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Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello,
and welcome to Never Post, a

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podcast for and about the
Internet. I'm your host Mike

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Rugnetta, and we have a
labyrinthine show for you this

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week. In this archive poll
originally published 03/27/2024,

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I talk with Italian academics
Gabriela De Setta and Paolo

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Berti about how we imagine the
Internet. Is it a town square?

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Is it a series of tubes?

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Is it the backrooms? They make
the case for the Megadungeon as

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a productive metaphor, a vast
underground locale traversed by

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adventurers in tabletop role
playing games. How does the

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imagined size, construction,
purpose, and relationship to

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play of the Megadungeon help us
think productively about our

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relationship to the Internet, a
place in which so many of us

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cannot help but feel a little
trapped. We're gonna take a

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short break. You're gonna listen
to some ads unless you're on the

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member feed, and when we return,
Gabriela de Setta, Paolo Berty,

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and the Internet as Megadungeon.

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Three months ago, my longtime
friend and legendary Internet

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Cryptid, Chris Shee, mentioned
me in a quote post on Blue Sky.

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She said, I think this might be
made just for you. The post she

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quoted was from an Italian
academic linking to a journal

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issue he had edited. His post
read, in the introduction, we

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make a case for abstracting the
main features of the

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Megadungeon, infrastructural
layering, ecological geography,

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procedural generation, ludic
logic, and mapping them onto

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digital mediation to see if they
can capture its complexity. You

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are probably familiar with
something like the mind palace,

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a framework, a metaphor, a kind
of mnemonic made famous perhaps

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by its most well known user,
Sherlock Holmes.

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The mind palace is a way to
understand, to navigate one's

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own intellectual storehouse.
It's a memory aid, a

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psychogeographic landscape, a
place graft onto the

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placelessness of the psyche.
Gabriela De Sita, who wrote the

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post that Chris forwarded me,
and his colleagues Paolo Berti

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and Stefania de Vincenz, put
forward in this journal that

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Gabriela linked to the
Megadungeon, a place prevalent

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in tabletop role playing as a
kind of mind palace for the

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media technological environment,
which is itself also

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fundamentally placeless. I had
the journal issue printed since

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its release is digital only at a
local print shop, and I read it

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all highlighter in hand.
Conceptually, it is dense and

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rich and really just unlike
anything I've ever read, and it

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has changed the way I see the
Internet, which is no mean feat.

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In this segment, me, Gabriela,
Paolo, we barely scratch the

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surface of the work they've
done. We traverse but a few

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rooms of the vast network of
ideas that they have worked so

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hard to assist in generating.
But as brief as the encounter

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is, there are more than a few
treasures to behold. I hope you

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enjoy. Joining me are Gabriela
De Sete and Paolo Berti.

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Gabriela De Sete is a
sociologist and researcher at

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the University of Bergen. He
holds a PhD from the Hong Kong

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Polytechnic University and was a
post doctoral fellow at the

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Institute of Ethnology Academia
Sinica in Taipei. His research

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focuses on digital media
practices, how the social and

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the technological entangle, and
vernacular creativity in the

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Chinese speaking world. Paolo
Berti is a lecturer in the

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faculty of humanities at
Cafoskari University of Venice.

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He holds a PhD from Sapienza
University of Rome, did

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postgraduate work in historical
and artistic heritage at the

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specialization school, and
studied art history at the

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University of Siena.

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As a contemporary art historian,
he focuses on new media, digital

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cultures, and mobile
technologies with forays into

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critical theory and game
studies. Gabriela, Paolo, thank

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you so so much for joining us.

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Gabriele de Seta: Thank you for
having us.

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Paolo Berti: Thank you.

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Mike Rugnetta: This is

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Gabriele de Seta: my side. Thank
you.

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Mike Rugnetta: So you both also,
in addition to your long your

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long list of accomplishments,
recently, with your

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collaborator, Stefania de
Vincenz, co edited a special

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issue of the journal MAGAZEN,
the International Journal for

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Digital and Public Humanities.
This was, volume four, number

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two for people who go looking
for it. I was out at the end of

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last year, December 2023. And
this whole issue of magazine,

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their first ever, if I
understand correctly, guest

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edited issue is organized around
a single idea that is built upon

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and expanded and explored and
plumbed throughout a number of

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papers, two of which are your
own. The single organizing idea

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is that of the Megadungeon.

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And I wonder if the two of you
could explain briefly what a

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Megadungeon is. Not the
metaphor, which we will sort of

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get to in a moment, but just the
sort of, like, base concept that

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exists in the world that appears
in tabletop role playing games.

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What is a Megadungeon? Gabriele,
let's start with you.

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Gabriele de Seta: So a
Megadungeon is quite simply a

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dungeon that is very big. One of
the ways to distinguish a

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Megadungeon from a dungeon is
that a dungeon is usually part

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of a larger world role playing
setting. So you might with your

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party of adventurers, you might
start in a in a city inn and

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then kill some goblins and then
hear about a dungeon and go

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explore it to clear it of
monsters or loot it. And then

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you come out and you continue
your adventures. A mega dungeon

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is so big that usually it
represents the entirety of the

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gaming world.

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So you start in the dungeon in
Megadungeon or you enter the

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Megadungeon and you never leave.
And this has some consequences

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for the design of the space
because it's not just a I don't

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know, a cave system or or a an
underground level of a castle.

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It is a huge dungeon that is a
world in itself. It has a an

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ecology. It maybe even has some
sort of urbanism in it or or

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different zones or societies or
ecosystems.

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Mike Rugnetta: One of the things
that's in the journal that I

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think is really interesting is
this idea that the classic

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dungeon has an edge to it. You
are probably gonna reach that

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edge when you're playing. You're
gonna get to a point where the

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DM has decided, you know,
there's a wall in this dungeon

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and you can't go through the
wall. One of the defining

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features of the Megadungeon is
that you might never and perhaps

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could never get to a point where
you've finished. So in each

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paper, we sort of take the idea
of the Megadungeon as a starting

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point.

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This possibly ever expanding
active environment that contains

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the entirety of what you might
need in a large scale campaign

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and uses that idea as a
framework for understanding a

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lot about the world. The
contemporary media and

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technology landscape, is maybe
the quickest way to summarize

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it. You know, saying that the
Internet, media, the stack of

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technology that organizes and
powers all of those things is

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itself a megadungeon in many
ways, or there are things that

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you gain by looking at those
things as perhaps being

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Megadungeon like. And I I don't
wanna ask both of you to, like,

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summarize or to go through
everything in a nearly 200 page

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journal issue, But I wonder if
we could like let's start at the

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surface, like, you know, the
entrance to the dungeon. Yes.

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Like, how and why is it that
contemporary media and

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technology is something like
this setting that can be found

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in tabletop role playing games?
Let's start with Paolo.

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Paolo Berti: Okay. The fact is
that the digital realm today is

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depicted as an increasingly
intricate with layers of

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interconnected system and so on.
So it's not longer about just

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discussing of cyberspace or
midspace or hybrid space. The

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word we imagine in the
mid-twentieth century as small,

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so implying closeness to other,
where globalization and

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telecommunication give us the
impression that we could reach

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friends or relatives on the
other side of the world,

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actually no longer exist.
Dimensionality has changed.

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Digital, telecommunication now
speak of big word and spaces

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that are no longer computable.
So proximity no longer exists.

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If I connect, for instance, from
my kitchen to play Fortnite with

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my brother in a in another room,
it's not just a communication

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between us as if it were simply
a phone call, but rather an

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entire infinite infrastructure
of data, of layers, of words

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that have the potential to
emerge. The world is not getting

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smaller. It's getting bigger,
and we don't know where

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backrooms is an online trope,
for instance, that speaks about

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that.

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Where they are, those Backrooms?
Where they expanded those rooms?

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Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

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The Backrooms like the sort of
very anodyne gray pathways that

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connect everything together in
the lore of the Internet. Your

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Fortnite example is interesting.
Is that sort of what you mean

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when you talk about self
organizing, self propagating

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space? By taking these actions,
by using this technology, you're

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sort of automatically and maybe
even accidentally expanding the

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architecture of how you can
understand the entirety of, you

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know, contemporary media and the
Internet?

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Paolo Berti: The Internet is the
most dungeon like media of of

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today. Just think of the of the
iceberg image that represent the

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deep web, for instance. There is
a real stratification and a real

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sense of exploration in the
Internet. Something Dantian in

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in the exploration of of the
Internet. There is also a

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representation that I find very
interesting, very effective.

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As you may know, Wikipedia is
full of hidden pages, and one of

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these leads to a page that
equates the role of Wikipedia

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contributors to characters of a
dungeon crawling game. By

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contributing, those people
identify themselves as

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characters, the article as
dungeon, they have character

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sheets, experience points. The
dungeon is very similar to this

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idea of leveling of the
Internet, stacking.

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Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. What are
what are some of the other

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characters that one encounters
in the dungeon? Surely, the

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troll is, you know, a very easy
and ready example. But, like,

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how far does this metaphor
extend? Like, are we you know,

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am I a player?

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Gabriele de Seta: I think the
history of how to characterize

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yourself when you relate to
media is very interesting. So in

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the beginning, it was, you know,
a user or a wizard, if you were

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very good at computing in the
eighties, I guess. And it it

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changes. So, yes, you can be a
player. You can be a user, a

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member, a profile, a streamer, a
celebrity, an influencer.

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And there is a constant change
in the definition of of of the

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individual first person user of
these technologies. We used to

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see the materiality, and we used
to think about the Internet as a

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dungeon and and ourselves as
wizards or a frontier to explore

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or a geocities neighborhood, you
know, in very spatial terms.

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Mike Rugnetta: Very literal.
Yeah.

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Gabriele de Seta: And and we
kind of lost that. And I don't

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think it's because we stopped
thinking about it, but it's

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because there's an increasing
attempt from especially

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corporate actors to make people
lose a sense of this

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materiality, data centers and
cables and increasingly

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environmentally demanding
computation, labor exploitation,

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and so on. And that is why I
think one of the most common

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rhetorics for the digital has
become that of flatness of

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platforms, of a certain
depthlessness. And in this

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sense, the Megadungeon for me,
and I think Paolo shares this

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point of view, is a way to
inject or reinject this this

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spatial and and volumetric model
into discussions of of the

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Internet and and of any other,
yeah, communication or

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computational technologies.

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Mike Rugnetta: It's interesting
because I I wanna try to pull

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together a a few things that
we've just said in the last

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couple minutes, which is like,
for a lot of people, I think,

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the Internet is kinda not fun
anymore. Yes. It's a bleak

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place. You log on, you look at
bad news, and you log off. We

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all know what the experience is.

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It's hard to imagine it on mass
as something that's pleasant.

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Yes. But a lot of how you
describe the Megadungeon and

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talk about our place in it and
how we appreciate our

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interaction with it is based in
play. And in recognizing that

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play is not only a sort of
fundamental aspect of the

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Megadungeon as a concept in
tabletop role playing, but is

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maybe part of our experience of
the aggregate of technology that

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we can look at as a Megadungeon.
And so I wonder, like, is the

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idea of play, like, radical in a
sense in that way?

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Paolo Berti: I think there is a
ludic paradigm that underlies

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the the dungeon and the
Megadungeon. In my essay, I I

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talk about John Huisinga, that
is a Dutch historian that wrote

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a book, nearly, one hundred
years ago, suggesting that the

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foundation of religion and war
and so on were shaped in the

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realm of play. We wanted to show
how this Huzinga paradigm has

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come in the end to to wrap
around us, to create a sort of

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prison around us. Through the
concept of gamification, this

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day we approach life as a game,
maybe too much. The interfaces

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of public administration apps
speak the language of gaming and

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leveling up, for instance.

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We strive to improve our self,
our curriculum vitae through

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skills like characters. Digital
goods are our equipments, for

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instance. So maybe this role
playing game mobile model,

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sorry, has became more pervasive
than we might expected, maybe.

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So it's a sort of mixed match of
gaming too much and not gaming

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too much.

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Gabriele de Seta: The dungeon as
a metaphor, the Megadungeon as a

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model, asks us to think about
the other side of play, which is

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design. So being a game master
and a game designer and a

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designer of the dungeon and who
makes the Megadungeon, who

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decides what connects to what
and and what you can explore.

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And I think that that is a key
point because what we were

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discussing before that the
Internet has become boring or

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not fun is because much of it
has become trapped by this

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gamification of use. So the
platforms and and apps and the

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consumer oriented stuff. But the
materiality is still there.

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The networks are still there.
And actually, we have devices

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that are way more powerful than
ten or twenty years ago. So we

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could build Otherwise, the
Megadungeon is there to be

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explored and to be mastered and
designed for ourselves. And I

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think what Paolo mentioned
before, the the backrooms, is a

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very good example of that
because, yes, it is a sort of

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pseudo horror trope, but it also
represents a kind of fantasy or

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dream, this liminal space that
is behind the Internet or be

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behind the surface world of of
corporate media. It's it's this

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endless sprawling maze of of
empty rooms that look like

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conference rooms in in in
abandoned hotels or something

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like that.

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But but for me to me, that that
is a very clear example of how

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people still dream of that
unknown maze of infrastructural

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spaces that can be inhabited by
by masters, but it can also be

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explored beyond the surface of
what you're gamified into

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everyday use.

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Mike Rugnetta: It's interesting.
It's horrific, but in a way,

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it's also kind of hopeful
because it is able to be

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explored.

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Gabriele de Seta: Yes. And and
and made into a story. Like, the

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the Backrooms as a whole, it
it's just an image, right, or or

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a few images. But the stories
that develop around them are are

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infinite. People make an entire
lore about the Backrooms and how

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to no clip into them, inventing
words and practices and and

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monsters that inhabit them and
what they mean and where they

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come from.

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So it's it's this endless lore
production that is very similar

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to role playing games to what
players and and and game masters

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do together, fabulating a
medium. So, yes, it is hopeful

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because it proves that you can
make that exist.

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Mike Rugnetta: Paulo, Gabrieli,
thank you so so much for

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chatting with us and taking some
time out of your schedule to

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have this conversation. This was
fascinating. I know I said this

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to both of you privately when I
reached out, but I wanna say it

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publicly too, like, my friend
Chris alerted me to the

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existence of this journal issue.
Having now read it, what I said

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to her was, I don't know that
there has ever been anything

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that feels like it is more for
me. Thank you very very much for

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making it.

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Gabriele de Seta: Well, thanks
to you and thanks to Chris for

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for sharing this issue with you
and it was a blast. So yeah.

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Thanks.

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Paolo Berti: Yeah. Thank you,
Mike. And thank you, Hans, for

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this.

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Mike Rugnetta: Where can people
find your work online? Gabriela,

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you can go first.

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Gabriele de Seta: People can
find my work online on my

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website, paranorm.asia.

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Mike Rugnetta: Paula?

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Paolo Berti: Yes. I I have a
profile on Academia Edu, on

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Kafoskari webpage, on Archive,
and social media like Facebook

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as Polo Berti or Instagram at
betvibel.

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Mike Rugnetta: That is the show
we have for you this week. We're

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gonna be back here in the main
feed on or around Thursday, May

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00:20:43,800 --> 00:20:49,320
21. Never Post is listener
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are a listener. Help us continue
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personal digital magpies by
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It's only $4 a month. Scrock. Is
that the sound a magpie makes? I

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00:21:06,515 --> 00:21:10,450
have no idea. Never Post's
producers are Audrey Evans,

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00:21:10,450 --> 00:21:11,970
Georgia Hampton, and The
Mysterious.

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00:21:11,970 --> 00:21:14,370
Doctor first name, last name.
Our senior producer is Hans

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00:21:14,370 --> 00:21:17,410
Buteau. Our executive producer
is Jason Oberholzer, and the

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show's host, that's me, is Mike
Rugnetta. Stone cries to stone,

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00:21:23,585 --> 00:21:28,225
heart to heart, heart to stone,
and the interrogation will not

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die. For there is no eternal
city, and there is no pity, and

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00:21:33,505 --> 00:21:35,185
there is nothing underneath the
sky.

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00:21:36,100 --> 00:21:41,380
No rainbow and no guarantee.
There is no covenant between

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00:21:41,380 --> 00:21:47,407
your God and me. Excerpt of
Jerusalem by James Fenton. Never

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00:21:47,407 --> 00:21:50,607
Post is a production of Charts
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