Trick picture, old and young woman.
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Often times people are criticized for overlooking younger candidates for job positions and the like. I have often been a loud, stubborn supporter for allowing younger people in the work place. As I sit here writing this article, I remind myself that the ideals I support in my work environment, are (as they should be) different from what I expect on my mud.
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Trick picture, old and young woman. |
By definition, the creator channel is where the creators can discuss player issues, policy, and coding issues among their peers. In reality, creators form friendships with each other and just as with normal talker channels, their personality, and experiences shine through. How often have you waited up late at night, to see how another creators date went? Or vented your feelings about an in real life issue on the creator channel? The channel would seem stuffy otherwise. Would you really not earmuff a coding-only talker channel? Bah, I would!
Currently our creator channel has an age span (to my knowledge) from preteens to the mid-fifties. Now, it has been said that creators do not want to talk about anything but code, drugs, alcohol and sex, and honestly, this does make up the majority of conversations that take place on the creator channel. I'm definitely not complaining. Until recently, the younger creators we had were in their later teens, and could handle, if not contribute to the conversations. However, our latest batch of young creators have protested to some of our conversations content, going so far as to use the age old "My virgin ears!!" to silence us. These protests have mostly fallen on deaf ears; older creators enjoy the atmosphere of the creator channel and are not about to stop because we now have adolescent members among us.
Should older creators curb their conversations out of respect to the younger creators? Maybe we should have any creators under the age of 18 on a separate creator channel that everyone listens to? Would that be unfair to the younger creators? Should we even care about how our actions affect others in a virtual world? I think we should. The players who seem have the most disciplinary issues are often the ones who forget that it is not just a game, it is a community, and everyone there is a real person, with real emotions.
The most nerve-rattling issue, to me, are the pointless monologues our younger members seem to engage in. When I log in, one of the first things I do is to check the creator channel history. Too often I'm finding the last 30 creator tells were all from the same person; not asking for coding help and not really seeming to be connected in any fashion. If you read through each one, you get the impression that this person is bored, and just talking to see if anyone will answer. Unfortunately, most of our creators are busy people, and do not want to engage in idle chatter all day long. This is not to say we do not go off on odd tangents, however, if you just sent three tells to the channel, and no one answered, would you not send a direct tell to the person you are trying to get the attention of? As expected, when an older creator does finally join in, they usually indirectly insult the younger creator, with a sweeter-than-honey insult, leaving the younger creator knowing they were just insulted, but not quite sure how.
I seem to have exhausted my brain cell for the evening; I will have to continue this next month. Until then, I will continue using shock aversion therapy on our younger creators in order to avoid conflict. Hopefully, I will not have to revert to the stronger method of partial frontal lobotomies and hallucinogenic drugs for the desired effect.
January 2000 Imaginary Realities, the magazine of your mind.
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