Cyberstalking

A friend recently asked me to have a look into what legal protections are available to someone who is being stalked online. Their query was complicated by the victim being in a different country than the stalker. I approached the issue by researching the relevant law in both countries, and then shifted my focus to [...]

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Virtually Valuable

While reading the comments on a friend’s blog post about Freebies, I came across the standard comment (and from a Second Life resident no less), which goes along the lines of “it’s all just play clothes on virtual dolls, why do you all give a crap?”. I was going to reply to it but realised [...]

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Anxiety and Paranoia in a Virtual World

I have had Second Life friends who frequently suffer anxiety attacks – I can think of four people off the top of my head but there may be more. I always encouraged them to be open about the way they were feeling so I could reassure and comfort them. I did this primarily out of [...]

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Sexual Perversion and Deviance, in Second Life

Replies to my recent post about Virtual Illegalities, and reading this very entertaining item (“Vaginas with teeth and other sexual myths“), got me thinking about what we can learn from Second Life about sexual “perversions” and “deviance”. This post brings together a lot of thoughts I’ve expressed over previous blog entries, specifically as they relate [...]

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Virtual Illegalities: Drugs, Prostitution, and Paedophilia

One of the great joys of Second Life is the ability to try-out and live-out things that you can’t do in the real world. It allows you to safely experiment with activities that you might otherwise be too afraid or unable to attempt. And it lets you do things that might be considered illegal in [...]

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Second Life Addiction Quiz

A recent commenter on my blog claimed you can’t be addicted to Second Life. I countered with a “oh yes you can be”.
It doesn’t take much of a Google search to find people making the claim that it’s possible (examples of relevant links include this and this and this).
Inspired by my good friend Rrish over [...]

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Facebook Free Day!

If you’ve been reading my blog regularly you’ll have a good idea of my opinion on social online media like Second Life, Facebook, Twitter etc: Yes they can be entertaining and have a lot to offer some people, but many people are wasting their lives to the tune of very many hours a day doing [...]

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Alt Personality

I’ve found that when people create alts, an interesting thing happens: It seems to intensify their personality. When I’ve met people in their alt form they’re usually acting more intensely – more in your face, or more nice, or more cruel, or more honest, or even more funny. In turn, I also find that my [...]

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Suicide Watch

One of the most intense and recurring experiences in my time in Second Life, has been talking to suicidal people. In particular, trying to talk suicidal people out of killing themselves. I have decided to write this post about suicide and Second Life, for three reasons: The first is I want the people who use [...]

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The Merits of Porn

After reading a recent local story about public outrage over a porn billboard, I was reminded of a course I did as part of my Philosophy degree back in my university days. It was called “Philosophy of Feminism” but it might as well have been called “why you should be a lesbian”. I’m only exaggerating [...]

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