“Hey baby, so how long have you been a
Lego?”
This is the
pickup line I came up with last time I was at Mobiles Disco. I haven’t tried to use it in real life yet. Mobiles Disco is an online virtual club – like a
chat room where a cute little
Lego-like representation of yourself can go and hang out with other Lego-like people that are all controlled in
real time by other individuals on the web. You get to choose what you look like, male or female, race, hairstyle, shirt, pants, etc. When I enter Mobiles Disco for the first time, I am tempted to be a girl, but I opt for a guy instead, with a blue shirt and
white pants, trying to stay true to reality. I enter a room full of other Lego people with tables and chairs and a bar at one end.
“Hi,” I say to the bartender “Can I get a beer?”
“Olut Tulossa. Ole hyva” replies Maarit, the bot-bartender. Apparently Mobiles Disco is Finnish. I look around the room, there are a few people standing around, and some sitting at tables. I notice that in the corner, there are a bunch of people wearing all black sitting around the same table. I approach them, to see what’s going on.
“This table is closed” one of them says to me. Whatever. I walk away. This guy dressed in all black follows me.
“jm229, we have to talk.” he says. “We need you to join our Mafia.”
“How do I join?” I ask.
“You just need to wear all black.”
“How do I change my clothes?”
“You just need to exit Mobiles Disco, and change your preferences so that you are wearing all black.”
“But I love my white pants so much.” I reply.
“It’s true, your white pants are really fine, but we need you to join us,”
“Hmm, I don’t know.” What is this guy’s problem? I think. I’m here to get down and have a good time. I ignore him, and he goes away. I go to the other side of the room and talk to some other people, most of whom are from Brazil, apparently.
Later, my real life roommate joins in, and I have an ally in Mobiles Disco to cause trouble with. It only took a few minutes of us getting sassy with people before we had a few people in a line, dancing. “Get down! Uh! Shake it! Boogie Down!” I shouted. Everyone else started to notice how much fun we were having, and eventually joined in, dancing wildly, or at least it felt like we were dancing wildly, really, we were just dancing within the parameters of how a Mobiles Disco person can really dance (waving your arms back and forth). There we were, a bunch of Legos country line dancing in a virtual Finnish techno-bar. It was so much fun.