Monday, April 16, 2007

thoughts and annotations on dibbell's article

at first, it really bothered my how casually Dibbell treated rape. just by the style of wiritng, i found it hard to seperate the virtualness of this incident from the realness of it--i couldn't look away, i couldn't stop reading.

when the author first described the voodoo doll and the way that you have to type command into the program, it bothered me. it more than bothered me--it incensed me. it made this rape seem even worse than rl rape--it was pre-meditated, it was considered, and it was still carried out.

is there a way to protect oneself in a MOO? are there weapons that one can use? is there some sort of kicking command? if not, why?

in response to "there were no explicit MOO rules against rape..." maybe the programers assumed that as a human, there were some things one jst didn't do. or maybe those who like to frequent these MOOs and who decide to rape these "people," are so far detatched from their human self that they can't control themselves.

overall, i found this article extremely nerve-wracking and scary. i was dreading reading it.

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