Blog Post W/E 3/18/07

I was extremely interested in the reading by Julian Dibbell entitled "A Rape in Cyberspace". I had first encountered the case of Mr. Bungle in another reading "Napster's Second Life" which dealt with the issues of regulation virtual worlds. The author's hypothesized that unless regulation was the same across the board then the virtual worlds may devolve into a series of peer-2-peer worlds that governmental bodies are not able to regulate because there would be too many servers and people would be fully in control. The relationship between this idea and the Mr. Bungle incident is that I feel that were there to be a peer-2-peer setup, occurrences might not occur. The reason for this is that many virtual worlds could be invite only and hopefully this would keep out unwanted people. Though it would be extremely naive to believe that there would be no disputes, the actions of Mr. Bungle were disgusting. The disputes would be more pragmatic, quotidian concerns.

The second thing that interested me about the Mr. Bungle incident was how violated people felt by it. Though I do not expect that users will not find issue with another user forcing them to do inappropriate things with kitchen utensils, the level of connection between people and their virtual selves is paramount to understanding how to mediate all disputes in the virtual world. There are many cases, especially among users who spend vast amounts of time in their virtual worlds, where they do not even see the line anymore between their virtual and real world selves. I notice this even in my life. I do not spend an exorbitant amount of time on my virtual world, yet I do feel a small connection to my avatar. However, as I discussed virtual worlds with another professor from the Legal Studies department, I was saying that many people use their avatar to represent themselves in the virtual world in the way they feel they cannot in the real world. This is not something I can empathize with. My avatar does not represent for me and hidden desires about aesthetics or anything else for that matter. I do not feel the need to skulk into any of the sex simulations in the virtual world. That's something that I could do in the real world if I wanted too.

This idea brings me to the character of Anshe Chung. She started out her empire by being a prostitute in the virtual world. This is not something that she would do in the real world. This is an example of more of a disassociation from one's virtual character. Even in the interview that was interrupted, it seemed that she was angrier that it wasn't about her, not that her avatar had been disrespected per se.

In seeing the need to regulate virtual worlds and the disputes that occur there needs to be a better understanding about the relationship between people and their online selves.