During my reading of Bell & Community & Cyberculture, I read about the strange case involving LambdaMOO (an online dungeon) and a cyber perpetrator by the name of Mr Bungle, who, with an online voodoo doll and a piece of programming code, could take over the identities of other players and force them to perform offensive acts.
After some further investigation into this strange story I found that several users posted on the in game MOO mailing list about the emotional trauma caused by Mr Bungle’s actions. One user whose avatar was a victim, called his voodoo doll activities “a breach of civility” while, in real life, “post-traumatic tears were streaming down her face”. This made me question how deeply these people related to their online identites.
I once had my car stolen (bare with me because there is a point…) and after it was missing for a few hours it was located and returned by the police. Now I had really loved that car, but once I got it back it just wasn’t the same and a few months later we parted company. Later I was recounting the story to a male friend and his response was ‘ having you car stolen is a bit liked being raped’. Bless him – he was serious!
So my car was stolen and my love affair with it was over, but I had not been physically violated. There was no comparison between my experience and a real rape. Just like I feel that there is no comparison between what Mr Bungle did and an attack in the real world. What did suprise me was the very emotional response by the people who’s avatars where ‘attacked’. It seemed exteme. However, if we consider the power of this community, as the possibility that it has become a replacement for a ‘real life’ community, then this becomes more understandable.
“community has become a ‘lost object’, nostalgized and looked-for (or longed-for) in cyberspace” Bell, Community & Cyberculture pg 105
If this is the case, and these people are searching for utopia in cyberspace that they are missing in real life, then an attack of this nature could be incredibly disruptive. When I visit online worlds it is ‘just a game’ – if I get pwned (throughly beaten) it is not a big issue. However, my approach to cyberspace could be considered different to many.
“virtual culture is a cultural retreat from the world (Robins CR:91)” Bell, Community & Cyberculture pg 105
The next question is ‘is this healthy?’
Tags: Bell, community, identity, LambdaMOO, virtual world
While virtual rape does not equate to rl rape it is still offensive. I have found myself in tears (more than once) by things said to me in a virtual space, so I understand why people would feel hurt by something so overtly aggressive.
I think the labelling is off putting – I hate when people use something like PTS so lightly. But as to the question of “how deeply these people related to their online identites” I think I don’t relate to my online identity at all – I AM my online identity. Just because I am online doesn’t make it any less me.
Maybe being sexually abused online can be likened to receiving an anonymous and random obscene phone call – they don’t know you, but is still spooky, and it is still you that is being spooked.
To view it another way if it is possible to express love and simulate *cough* physical affection in a virtual space in order to engender positive feelings in yourself and another, then it must be possible to suffer when that same sense of self is abused in such a negative way.
Thanks for your comments Tracy.
I do agree that any kind of personal attach can be upsetting, even when it occurs in cyberspace. However, I still find that I draw a line between my own virtual identity in blogs, FB, twitter etc and my very well used avatars in World of Warcraft. In WoW these avatars are characters, rather than really representations of myself, and therefore actions undertaken against them are not taken against me. However comments made in FB etc are aimed at me as an individual and are as a result intended to be hurtful. These comments are very hurtful.
Oh I agree – in a game context we have to distance ourselves from our characters. But some people get very confused, lol – I guess it is like people who believe Coronation Street is real.
That is always a worry!
Sarah, I’m just writing up a blog post on Bell and although I’m not talking about the Mr Bungle incident in it I was struck by that part of the chapter. It sounds from Bell’s account and your own posting like there are two elements to the sense of violation: the sense of violation of the virtual person; and the theft of identity inherent in someone seizing access of your avatar.
I think that Tracy’s comment that such violation might be more like an obscene phone call than anything one would define as rape but I do believe some real sense of violation is possible online. The phrasing is really alarmist and I wonder if there is any sense of peer expectation about the reaction: I wonder if it just might not just be that their characters/avatars have been made to do obscene things with Mr Bungle, but that it is “falsely attributed to other characters in the virtual community” so there knowledge amongst other players of what the characters have done. Not only will players feel violated but they will also want to protect their reputation in a space where involvement relies on relationships and credibility and that may lead to a more hysterical characterization of the act that has taken place.
With several players effected I think it is also likely that labels will have been thrown around quite lightly with little thought about what those terms might mean to people with some sort of experience or proximity to their more real/legal definition. I know when I have been part of online communities receiving abuse the level of hysteria and flame wars can quickly get whipped up as multiple offended parties become enraged and encourage each other to react to the offending party.
So, I think you can feel a sense of violation and offense online in a virtual community like LambdaMOO but I think to characterize any online activity as akin to rape is to be quite offensively unaware of what that term means to other people.
[...] article last month. Indeed the MUD experience discussed by Julian Dibbell (1999, quoted in (2), and which I commented on elsewhere) puts in mind my own experience of being part of a “kd lang Mailing List” which [...]
Thanks for your comments Nicola.
I completely agree with you; surely it is a matter of scale and how close you feel to the creation being abused. In a situation like Twitter where it is a very personal narrative, such attacks would surely feel more intense. Take for example the fabulous Mr Stephen Fry and his latest twitter traumas where he was upset by a another blogger calling his texts ‘boring’. As Stephen uses his own name and his own thoughts these comments hurt as much as if someone had come up and said it to him in the street.
Since the incident Stephen has appologised for his response and made peace with the user. I think this is also relevant because after the sting of the comment has passed, he became aware that his response was possibly a little over the top and that no one was physically hurt!
Precisely. Some people life with the pain of the real thing every day and possibly stories like the cyber rape belittle their own experiences.