Are some people really so stupid as to expect privacy in SL?

Exactly! Hell, I've even invited newbies to try out my stuff, to save them the hassle of getting orbited all over SL!

When I first came here (a bit longer ago than this incarnation), I happily wandered in and out of everything, completely clueless that the same sad and sorry notions of possession and privacy from the physical world prevailed in SL. In a way, I guess I was lucky, because it was a while before anyone came the heavy with me and lectured me on ownership; that was when I realised that not everyone saw SL as I did, as a wonderful playground.

Like Stephen, I was more than a little disappointed to realise that so many people bring all that baggage here with them, but as one who respects everyone's right to hold a view different to mine, I've come to accept it. One thing will never change - my place will always be open house to all comers!

I used to explore exactly the same way. One day, I came across a huge estate.....it was amazing....I had never seen anything like it in SL. The owner was there....he came down from his home, and greeted me graciously. He invited me to look around, and to explore the whole property.

He invited me to come into his home and look around, and he showed me a piano, and told me to play the piano. This was amazing!

I was particular fascinated by the fish in his pond. I had never seen fish before. He had fishing poles to use!

He had an elaborate waterfall system, and he told me I could come there any time and use it. I had never seen that before, either. I had not heard the sound of the water flowing like that before, in SL. It was amazing.

That guy, and the way he invited me to experience everything....kept me in SL, for who knows how long. Maybe that guy and that memory keeps me in SL today. I wish I had kept his name. There were many others like him....but on that day....that guy...made a huge impact in SL. HUGE.

OK, first off, perhaps you have written up some propsals, and I never once said you haven't. But I'm not seeing a single one being offered up in this thread either. By anybody. Including you. And no, something telling us to build skyboxes doesn't cut it. That's just telling us that we are not allowed to use the ground on our own properties that we are paying for.

Now, when it comes to #'s of actual incidents, since I've been in SL for over three years some of the incidents are a little tough to recall, but let's see what I can do.

First there is of course the one that I've already shared, of the guy teleporting straight into our living room to invite us to a discussion of rude behavior in SL. This occured when I had property in Mumun on the mainland.

There's also an incident in a skybox I had (yes I've gone that route for privacy also) above Sinaburoe, where somebody not on my property at all was hammering on the scripted door trying to force it to open for hours before he finally gave up and went away. I stayed in the whole thing the whole time watching this going on and couldn't believe his persistence.

Last month, on an estate owned by Relic Starbrook, while the other two above were mainland properties, I had somebody walk right into our home and tell us to get out because we're on her property. I personally banned her from our property and informed Relic. Turned out it was a good thing I did because she had also pulled the same trick immediately upon her abrupt exit from our property, with somebody else in another estate also owned by the same guy. This earned her a complete ban, initiated by him, from every single estate he owns.

Also there were three incidents in Mumun of people opening the doors to our house and walking right in, while I was present there, saying they saw a TV in the house and were there to watch TV. When I informed them this was a private house the typical response was something to the effect of "so what? I'm here to watch TV."

Those are the ones I remember. That makes what, six? You may not think it's a lot of them considering I've been in SL over three years, but I say it's too many.

For me, three-plus years later, I still wander happily, willfully oblivious to whether a place might be "private" or not. I'm not the least bit ashamed of it, either.

On the other hand, I don't get a lot of time to explore anymore, so the chances of me popping in on anyone's parcel uninvited is vanishingly small, but I gotta say: what time I do have for exploring, I'm sure as hell not going to spend it checking About Land on every parcel that looks interesting to make certain it's listed in Search (and therefore public, by definition).

So sometimes I bounce into those dopey whitelist banlines or lame security orbs. Doesn't happen as often as one might expect, however, and that's because I generally explore places that look interesting, and almost without exception banlines and security orbs are "protecting" the least imaginative real estate on the grid. Maybe a prefab, some sex furniture, and (God knows why) a few palm trees. That's not going to be anything I'd want to spend any time exploring anyway.

That brings to mind the notion of "urban camouflage." If one really wants privacy, all that's needed is to hide behind a boring facade.

As far as I personally am concerned your wanderings are not a problem. It's the people who see a HOUSE and don't bother to think about the fact that it's a house. Just walk right in. It's a building, and everything in SL wants to be public anyway, right? Those are the people who make ban lines necessary. Plus idiots like the unenlightened bloke who thinks just because there are two green dots together it's an invitation for him to teleport in and invite them to a group discussion. No it isn't.

So feel free to continue to explore and see the sights out there, that's really cool. All I'm expecting and asking is that people respect people's homes and stay out of them, then we wouldn't need to be pre-emptive in making sure entry is not possible.

Actually, I have and it happened to me, when I was newer to SL. I had just finished building my little home on my first land plot, including a locking door. I was in the process of working on my appearance, thus was in the buff, in my home, door locked and some numbnuts rings the bell. I say, "I'm sorry, I'm not accepting visitors at this time." I kind of expected Numbnuts to fly off or something. But noooo.. Numbnuts sits on one of my pieces of furniture and comes it. He then proceeds to stand up, rez his own chair and give my a critique of my newbie appearance.

Yeah, I banned his butt, but it took me a couple of minutes to figure out the tools.

Mind you, this didn't inspire my current ban lines, but similar incidences did. Especially when I had a project in progress, crashed out, and logged in to find someone else on my project work stand, rezzing their own creations to work on. Hey, that's what the pose stands in the SHOP are for! And they proceeded to complain about my project being in "their way" on MY land. Bah.

Now, yes, Argent, you did come up with some great ideas. I would vote for some of them, but they aren't what I want.

I'm an oddball. I like people watching me, giving me helpful comments when I'm building, seeing errors that I can't. I just don't want them between my camera and my project. Or on my project pose stand when I'm working on a project.

If I could find a way to handle that without resorting to a security orb, putting my workshop in the sky (it adds to the "feel" of my plot), or something equally extreme, I'd gladly take down the ban lines.

What, creating yet another Jira, starting a new thread about it, that's nothing?

Go to hell, again.


He wasn't on your property. How would ban lines have helped?

Let's see, in Noonkkot, right next to Sinaburoe, I've had one guy put up a bunch of pictures of roadkill in his property facing our lot, and they stayed there for months until he finally abandoned the land and we could buy it... I never spoke to him, but apparently he had something against furries. I've had to set up an invisiprim wall to block the view of an adfarm next sim over. I've had someone set up a bunch of instant-action "security" orbs at the end of a runway because he thought collecting crashed aircraft was a hoot. Another time someone buried a tubgirl bomb in the middle of Noonkkot... I think they were after someone's store but the fallout hit the whole of the sim... the Linden who finally came out to locate end delete it was wearing a hazmat suit.

The biggest bit of landowner griefing I ever saw happened in Sinaburoe... I suspect it was before your time there... about 1/4 of the sim in the middle was owned by someone who was setting up some rental properties and gardens. Over a period of several months another group of people bought out about half the sim, buying up the land around the edge, until they could block her out with a huge ugly castle. Once she gave up and sold out they abandoned the whole sim.

I've seen dozens of examples of griefing, and for most of them banlines provided no protection. I don't doubt that you've seen plenty too. I was asking you specifically about the incident where someone walks in and claims they own the house. That's the one you keep trotting out, as if it happens all the time. It turns out that was a single incident with a specific griefer... not a trend. Which is what I expected.

So, you've had half a dozen incidents, all minor, and decide that one's too many. I've had maybe a dozen, some of them nastier than any of yours, and I don't consider griefers a big problem. And yet who's been working on actually coming up with real solutions?

Oh, I see, so any other incident of somebody entering my home uninvited, and trespassing, are irrelevant, only those where they claim to own my own home matter.

Well, I'm throwing your own words right back at you, with prejudice.

Go to hell, Argent.

I didn't say they didn't matter, I said they weren't the situation that you keep bringing up as if it's this big problem.

OK, so I shouldn't stick with the one single worst example then, because the real problem is that the general public doesn't have enough brain cells to realize that private property is just that, private. Until the general public in SL respects the integrity of a home the same way they're expected to do in RL, the need for ban lines will not go away.

There are a lot of people here in this thread who have made it quite clear that we the property owners are supposed to 1) allow them to see everything on our property, and 2) not put up ban lines on any property (or security orbs either) so that they have unfettered access to such properties. This attitude is extremely offensive and not to be tolerated until such time as we the property owners know we can build a house, at ground level, and uninvited people will not set foot in our homes for any reason whatsoever. Since Linden Lab refuses to listen to any proposals that involve any protection whatsoever at ground level, other than putting up ban lines, the ban lines will stay. This is why I say that nobody, including yourself, has ever proposed any viable solutions, because there are no viable techincal solutions as long as Linden Lab refuses to implement them. Who's going to educated the great unwashed before they're turned loose on the grid that they have no business in anybody's homes? I can't, can you?

OK, then.

I didn't realize until about 6 months into the game, that we are not all playing the game the same way. Even owning a home for 5 months of that. The region I lived in did not allow ban lines or security orbs....I didn't even know what they were.

There were active neighbors on every single parcel (not like today). They were from England, Belgium, Japan, Brazil, Canada, France, and US. We wandered around each others' properties looking at whatever was new, and sending notes back and forth complimenting each other, and asking each other where we got certain things.

No one ever came Unglued. No one ever minded a bit. I don't recall anyone ever getting mad about a "visitor" from outside the neighborhood either....to the contrary, most visitors were given a tour of the neighborhood.

THAT is what some of us learned in the beginning. That doesn't mean that we don't have brain cells or that we are offensive. We thought that was how the game was played. We thought it was different than RL. In a positive way. We were not taught that we must lock our homes and put up fences and keep each other out at all times, and that if someone cammed into your home to see your new sofa, they were a creep. We were the "general public" and we were nice people.

You have taught us that lesson. Happy now?

I definitely value my privacy in secondlife, when im at home, I don't use ban lines or orbs but when someone walks onto my property and starts watching me what im doing or asking questions, that is fine but these people don't realize that it is rude to walk on someone's property, even in real if you did that you would get the cops on your butt.

No, the real problem is that there's assholes who get their lulz from pissing people off, and one of the ways they do it is to play sillybuggers with people's homes. If they can't get their sick jollies that way, they'll do something else, you'll just get yourself griefed some other way.

The problem isn't the houses, the problem is assholes.

The solution isn't ban lines, the solution is effective ARs.

Ones that stick, even for griefer alts.

I know I"m going to sound contrary, but no I'm not happy, because you don't get it. I'll say it again, in plain English. The point here is to keep people out of our HOMES. Not to keep people from looking at our gardens or what have you. When you see a wall of a house and a door, that means "YOU KEEP OUT OF THIS BUILDING." THAT is the problem, people who don't respect THAT.

Then put up your fences and your ban lines. I "get it" very clearly.

No, you don't. You've demonstrated that quite well. You think that banlines mean you can't even explore a garden, and they don't. Considering that if I put up ban lines around my home at all, it only extends to my home. That's what subdividing properties is for. That way you can come within about 5 meters or so, roughly of my front door, and no further. The rest of the property, explore at will. But you can't get inside my house because there are stupid people who cannot grasp the simple fact that a house is not a place where they belong uninvited.

A locked door with no obvious means of access should be all that is necesarry. If people would simply respect the obvious wishes of others, we wouldn't need banlines, security orbs or landscape wrecking privacy options.

On one piece of land I parked an airship a couple hundred meters above the ground, locked the door and set it to group only. Of course there were people who didn't take the hint. I never ran into anyone who went so far as to claim it was theirs, but did teleport in on one guy who acted like it was.

While I don't mind people exploring most of my property, if you can't walk there and my teleporters won't take you there, you probably don't belong there.

I get it.

I could explain to you how I get it, to assure you that I get it....but then I would have to use buzz words that might set you off.

Yes, it's a slack Sunday so what the heck, and before anyone posts about the length of the post: there's no tithe on text so if it's not short enough, by all means feel free to carry on to the next post.

Scylla, assuming you read this, I should say that I don't think the issue of online rape ties in that closely with stalking, which was the line I had been taking in the discussion. The two things often go together in RL but they're not at all the same thing. For one thing, women make excellent stalkers too and for another, the intentions of the stalker and the effects on the victim of being stalked won't necessarily be the same as a case of rape.

Your reading list is a bit circular in the way Bugeja comes back to Lynn's article about the Brussels police investigating a case of rape in SL. I wonder was the case ever prosecuted or does it just make interesting headlines for journalists and researchers to reference? Boyd and Lynn both reference Dibbell's account of the LambdaMOO fracas but where is the real weight of it all? Apart from the residents of LambdaMOO insisting on implementing measures to deal with bad behaviour, did anyone take the incident seriously enough to make a case of it in RL? I believe the answer is 'No'.

There is a very slippery feel to all the speculation around what amounts to some very puerile and vulgar textual antics on the part of Mr Bungle when the only solid reaction from the 'victims' was that they were real pissed with him, they took their revenge and had him deleted from the game.


The implications of 'rape' in virtual worlds has been discussed several times that I can think of on these forums alone and the consensus, as far as SL goes at any rate, seems to be that rape is very much tied in with roleplaying and there is no real harm done because it is essentially consensual. For one thing, I don't imagine collared residents would agree with Duranske's suggestion that BDSM collars facilitate rape and the gist of discussions of the issue on these forums was very much reflected in the discussion following Duranske's article.

His caveat that a virtual rapist can take advantage of newbie ignorance doesn't wash with me at all: I would argue that new residents should take responsibility for themselves and get the hang of basic concepts like camera control, the communication interface and important features like the 'Stand' and 'Mute' buttons before experimenting with SL or any other virtual environment for that matter. But this is another can of worms in itself: the Lindens shouldn't be allowing new residents in-world at the drop of a hat these days. An induction period on 'Orientation Island' is an absolute prerequisite even at the cost of new accounts logging out permanently within their first few hours.

Aside from the issue of 'virtual rape', the general ignorance and lack of competence of newbies makes them not only a hazard to others but to themselves as well. I still think the OP's experience with his neighbour revolves on her lack of consideration for others in this respect. And a good deal of the controversy over privacy hinges on newbies often making the unconscious judgement that other residents really are just little Barbie or Kens to be observed/ignored/verbally abused or whatever without a second thought as they duckwalk around the Grid trying to work what it's all about. At best, some newbies seem to think other residents are mentors by default; that they're only there to show them the ropes.

I am rarely, if ever, disturbed by communications or interference by anyone more than a month or so past their rez date. I suspect use of security orbs and banlines would drop considerably if the concept of privacy could be efficiently relayed to newbies from the outset. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Julian Dibbell points this tendency of newbies to test the boundaries of more seasoned residents in the Village Voice link you provided.

It's a great blog though, very well-written. I've bookmarked it and I plan to read through the rest of his articles in time.


As you probably guessed already, I totally agree with the Wired article. I might have written it myself.

Interestingly, Regina Lynn is one of the few journalists I read on the subject of online intimacy and relationsips, and of course all the shenanigans besides, long before I saw the first mention of SL. Being a fairly regular reader of Wired since 2004, it surprises me that I found out about SL elsewhere and much later. I was very disappointed that neither she nor any of her colleagues seemed to put in time at the Wired sim although I'm sure she and more than a few of the other Wired correspondents still have accounts in SL.


Dibbell's story is a very interesting and nicely told, reading like a game of consequences between MR James and William Gibson. However, I suspect it's impact might just be down to the matter of his style as much as the events he describes so well. Something about his description of LambdaMOO reminds me of Mark Z Danielewski's 'House of Leaves' and I have to ask what the residents of LambdaMOO were looking for when they logged into that darkly gothic mansion? I guess they didn't expect to be manipulated like dolls and 'raped' but Mr Bungle nevertheless strikes me as a well-defined figure of horror extending the theme of the place through his actions. And after all he was just as vulnerable to being manipulated as the others. Wise old Iggy put a stop to his assault easily enough.

The whole story was laughable to me, right down to Mr Bungle duping Samaritan into freeing him from Iggy's cage, but again that might have been down to Dibbell's style, which I took to be the blackest humour. And where was the damage actually done? Despite her tears of frustration, it seems Moondreamer was only severely pissed about the whole business when she posted her view on what happened the following day. As Dibbell said himself:



I use a FGĞIOD keyboard myself but I guess that's beside the point. What is interesting is that two of the 'victims', exu and Kropotkin, were anarchists. Anarchists ready to backflip through a loophole distinction between toading or erasing Mr Bungle as opposed to effectively destroying him, which of course they insisted it wasn't any thing of the sort: they were merely turning the collective back on him. I must say that's very typical of the po-faced manner in which thinkers of that brand manage their double standards.

At the end of the day, the LambdaMOO players payed a high price for playing out their drama in altogether the wrong direction and, by Dibbell's account, the place was never the same after Bungle was erased. Perhaps things would have developed more positively if his victims had responded with some creativity and used the humiliation and distress that he brought them to make the incident into something else more interesting? Did no one think to turn the tables on Mr Bungle and perhaps 'redraw' his character as something blander and offensively less offensive like Ronald McDonald or Sideshow Bob even?

Perhaps that wasn't possible but I wonder why not if it was technically possible for one player's character to 'rape' several others, for another player to cage him in turn?

Bungle's rebirth as Dr Jest showed at least some creative response to the farrago but Dibbell's conclusions regarding his redefinition of rape as a crime against the mind lost me. It is just the sort of exaggerated dramatising that keeps bubbling up to the muddy surface of discussion boards dealing with the question of online violence. Unfortunately he seems to disappear up his own backside in the end: I suppose he was too busy deconstructing his thoughts but it was a real shame he missed out on picking Mr Bungle or Dr Jest's brain about the affair. Dr Jest's reappearance in the living room, another mass rape and the inevitable toading that followed are very central but he skates by the event as if it were an afterthought.

It would have been interesting to read the logs immediately preceding Bungle and Jest's 'crimes' and see if maybe something in the environment and behaviour of his fellow players set him on his course. Looking back, there have been moments in certain types of RP situations within SL when players have insisted on going so far OOC, and with such obstinate persistence and utter banality, that I really wouldn't have minded myself handing them a steak knife and urging them to unblock their double-bracketed arses.

Honestly. It wouldn't have cost me a second thought if the thought had occurred to me in the first place. It is only pixels after all, and like Mr Bungle, I think it is wonderful that we can take advantage of this simple fact and play with atrocious notions in the same way we can equally conjure up fantastic beauty. On the other hand, I can't speak for anyone who takes Michel Foucault seriously. I think it's just asking for a trauma in the pixels to apply the sloppy scholarship of that lazy slob to a discussion of online behaviour and ethics.

Perhaps I'm short on patience but I could take Dibbell's thesis about rape being an attack on the mind and argue that some folk have a way of being so polite and bland and yet very clear on their right to do as they please that I'm sure it never occurs to them they are being abusive to strangers, raping them with their relentless focus on smalltalk in certain situations. Silly, I know, but there are cafés and plazas all over SL where they can indulge themselves with that kind of thing and it occurs to me that Mr Bungle perhaps found himself in the midst of just such a soirée on LambdaMOO.

I could be wrong of course. It's just a thought.


I don't go with the association between violence in the media being an influence on our behaviour at all. I grew up in a part of the world where extreme violence was very much an everyday occurrence and Jerry slamming an iron in Tom's face or any amount of Sam Peckinpah films in our local cinema had precious little to do with it I am sure.

Also people in the community where I live today have precious little access to television, cinema, video games and even printed matter. Life is hard for them and this is a level of luxury well beyond their time and means. Nevertheless, violence against women, children, men and even animals is equally rife. The bit about the animals isn't bathos, by the way: I've had to intervene and stop a group of children kicking and beating a heifer on its way up the street for sacrificial slaughter. Their parents were egging them on with a great deal of swearing and shouting from the sidelines and I still get dirty looks from one or two of them about that.



I had to ask myself why a depiction of violence against the effigy of a particular woman is deemed symbolic of violence against womankind in general? How did we get to the point where it is second nature for this conclusion to be drawn? What is the basis for thinking like this? The jerk was out of order with his prank but it's a slick trick to conclude he was making an assault on women everywhere.


I don't agree with this assertion at all. Writers like Waddington make the argument stick by inferring most everybody suffers from a lack of affect whereas the inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality is not by any means a prevalent disorder. People can tell the difference.

I have trouble with Boyd's thesis in general. Every other point she makes is selectively building an image of online behaviour that does not tally with my own experience: "the overtly 'masculine' atmosphere of some online forums" is completely at odds with my SL experience, for instance, where there are just as many if not far more females than males either in-world or on these forums and an equally feminine vibe about the atmosphere and attitudes of residents in general. And I wonder why "research on sexualised violence against women in gaming and virtual environments has not generally kept up with the extent of its occurrence"? Is it really any more prevalent than similar occurrences against males in SL? Is online violence that much of a public health issue in any respect?


I never heard of Game Masters although I gather from this that it involves a GM setting the basic events that shape the backstory of a roleplaying game, thereby affecting what happens to the various players. I have seen loose versions of this in some SL roleplaying sims but one of the things I both appreciate and denigrate about SL is that every resident ultimately makes his or her own choices in RP scenarios as they would do anywhere else in-world. Some do this more creatively than others but I'm not sure how Laurenson's prescription fits in with SL ethics (if there is such a thing).


She's bang on. It is complicated, obviously, because I just don't get it. That or I guess there are an awful lot of people out there who need to get their thinking straight. For the time being at least, I have to assume the latter because, frankly, I won't risk my sanity trying to follow their twisted thinking on this one.

I do agree with her thesis that rape just isn't that necessary to a storyline and I'd certainly like to see how she might run an RP sim in SL. The chances are high that she might work some very interesting and original character development with other players. That said, I find her arguments why rape is a taboo above all other forms of crime confused. Insensitivity to the mores and dislikes of others is such a common phenomenon of online interaction that it doesn't have to be a singular no-no on the issue of rape.

For instance, I once had a barney with a complete stranger in SL, a passer-by, that began with an innocent enough enquiry from him about my haircut. Next thing the guy was all over me with the usual questions where I was from in RL, my age, what I do for a living. All of this before I could rattle off my stock reply that "I don't like to discuss RL". I guess the sim was kind of laggy that day.

Anyway he comes back with "I don't suppose we have much to discuss at all then". I pointed out we were standing in a very fine sim. It was my first visit and I could think of lots of things we could talk about. I might even have offered him a few pointers on how I fixed my haircut, seeing how he was so interested. He disagrees so I suggest he go outside in RL, take a walk down his high street and find somebody to chat about RL in a bar or café or something. Well that was the cruncher, see, because he tells me he can't, he's a paraplegic, house bound.

And, of course, I felt like an insensitive jerk for making the assumption he could just up and walk out his front door anytime like I could do. Thing is, it occurred to me afterwards that he was a bit of an insensitive jerk himself. After all, he might have lost the use of his legs but he didn't lose the use of his brain, did he? Why could he not think outside of the box for a bit and just go with talking about something else when I made it plain I wasn't interested in talking RL?

Apologies for the digression but that story was to illustrate how I learned it's just so easy to get on the wrong side of folk in online situations. I would argue that it is in fact so easy, you would practically have to be a diplomat to get by without rubbing someone the wrong way de temps en temps.

So it shouldn't take a degree in rocket science to understand that one person will not see rape as being that big a deal when, more often than not, online environments allow for the whole gamut of violations one human being may perpetrate against another.

Finally, my 'lexile reading level' was only 1/3 of the Britannica article and I'm not up to taking out a subscription so I couldn't follow Bugeja through to his conclusions. However, I did catch this:


In SL I've been shot at, the RL corollary of which being that I would be dead now, I've been blasted into space, I've been insulted outright, I've been slandered and I've had to put up with all sorts of bullsh!t besides that would have serious consequences if they were events in my RL but I'll live regardless and I certainly don't see any of it as a gender-conspiracy against males just because that is what I am. It's only pixels, as I keep insisting, and the bottom line for anyone who has met similar attacks on their av is that they should get over it or drop it like a hot potato if it is so distressful.

tl;vb

Pep (Starts from the basis that "virtual rape" is an oxymoron.)

Oh good grief. This again. I cannot begin to imagine a real life victim of violence of any kind being anything but deeply offended by the subject arising in a petty discussion of whose viewer gets to see which "private" pixels. It's absurd and demeaning and as inapt an analogy as I've seen since a thread about lost inventory items got the full Godwin, Niemüller and all.

You don't like it, don't read it. Your concern for the tribulations of others is quite touching but I suppose equally irrelevant. I'd insist that it's perfectly ok to discuss whatever, whenever, as the issue arises.

In fact I found your long post quite interesting and well crafted. That's not to say that the subject warrants discussion. By now the appeal of raising virtual victimhood at every opportunity wanes, one should think, and countering that position as if it merited serious consideration should be overkill, one would hope. I do not, however, question your judgment that it's still necessary. I dearly wish it were not.

/signed
.

Trouble is that I think it is relevant as long as there are folk who are sufficiently disturbed by it - and I include myself in the 'disturbed' category because I'm disturbed that there are folk who are disturbed in this context. While I see a whole world of difference between the issues in reality and virtuality, it seems a considerable body of people would disagree.