this way, "This has got to change, we destroy every place we show up at." He was dead right. Some activities can be mass coordinated, things like laser tag etc. But last year, a library tour was offered. 35 ppl signed up and over 60 actually came. It was horribly rude. The poor library people graciously took it in stride though. The same thing happened with Ubi. They had, I dunno, maybe 63+ signed up for their presentaion and over 100 showed up? How rude was that? They, like the librarians, took it all graciously in stride.
Even so.
These are things that should not be.
We have grown far too large to have these kinds of things happen.
Some people were disappointed that there seemed to be clique-ish groups that spent more time together than they did mingling. Well, perhaps, for them, that was their goal : too meet and bond face to face with the people the interacted with most online?
That is why Mysterium was originally designed with free time and lots of options in mind.
That is one of the reasons there were also some group activities pre-planned as well. So as to meet the needs of both groups. But certainly to expect that the whole thing is meant to be experienced as a huge mass of people, for the entirety of the event is unreasonable because of the sheer numbers of people that show up now.
A funny recollection of Toronto Mysterium:
We would often congregate in the lobby (so what's new there eh?).
Very few people would leave the lobby, unless somebody just started walking.
It was kinda cute. So I tested it. There was a planned group activity at one point. Everyone knew the time constraints. But nobody was actually making a move toward the doors.
So... I just started walking.
And you know what?
People started following.
Just like lemmings.
It was histerical.
But what does that say about our group?
To me, it speaks of an unhealthy inability to move outside of what is familiar and comfortable, unl;ess somebody else makes the first move.
I wonder if that isn't a bit like how people like Hitler were able to succeed at committing the atriocities he did with so much seeming support from otherwise very smart and loving people?
Somehow theidea got communicated that there was "Group" and this is what they are "Doing" and you better just go along with it.
Anyway, that was quite a ramble.
but its my blog.
I can do that.
Here.
;O)
In summary I guess I would say:
We know who we are.
We know why we are here.
We are what we are.
Who cares how we refer to ourselves whether it be Myst MR, MRE, MRED, MREDU, Pink With Purple Polka-Dots, or Franks Kraut Club.
I mean who really gives a rats and what does it matter in the long run?
Well.
Guess that was amore impassioned summary than I had origianlly planned too.
Guess I better stop.
;O)
Addendum:
Ok so now, somebody justbrought up another interesting point, which reminded me something I was talking to a friend about months ago:
Bob said:
" Your City analogy is one I thought about sometime back.
While there are many different neighborhoods, they all reside in our little city... or maybe I should say, 'Cyty' "
I couldn't agree more.
His comment reminded me of a time when Randy and I were having a chat, discussing how it would be interesting to have an anthropology student observe and comment on the rises and fluctuations of our "Cyty." How it compares to other civilizations with regard to their rises and falls and changes through out history. I have had a little bit of experience observing the "Lives" of churches from their inception to their splitting up or dying out. The average life of a church, from its birth, to its dying out takes approx 25 years to complete. And a dead church can still be functioning, just not very effectively for the benefit of God or the people they are supposed to serve, if ya know what I'm saying? Anyway. It's all kind of interesting isn't it? In some ways, the way our Comunity seems to function is similar to that of a church in some ways.
Bob went on to comment:
"Reminds me of the saying about a house divided "
Man that is a sad/scary thot and one I refuse to contemplate/accept as a possibility for our Community right now.
I'm not even gonna think about that today.
There is just too much good to be dwelling on instead.
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