Cyber-Scrabble

In graduate school a professor said that technology was going to be the great equalizer. He was referring to making more activities available to people with disabilities. I have found technology to be a "social equalizer", bringing together folks who would normally never meet or take the time to get to know one another.


For several years I have played games online. I played one-player games and always avoid the chat boxes. Because if you watch TV news and police shows, you know chat rooms are evil places filled with perverts and undercover police officers. Several months ago Club Pogo introduced Scrabble online. I have always like real Scrabble, so I started playing against the robot players, and eventually got up the nerve to play at the tables with "real people".



When you are sitting around a Scrabble board, even in cyberspace, you just need to chat with the other players. There was one player, in particular, who almost insisted everyone meet and talk. He praised your good words and asked questions to get the conversations started. (It turns out he is a person with a disability.) Before you joined Club Pogo the people at the tables are represented by white circles with happy faces, so until you chat with someone you don't know anything about them, there is no different designation made for male/female, race, age, etc.

After playing several weeks I found myself looking for the same players and often players seemed to find me again. After a few games with the same folks we started revealing bits and pieces of our real lives to each other...a first name, an email address, the city we live in. In cyberspace I have met and become friends with people I know I wouldn't have gotten to know in real life. Sometimes the folks at the Scrabble table live in the far western or northern US, or even other countries. I have gotten to know other teachers, lawyers, home schooling moms, people with handicaps, cat lovers (I'm allergic), a poet, older folks, and younger folks. Some are people, I feel certain, I wouldn't have gotten beyond "Hi, how are you?" in real life.


It's amazing what you find to "talk" about around the Scrabble table with folks you've never seen. Of course the weather is always discussed, sometimes politics, however at some tables we had to agree not to discuss the election. I have run across a few strange folks. Even in cyperspace there are some folks you don't care to "see" again. Like the guy who claimed to be Barack Obama's chief body guard, yeah, right...like he would have had time to play Scrabble during the campaign. Or the woman who continued to fill the chat box with all the words to the songs from Momma Mia and suggested we all form a conga line. Or the teenage girl who was more than flirting with the 40-something guy. He disappeared in a hurry; not sure if he was kicked out by censors or if he had the smarts to get away from trouble.


One option on Pogo is to design your own cyberspace avatar (or mini) so you actually see "the people" at the table. Pogo lets you earn tokens so you can go shopping for clothing and backgrounds for your avatar. You can change them to reflect your mood, the season, or favorite activities. It's funny how your avatar can develop a personality and will say or do things that you would not do or say in real life. It's like cloning yourself and being able to edit things in and out of your personality.


My avatar has a BFF who is as far opposite of her as can be. The BFF is young, northern, democrat, atheist, a Wal-Mart fan, and male. It is amazing that there can be anything in common for these two to talk about, but after weeks of playing Scrabble they have learned their real life counterparts have similar careers (both dealing with people with disabilities), that they like the same movies, the same TV shows, enjoy the same foods, and can have a lot of fun playing Scrabble.


Yes, technology is the great equalizer...how else can people from all over the world with such different backgrounds "sit down" at the same table, play games, chat and get to know people they would never have met in real life.