Cyber-sex goes mainstream (and dark)
Well, here it is folks, my first attempt at an actual social commentary. Of course, I had to pick something dark, disturbing, and all about sex. Oh well, despite the fact that my parents sometimes read this, here goes nothing…
From the time that people first logged on to a BBS system, and had the ability to become someone else behind a keyboard, they have lived out sexual fantasies by typing them on a computer. IRC, the Internet’s original chat rooms, has always been dominated by channels such as #sex, #bisexual, #b&d and the like.
Instant messengers such as ICQ and Yahoo! get plenty of use for describing what folks might like to do to one another, sight unseen.
Online games, from the very original MUDs (Multi-user domains [or dungeons]) have always featured the possibility of a virtual escapade. Once graphics were added (Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron’s Call) although the animations to support such activities were not there, people continued to type descriptions to one another, all while either imagining (or not) what the face behind the computer graphics were like. Cyber-sex now didn’t even require a particularly vivid imagination.
Those that know me well know that I have my reasons for strong feelings on the matter, but I have always felt that this was an extremely dangerous environment for those who may have trouble separating their real life from a virtual world, and vice versa. A friend of mine at work (who I didn’t tell I was writing this, so I won’t use their name) have often debated the ability of a virtual world to be more and more realistic, and exactly how realistic we wanted it to be. The crux of the debate often returned to the point that in order to have a realistic virtual world, freedom of behavior must be allowed. Anti-social behavior must be possible, but regulated in some way. Regulating unpleasant, anti-social, or even criminal behavior in a virtual world is extremely difficult. A virtual world has two great differences from the real one.
The first is anonymity. Reputations function in the real world to regulate behavior. If a given individual routinely behaves like an ass, then respectable individuals who are possibly more pleasant to be around will avoid this person. This does not work in a virtual world. Tomorrow the blonde, burly, bodybuilder who was harassing you could easily be a short, demure redhead with a couple of extra pounds on her. Your body, your look, is not something that you have to live with every day. Change it. Simply make another avatar. Since there is no risk that the reputation of your avatar will reflect on the real you, there is no incentive to behave in a say that the virtual society deems “acceptable.”
Of course, reputation does not solve all of society’s ills. We have crime in the real world, and for those times when reputation is not enough, we have punishment. Punishment works no better in the virtual world to regulate behavior than reputation did. There are only three types of punishment in our real world.
- Physical pain
- deprivation of privileges or freedom
- death
While punishment on a very personal level between two people may focus on pain (they have a fist fight), “official” channels of punishment through a court system focuses almost exclusively on the second (deprivation).
Steal a car, and you lose your freedom of movement and association for some period of time. Scam people out of their retirement savings, and get deprived of a sum of your money. Cheat on your spouse, and lose the privilege of their company. That’s the way the world works.
But how do you do that in a virtual world? How do you imprison someone? You can take away their permission to log on for some period of time, but this isn’t practicable for a number of reasons. As above, they can simply create a new avatar. Or go to a different world until they get imprisoned there. Also, the majority of these virtual worlds rely on payment from their subscribers to continue to exist. If someone gets put in “jail” for a lengthy period of time, they will simply stop subscribing, or worse yet, cancel and then start a new subscription, effectively erasing their criminal record. Death has the same issue, in that it either means something (in which case those punished will stop subscribing) or it doesn’t, in which case it is ineffective as a deterrent. The impracticality of physical deterrents in a virtual worlds are self evident.
This is not to say that the difficulty on creating an online society with standards for behavior is impossible, or that people are not trying to do exactly that. A new type of MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is coming, with different approaches to this issue, some quite original. The two that are getting the most attention are Red Light World and Sociolotron. Both of these virtual worlds don’t beat around the bush. It’s not about killing monsters, getting loot, or shooting laser beams from your eyes.
It’s about sex. Lot’s of it. And in the case of Sociolotron, it’s about bondage, domination, rape, and potential of other unpleasantness such as disease, death and pregnancy. Of course, what any of those terms mean in a virtual world is in question. Sociolotron supposedly has a system of justice, punishment, and even trial by your peers, as opposed to by GM [Game Master].
To be fair, I have not downloaded the game. To tell the truth, it’s not my speed. But I wonder about the people that would choose to live in a world where such behavior is expected. It is not without real life precedent. In frontier towns of the old west, many crimes committed by gang members went unpunished because you could always depend on two or three folks loyal to that gang being on any jury. Some of the most famous lawmen in the west’s history (Wyatt Earp for a specific example) earned their reputation by taking justice in to their own hands when it was proven that a courthouse was incapable of rendering a verdict. What happens in the world of Sociolotron when a corrupt jury sets your rapist free? What recourse do you have? Rape them back? Would that even be considered a recourse? After all, the “rapist” is still in charge, they are still controlling your behavior with theirs. It doesn’t take a vivid imagination to see how quickly this would degenerate into complete anarchy (which, while fun for the setting for a first person shooter, is hardly solid ground for starting a virtual society).
More importantly, given the heavy psychological aspect of many sex crimes, what happens if your behavior in a virtual world has real life consequences? I am not saying that the ability to commit rape in a virtual world will cause an otherwise healthy person to want to do so in real life. I am saying that the ability to act out anti-social fantasies online may attract those who may have a real life predisposition in the first place. That is a very, very dangerous idea.
Where does real life stop? Where does the virtual world begin? When does stalking someone in a game leave off, and writing them sexually charged, threatening e-mails constitute a real threat? At what point are actual flesh and blood policemen going to be asked to investigate acts committed while sitting at a computer keyboard?
Because in a virtual world, with virtual cops, virtual juries, and virtual jails, there still aren’t any consequences.
That’s quite a set of questions you raise - a topic of conversation that could be debated for hours (and requiring far more space than I have here).
The real problem here is that people have such a need/desire for a virtual world in the first place. Maybe if people would simply focus their energies on making their REAL lives better places to be, fewer of them would feel the need for a “realistic virtual world”. Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron anyway?
I’m not sure I agree there. A world that you can run away to every once in a while to forget your troubles, commitments, and responsibilities can be a healthy thing. After all, isn’t that fundamentally what a book or a trip to the movies give you? * The issue with these virtual worlds are that you share them with others. Kind of a community dream, so to speak.
However, combining a world (virtual or not) where your actions have a real effect on real people with an environment that encourages (what is, in our society, at least) illegal or immoral behavior seems like a very harmful environment to be in.
I agree that we all need some temporary means of escape once in a while; but I’d hardly put a reading a book or watching a movie in the same category as creating an alter-ego and joining an entirely non-existent world for yourself and others to “live” an alternate life. The time and level of personal/emotional commitment involved varies tremendously between the two. Books and movies have plots not determined by their audience and definite endings not prolonged by yet another code-spawned adventure (though sequels could be argued). If a book or movie lasted forever and altered it’s plot based on the audience’s actions, then we’d have a basis for comparison.