Virtual harassment - Is it a real thing?

[marshwiggle]

Woman claims she was 'groped' in Meta's virtual reality metaverse

And if virtual harassment is a real thing, should it be tried in virtual court with virtual sentencing?

[ergative]

I think any domain in which people can interact with each other will include people being dicks. So, yes, virtual harassments is absolutely a real thing.

Whether it is so severe a thing as to warrant any kind of penalty is of course a different question. I can imagine that a service that provides an interactive domain will have some sort of terms of service that say 'don't be a dick', with penalties such as blocking from the service if you violate it. This may serve as the thing that you're facetiously referring to a virtual court with virtual sentencing.

However, given the tone of your post, I get the sense you're not terribly interested in the actual issue of how to prevent people from being dicks to each other.

[secundem_artem]

I think any domain in which people can interact with each other will include people being dicks. So, yes, virtual harassments is absolutely a real thing.

Whether it is so severe a thing as to warrant any kind of penalty is of course a different question. I can imagine that a service that provides an interactive domain will have some sort of terms of service that say 'don't be a dick', with penalties such as blocking from the service if you violate it. This may serve as the thing that you're facetiously referring to a virtual court with virtual sentencing.

However, given the tone of your post, I get the sense you're not terribly interested in the actual issue of how to prevent people from being dicks to each other.

I have no proof to back this up, but it would not surprise me in the least to find that there are cave paintings dating back to the dawn of humanity that prominently feature BOOBS!!!!  I'm seriously dubious that sexual harassment is a modern creation. 

[mahagonny]

Whether it is so severe a thing as to warrant any kind of penalty is of course a different question. I can imagine that a service that provides an interactive domain will have some sort of terms of service that say 'don't be a dick', with penalties such as blocking from the service if you violate it.

Doesn't sound like the King's English to me.

[Parasaurolophus]

Of course virtual harassment is real harassment.

Virtual sexual harassment is also clearly a real thing (e.g. revenge porn, to take a more extreme example of how it can manifest).

I take it that the general question you're interested in is not whether virtual or virtual sexual harassment is real, but whether virtual sexual assault is real. On that (general) score, it seems to me that, as things stand, sexually assaulting someone in a gamespace is not at all equivalent to sexually assaulting them IRL. What it does seem to be, however, is sexual harassment.

As for the specific article in question: I don't know whether current VR interfaces are at the point where a virtual grope is sufficiently similar to an IRL grope to count as an assault. I suppose it depends on the haptic feedback and first-person immersion and stuff, but I don't know. It's certainly plausible, but I'd hesitate to venture a stronger opinion without better information and perhaps some firsthand experience of the VR platform. Certainly, what the woman reports--a groper with a supportive audience--is not at all OK, and "Meta's" response that she should have enabled safety mode is just jarringly tone-deaf.

[dismalist]

If it's virtual, it's not real.

One lovely thing about on-line social games is that there can be many. Some may allow virtual harassment, some may not. People can self-select into which game -- under which rules -- they wish to play. Some games will prosper, some will die. We do not need an on-line game Directorate to allow people their desired degree of whatever on-line.

It's different if we are forced to use an application, such as e-mail. There have to be agreed on rules for that.

Alas, we can't do that with reality. We are stuck with the single one.

[Parasaurolophus]

If it's virtual, it's not real.

One lovely thing about on-line social games is that there can be many. Some may allow virtual harassment, some may not. People can self-select into which game -- under which rules -- they wish to play. Some games will prosper, some will die. We do not need an on-line game Directorate to allow people their desired degree of whatever on-line.

It's different if we are forced to use an application, such as e-mail. There have to be agreed on rules for that.

I don't think you've done much gaming. Are you familiar with griefing? Because it's rampant and can be really fucking awful. It can completely ruin your day. Even though you aren't in a PvP game.

I remember spending hours back in the day trying to play Diablo and, later, Diablo II, and being unable to do so because people and their hacked gear kept showing up and murdering me over and over and over (and taking my gear...) even though the game was set to PvM. It's just not fun.

[dismalist]

If it's virtual, it's not real.

One lovely thing about on-line social games is that there can be many. Some may allow virtual harassment, some may not. People can self-select into which game -- under which rules -- they wish to play. Some games will prosper, some will die. We do not need an on-line game Directorate to allow people their desired degree of whatever on-line.

It's different if we are forced to use an application, such as e-mail. There have to be agreed on rules for that.

I don't think you've done much gaming. Are you familiar with griefing? Because it's rampant and can be really fucking awful. It can completely ruin your day. Even though you aren't in a PvP game.

I remember spending hours back in the day trying to play Diablo and, later, Diablo II, and being unable to do so because people and their hacked gear kept showing up and murdering me over and over and over (and taking my gear...) even though the game was set to PvM. It's just not fun.

If it makes you sick, why do it?

[mamselle]

The issue was that intruders wielding awful, intrusive hacks were making a player sick, not that the game, properly constructed and played as intended, would do so.

Picking off the very last statement, taking it out of context, and then decrying a lack of logic that is only generated when the statement is taken out of context only shows that de-contextualized statements can be made to sound illogical, which is a known thing.

It's a kind of empty algebra.

Stop it.

M. 

[dismalist]

The issue is competition and choice.

[Parasaurolophus]

The issue is competition and choice.

No. It's harassment and possibly assault. Keep up.

[dismalist]

The issue is competition and choice.

No. It's harassment and possibly assault. Keep up.

But on-line it's free to not get harassed -- don't play the game! Choose a different game. More expensive in real life, where there's only one game.

[mamselle]

Right.

Don't do something that's usually simple fun, if everyone follows the rules, because someone who doesn't care about the rules, or likes breaking them, or both, might decide to hurt you while doing it.

Where have we heard these instructions before?

Oh, yes....

M.

[marshwiggle]

After thinking about this, and seeing the responses so far, I realized that this situation allows a virtual exploration of many theological questions.

One of the most common challenges atheists make to theists is the problem of pain:
Why would a loving God allow people to hurt or kill each other?

This gaming situation allows that question to be examined virtually.

If a "loving God" (i.e. game developer who cares about people) restricts "creatures"' (players in the virtual world) possibility of harming others, does it come at the cost of reducing the richness of "life" (the potential game experience) so as to make it not worth "living" (playing)?

Other possibilities:

Does "divine retribution" for "sins" make people so fearful that they aren't motivated to actively participate? Or does leaving much of the enforcement of "justice" to "creatures" make the world seem less arbitrary?

This could be fascinating.

[apl68]

The issue is competition and choice.

No. It's harassment and possibly assault. Keep up.

But on-line it's free to not get harassed -- don't play the game! Choose a different game. More expensive in real life, where there's only one game.

But there's essentially nothing online that can't be invaded by trolls and spoiled for others through harassment.  It's not reasonable that society, or certain members of society, should have to cede vast stretches of the online world to trolls.  Lines have to be drawn.  This is why I could never be a libertarian.  Whatever its merits in theory, libertarianism in practice always ends up serving as an invitation to the most ruthless and amoral among us to victimize everybody else.