Preserving Worlds S1 Ep1: WorldsChat
Means TV
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14m
Directed by Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil • Documentary • 2021 • 14 minutes
WorldsChat is a social virtual world that was launched in 1994, and is still online today. Users can equip avatars and hang out in 3D spaces, conversing with each other over text-based chat. WorldsChat allowed users to create their own spaces and avatars. Over the years, they transformed it in a way its developers could never predict. Today, it is not just a time capsule of the early 90's utopian web; it also contains a vast labyrinth of outsider art that has arisen within its fringes.
We spoke with GradualDIME, an amateur archivist documenting WorldsChat's user-created art and environments. He gave us a tour of his favorite places in WorldsChat, and told the story of what happened when 4chan's paranormal board discovered it.
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