Second Life players turn to child sex games
By Sean P. Aune
According to a recent investigation by British authorities, there is a world full of virtual pedophilia going on in Second Life.
The popular virtual world seems to have nothing but problems when it comes to the sex lives of their virtual citizens. Back in July they were catching flak over the ability of users to make their avatars look like animals, and hence meaning the users were engaging in supposed beastality. Now there is talk of how people are engaging in sex with child-like avatars.
It seems that people are creating child-like representations of themselves, known as "avatars" in the virtual world, and then soliciting sex with adult players. The only situation mentioned by name was happening in a playground-like portion of Second Life known as "Wonderland". When a reporter entered in to Wonderland, they were solicited for sex by the "children" on the swing sets.
While this activity can be viewed as harmless role-playing between consenting adults (you must be 18 to be in Second Life), you have to wonder if these people are able to draw the distinction between reality and fantasy when they shut their computer down. You also have to ponder if any of the people engaging in this activity are pedophiles in real life, or if they are just engaging in this in their "second life".
This is not to say that all users of the virtual world are to be condemned or vilified. With over nine million users worldwide, there are certain to be some bad apples in the mix. As with all of these types of stories though, it will be assumed that these extremes are indicative of the entire user base.
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Entry was posted
on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 1:15 pm
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November 1st, 2007
Is this article referring to the very same reporter that logged into Second Life back in May when this story actually broke? Is this a slow news day?
Amazing how you “reporters” all hop on the bandwagon. Someone rehashed a 5 month old headline and every one of you reported this “New” news.
February 28th, 2008
Weird stuff. A good medium like Second Life is always open to abuse.
IMHO, this is not harmless role playing because what you occupy your mind with can become reality.
June 28th, 2008
What were delving into here are mind crimes…but on the other hand that IS very wierd and shouldnt be messed with in the first place, real or virtual.
I am waiting for the brain implants; what a day that will be.