The Dibbell article posed some interesting questions. The main one being "where does the line between virtual and actual reality blur?" The victim could have very well been so offended that it was considered rape...or the victim could have just ignored the harassing statements and blocked them. But in the MOO world where text is held accounted for with so much regard, it was impossible to squash the attacks for what they were. Instead the victim's good name was sullied by the attacker and misrepresentation of the name with the voodoo doll was seen as an unforgivable act. The feelings must be based on a certain violation level by that account. We want a good name and rapport in real life as well as any virtual life we may partake in. If insert pain, hurt feelings and ill-intentions towards any of our other identities, then we feel violated.
Then, I start to wonder what programming measures are taken to prevent such incidents. Eliminating all bad things in a simulated environment isn't impossible but takes a lot of coding. But doesn't simulating an environment force you to mimic everything...even bad things. So the real question is posed on which direction the developers will take in creating these constructs. In a virtual world where crimes like rape are A) Possible or B) Not Possible make for two completely different experiences.
3 comments:
You really made me think about whether "crime and violence" should be allowed in the virtual communities. I agree with your idea that if you mimic a real world it should have the same elements as in the real world, basically the bad with the good. It balances things out. I also think that even if we try to stop it by coding against it, it will probably still be around, same as in the real world. Criminals will still find loopholes in the system, that's just the way life is. And how interesting of a world would it be without crime? I think a virtual world without crime could not be called a fair representation of our world at all. It would be just too different.
Exactly the point I was trying to make. Bad with Good balancing things out. Right on.
Well I think that if you are choosing to enter a cyberworld through a MOO or a program such as Second Life or any other similar program, then you should be aware of the risk that you take part in. And even if these programmers worked their butts off to fix the bad aspects of a real enviroment then it wouldn’t be as fun, because it would no longer be a virtual reality…it would be virtual Candyland! I don’t want bad things to happen to people either, but if people want to join a virtual world then they should know whats out there in the world. Besides, I’m sure that a lot of people who are in a virtual world that are doing bad things are actually good people in real life, but maybe they just had/have some sick fantasy of being an evil person, I would rather have then let it out in a fake made up world than actually commit a crime in the real world. Sounds bad because I know that people in the virtual world can get their real feelings hurt, but if they wanted to, they could always just unplug their computers.
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