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

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!

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.

Precisely. Some people life with the pain of the real thing every day and possibly stories like the cyber rape belittle their own experiences.

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.

I guess it is like people who believe Coronation Street is real.

That is always a worry!

While virtual rape does not equate to rl rape it is still offensive.

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.

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.