The Elevator Effect In Second Life

There is an good video on NPR about how real human reactions translate to the virtual world. It's interesting in view of the question posted here about rape in Second Life. The video covers a little experiment in SL where a reporter gets together with a psychologist to see if some unspoken human rules apply in the virtual world — such as staring or standing too close to someone. Perhaps surprisingly, in this world where you can be or do just about anything, you can't break these unspoken rules with impunity.

Comments

To many second life articles

[bjourne]

Ok, Second Life may or may not be pretty cool, but why is there one Slashdot article about it every two or three days? World of Warcraft is at least ten times as popular but does not get anywhere near the same coverage as Second Life does. It smells fishy.

For example, there was this article about a woman offering sex for 5000 World of Warcraft gold. It did not reach Slashdot. That ten times as funny and definitely more "interesting" than some kind of psychological experiment. :)

Re:who's hurling the giant phalluses around?

[Lumpy]

I find it entertaining as these reporters are acting like it;s a new thing. It's not. Ever cince the days of Doom this has been observed and documented. Camping, while being a viable attack vector in the real world (called a sniper) is frowned upon so much in game that most all combatants will band together to punish the camper.

There was a paper published about it back in the 90's. I wonder if anyone can find it out there on the internet. I believe it was "social manifestations in online gaming" or something similar where they already looked at this and even in a game where you are supposed to go around killing each other, certain social rules are still followed or suffer getting punished.

Re:Yes you can

[Hemogoblin]

You're equating "non-physical" to "non-consequential". Think about that for a minute and you'll realize how silly that conclusion is.