Second Life Weirds Me Out Sometimes

Ok, so it weirds me out a lot of the time, but here’s one CNet picked up:

I’ve seen “open chat messaging along the lines of ‘Daddy’s going to spank you if you don’t stop flirting with…'” one “Second Life” player said. “And then, ‘Oooh, Daddy, I’m sorry, Will you spank me anyway?’ Usually it is a young ‘teenage’ girl avatar and her ‘daddy.'”

Another player, known in the virtual world as “Usagi Musashi,” said that when pretending to work in a virtual sex club in “Second Life,” she often saw child avatars trying to pick up adult avatars.

“One day in the welcome area, I saw one child” avatar, Musashi said. “This one was just posing like she wanted some action. They stand around and look for action like escorts…then (they) age play.”

(30 second shudder break!)

Welcome back. Rather than get all high and mighty over someone’s fetish in Second Life (trust me, there are weirder and arguably worse ones out there), I’m instead going to look back to turn-of-the-century New York City, where in the seedier areas of town (that was a huge chunk of the city, given how corrupt the police force was back then), there were entire brothels dedicated to the real version of what Second Life residents are – erm – simulating.

Kinda interesting to see how behaviors transfer to the digital medium and suddenly become “interesting” rather than “depraved.”