A question that is probably as old as clay tablets is whether mediated-sex (be it via phone, email, IM, SMS or in a VW) really counts as cheating on ones partner. While some of us muse about the ethics of this, others have gone ahead and based business models on it.
mediatedA few weeks ago I was surfing the blogsphere and came across this intriguing ad (Source: http://www.sljobs.blogspot.com/):
posted by RaAusar Powers at 8:49 PM | 0 comments
Friday, February 04, 2005
Private Detectives/Investigators Needed
Contact me (Bruno Buckenburger) if you are interested in doing some detective work for B.B. Investigations. Most of our work involves investigating infidelty and hiding of assets. We also get involved in undercover work. Undercover work has been mostly getting involved with club and other business owners. That seems to be really popular these days as more and more club owners are resorting to violence. We charge our clients a flat fee and also for any evidence we uncover (i.e. pictures).
We'll split that fee with you 50/50 in either Linden $ or US$ If US you need to have PayPal. Exchange rates are determined by the Gaming Open Market. We get you the leads and you deliver the services. Most of our needs are for women and we expect the women to do what they need to in order to get the job done. If you are unclear what that means, IM me in-world and I will explain. We also need you to be reliable and available. You need to be there when the target is there. Contact me in-world for more information. We look forward to your being a part of the team.
As soon as I spotted this I did the sensible thing – I sent it to someone else to do the hard detective work. In this case friend-of-the-show Hamlet Linen aka Wagner James Au. And detect he did. The results are in his piece: Watching the Detectives, which brings up the issue of using a Honey Pot trap.
Meanwhile over at The Secondlife Herald (yes this was the Alphaville herald) Cienna Samiam has gone for the headline grabbing angle: Linden Lab Supports Invasion of Your Privacy?. The Herald's angle is that detecting breaks all kinds of Linden rules but Hamlet’s ‘McStory’ constitutes support from Linden – hence they are encouraging players to break their own rules.
It’s quite a smorgasbord of issues. Though to me very few of them are specific to VWs. Detecting cheating and using attractive people of the opposite / same sex has gone on for the longest time, to me the shifts that digital technology seems to make are:
- Finding potential partners for online ‘romance’ is probably a lot easier than off line
- At least some people would see an online affair as less serious as an off line one
- A mediated environment such as Second Life makes it easier for some people to indulge in the kind of fringe sexual activity that they might not do off line, so people might find their patterns in all kinds of situations (some of them physically impossible to replicate (you’ve got to love SL animations))
Other than that it seems that the new silicon streets are just as mean and dirty as the old ones.
Its interesting to note how humans, or at least the clients of these services, might view online romance as real, yet the same person may view murder, gang and mafia activities as 'part of the game'. Is this "Selective attention based on insecurities?" or how else is 'in-game romance' different from other in-game activities? Why does an activity that in the real world brands you a serial killer and puts you on death row seemingly 'ok', and an activity that can simply get you divorced such a hot button?
To phrase it as a question: If you wouldn't date an 'online cheater', would you date an 'online serial killer'?
To extend this: Why would you ever date an online gamer? Wouldn't you be afraid one night you might be wearing your avocado mascara, he might mistake you for a green Orc and hit you with a meat cleaver?
Posted by: Andres Ferraro | Apr 04, 2005 at 12:45
In one of the more widely cited examples of "new games journalism", Ian Shanahan (aka "Always Black") has written an interesting piece on the ambiguities of virtual cheating:
Possessing Barbie [http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackbox/possessingbarbie.html].
Posted by: Peter Edelmann | Apr 04, 2005 at 13:25
Andres said:
"Its interesting to note how humans, or at least the clients of these services, might view online romance as real, yet the same person may view murder, gang and mafia activities as 'part of the game'."
I think for some people it is just part of a game, but for others it is a more social thing... a more arousing experience. Jealousy over this arousal is what may lead someone to think of on-line romance as cheating.
There's a difference between 'just role-playing' ("Neat, my character has a girlfriend!") and 'something more' ("I can't wait to talk dirty with her on-line again tonight!"). This difference matters most when it is a gamer's spouse/partner who is deciding which case it is.
When a person seeks some kind of arousal from someone other than his/her partner, it can be considered cheating. Flirting with someone on the subway can be cheating even if it doesn't become physical, if the partner feels hurt by it. This isn't necessarily insecurity, it's just part of the rules of a relationship, which vary from one relationship to another. Or do I watch Dr. Phil too often? yeesh.
Posted by: Neil | Apr 04, 2005 at 14:12
Neil,
I have a feeling (and no hard data) that if I tell a date that every night "I log in to a game and get a big shot of adrenaline as I'm doing PvP" I'm still on for a second date. However, if I say that every night "I log in to a game and get aroused by the dirty talk of my online pals" I'm pretty much out -and labeled a pervert-.
You're right in that this varies from relationship to relationship. If not, there'd be no swingers.
Evidently it all has to do with what you stated: The mutual understanding between the parties of what is ok, and what is not. The root of these rules being buried very deep...
Posted by: Andres Ferraro | Apr 04, 2005 at 15:55
Is this "Selective attention based on insecurities?" or how else is 'in-game romance' different from other in-game activities?
I would say the key difference is that while playing these games, players develop real relationships with other people which can sometimes lead to more.
I'm also not sure if by 'in-game romance' you mean an 'in character' romance, or a romance that develops online rather than offline. The former can have the risk of developing into the latter, and the latter can stir up real-world feelings and emotions despite it being online.
In contrast, other in-game activities like slaying guards and boars, rarely stir up real-world desires to go do those things.
Posted by: Thomas Rice | Apr 04, 2005 at 17:26
Peter Edelmann > Possessing Barbie http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackbox/possessingbarbie.html
Great link! Who knew There was –that- racy.
I’ve been thinking of blogging about NGJ, but, I dunno, maybe were over it already.
Posted by: ren reynolds | Apr 05, 2005 at 03:29
Speculative hat on /
I suspect the answer to "How can it be worse to be a libertine than a serial-killer ?" boils down to identification and empathy.
Few people will believe by looking at your avatar's routine that you are IRL a bat-winged vampire, or pinstripe-suited mafia thug, or a sociopath android - it's just to remote from what people expect of reality.
Being a cheater is something terribly mundane and intimate at once, and the crux of cheating is deception, starting from breaking some sort of exclusive contract, extending in cover-up lies, etc., all of which is problematic in the context of a game, where consensus and fair-play are the sole guarantees that everyone plays by the rules, but gets worse when all you know of people is limited to the game context (which is often the case when it comes to online worlds).
I posit the way we look at people we know only in online circles applies, in some twisted fashion, to the people we already know before we run into them online: because we are in a different state of mind, where we decode subtext from speech and actions accordingly to implicit (online-specific) rules, we don't relate to the other player in the same way we do off-line, instead building a secondary mental picture of him/her, exclusive to the online experience.
Problem is we have to bring together this new image and the old when we return to off-line mode (be it at the end of a session, or because we just had a glimpse of our SO being 'someone else' on screen as we pass by his/her seat on our way to the kitchen).
[This is a rhetorical 'we', btw, not necessarily true about you or me...]
If what we saw of someone we know is remote enough from how we picture him/her IRL, it's not hard to keep this 'alternate' insulated from the actual person, however the cheating cliche is that the dupe is always last to figure it all out, so we are prepared to the idea we could be oblivious to the obvious on this specific issue.
It's not like it was news, anyway, movies and TV play by the same semiformal set of rules online worlds do, where gruesome murder depicted in gory details is commonplace and barely frowned upon, while nudity and expletives are prohibited under the assumption in would taint the souls of children (or something).
The rationale being (hope I), that rabid murder is obviously enough fiction, while other socially unacceptable (yeah, it's weird, but I'm just trying to figure it out, too) behaviors may be closer to expectable reality and thus must be squashed.
The classic 'a rape in cyberspace' and the outrage it triggered, compared to the thousands of daily virtual murders are a pretty iconic example of it, imo.
In the same line of thought, expressions of racism, homophobia and other discriminative attitudes we are familiar with IRL are banned from the playground in most online worlds who allow for random murder.
/Speculative mode off.
I see a flaw in my reasoning, though: north-americans are more familiar IRL with rabid murderers than europeans (on average), and still are more worried about displays of politically incorrectness than EU people (on average again, and please don't call me on hard numbers, here).
Still, I think there may be something to the tune of: trust is worth the same on both sides of the screen, as people who pull off scams or hustles in games are oftentimes more despised than PKs, and regarded as bad, bad griefers, on the grounds that they call on RL social engineering to scam people - and therefore hurt 'for real'.
Just my two cents (in the slot machine).
-- Yaka.
Posted by: Yaka St.Aise | Apr 05, 2005 at 22:11
Peter Edelmann>Ian Shanahan (aka "Always Black") has written an interesting piece on the ambiguities of virtual cheating
I'm not sure that the uncomfortable feelings described in that article are necessarily to do with the interaction between the players. The author would be just as embarrassed if he thought his girlfriend might walk in while he was looking at a regular porn site. That's not so say I don't believe that people can form real relationships in virtual worlds, but it is to say that I don't think the question is even as clear as the author makes out (which itself is fairly ambiguous!).
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Apr 07, 2005 at 04:51