Second Life vandals deface Edwards HQ with blackface

Amanda reports that online vandals in Second Life defaced John Edwards' virtual headquarters.

Second Life is a online virtual 3D world created and owned by its 4 million virtual citizens.

On the left is a screen shot of the "damage." Note the picture of Edwards in blackface on the bottom left.

Shakes has more details, via robinrising of the Edwards blog:

Shortly before midnight (CST) on Monday, February 26, a group of republican Second Life users, some sporting "Bush '08" tags, vandalized the John Edwards Second Life HQ. They plastered the area with Marxist/Leninist posters and slogans, a feces spewing obscenity, and a photoshopped picture of John in blackface, all the while harassing visitors with right-wing nonsense and obscenity-laden abuse of Democrats in general and John in particular.

I witnessed this event, taking names and photos, including the owners of the pictures. I also kept and saved a copy of the chat log. I have filed an abuse report with Linden Labs, and am awaiting their investigation.

Not funny, guys.

I don't play Second Life, but I find the concept fascinating on a philosophical level. (Do people play Second Life? Maybe it's more accurate to say that I don't maintain a Second Lifestyle.)

What real-life ethics should govern gameplay in a virtual world that partially recapitulates the real world? On the one hand, it's all virtual. Characters in second life are role-playing. In some ways committing a crime in Second Life is like writing a first-person story about a crime.

On the other hand, people play Second Life with real money, and users invest a lot of time building their stuff. Second Life Edwards HQ was built and paid for by Jerimee Richir (aka "Jose Rote") who views his creation as a form of real-life political outreach to Second Life players.

Second Life isn't like a traditional game with consensual rules and objectives. People go to Second Life for very different reasons. Some want to interact or compete, or persuade. Others just want to be left alone to build their Second Life dream houses and hang out with their friends. It's not clear that a hostile group of players has a right to impose its vision of the Good Second Life on non-consenting fellow players. So, there are real ethical questions about whether it's okay to destroy people's virtual stuff, even within the context of the game.

Being a dick in Second Life isn't cheating, per se. The game is designed to allow people to play as vandals or criminals, or anything else they can imagine.

It's hard enough to figure out the meta-ethics of first life--i.e., why should we be moral. The meta-ethics of Second Life are even more complicated, because they probably presuppose answers to the the meta-ethical problems in real life.

Also, it's important to remember that defacing the Edwards headquarters was a virtual performance for a real-life audience. When creations reference real life people and events, the boundaries between the real world and the simulated world aren't so clear.

If your online expression is a means of real-life intimidation, you're being immoral in the real world. Burning a real cross on an actual lawn doesn't usually cause direct physical harm to the victims, but that's hardly the point. I don't see how virtual cross burning would be any better, if the online cross-burner's goal is to frighten or subordinate people watching in the real world.

Suffice it to say that defacing the Edwards HQ with excrement and blackface was a pathetic waste of time.

Comments

[scarshapedstar]

Hmm, well, this probably wasn't actually the work of Republicans, but one of SL's dedicated griefer collectives...

[revenantive]

well...that means some people on Second Life are going to have to organize a 'Player Killer' team of PvP experts....and go to town...on stupid defacers...that's what happens on PvP servers in the virtual gaming world, which is big business in today's online marketplace.

the first rule of PvP online virtual combat in virtual online imagined worlds: in virtual worlds that have PvP rulesets or that sort of thing, usually teams of players with a better overall strategy will win.

[B-Money]

I am laughing so hard right now!!! How much an dork do you have to be to do something like this!!

All I keep picturing are several guys who look like the geeks from "Beauty and the Geek" sitting at their computers with head sets laughing about how cool they are in a virtual world. I guess vandalism is not limited to subways and bridges anymore.

ALL of the people who take part in this Second Life thing sound like douche bag losers to me. Get out and live a real life, instead of committing pretend crime on a game.

By the way, I am laughing at the complete adsurdity of this. Although I do not see it as serious a thing as Lindsay, I am worried about the mental well-being of the schmoes who would perpetrate such a dasterdly deed.

[aeroman]

Jack Balkin opens up his Information Society course with a discussion of transgressive behavior in virtual worlds. It's a shame there's not video or transcription somewhere.

[Hawise]

B-Money- these are the same shmoes who race through traffic in fancy cars, drop burning cigarettes into full trash bins and call on their cels to invite friends over to trash someone's house. It is a mistake to assume that these are people that will not impact your life- they are cutting in front of someone in line even as I type.

[B-Money]

I never assumed they do not impact my life. I simply said I think they are lame for living in a fantasy world and committing "crimes" and what not.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

What's Balkin's position on Second Life law/ethics, aeroman?

Obviously this is nowhere near as a big a deal as a real-life hate crime. Virtual hate criminals are just about the lowest form of online life I can imagine. A step below spambots, really.

On the other hand, Second Life is played with real money and users do invest a lot of time and effort in their creations. So, it's not a trivial thing to destroy something someone has built in that world.

Running a virtual campaign is a cool idea, and the Edwards SL'er was doing something creative and positive, but these guys had to go and wreck it.

Who knows whether they're real-life Republicans? There are some players who just like to be thugs on Second Life. I doubt they are totally dispassionate about their targets, though. I don't think you can use blackface in any context without the act being politically significant.

[scarshapedstar]

"All I keep picturing are several guys who look like the geeks from "Beauty and the Geek" sitting at their computers with head sets laughing about how cool they are in a virtual world. I guess vandalism is not limited to subways and bridges anymore."

Actually, that's more like your typical Second Life subscriber. The guys who did this are most likely teenaged SomethingAwful.com forum goons.

[aeroman]

Balkin assigns this article about a "rape" in the LamdaMOO MUD to kick off the discussion. Many of his own thoughts are in this excellent Virginia Law Review article on law, liberty, and regulation in virtual worlds. It's a must-read for anyone interested in the issue - our most tech-savvy major First Amendment theorist laying out the implications of virtual worlds and their norms very compellingly. And it's free!

Balkin takes the investment people put into virtual worlds very seriously, and supports some legal intervention to make sure that the participants in those worlds are able to structure and enforce their norms in a suitably autonomous way. It simply makes no sense to think we shouldn't protect people's valuations just because we don't share that valuation. I, for example, think that the work of Damien Hirst is ridiculously overvalued and think that the people who spend big money for it are foolish. However, no one disputes that tort, contract, and anti-theft law should protect those pieces of art as assets.

[blucas!]

Second Life is increasingly have the same problems as the real world.

Second Life Liberation Army, anyone?

http://www.blogherald.com/2007/02/25/terrorism-20-or-angry-cybergeeks-secondlife/

[Frank]

Help! I'm a rock!

[shawn]

"It's not clear that a hostile group of players has a right to impose its vision of the Good Second Life on non-consenting fellow players. So, there are real ethical questions about whether it's okay to destroy people's virtual stuff, even within the context of the game."

Actually, all that is neatly covered and forbidden in Linden Labs end user license agreement. The only place it's actually allowed to do such things is 'combat sims'. Otherwise, it's a breach of the EULA. Punishments range from nothing to banning from the game and loss of all assets associated with the character being banned.

That said, it's still not uncommon at all and most people who operate money-making businesses in SL and many people who don't are familiar with the annoyance of 'griefers'.

Basically, jerks are jerks no matter whether they are real or virtual.

[michael schmidt]

If people are willing to demonstrate that opponents of Democratic candidates are crude, unimaginative, destructive and racist, that's ok with me.

[Lawrence Krubner]

"Second Life is a online virtual 3D world created and owned by its 4 million virtual citizens."

Second Life does not come within an order of magnitude of having 4 million citizens. What it does have, as Clay Shirky has pointed out, is an impressive ability to get the press to over-report its numbers.

[Lawrence Krubner]

"ALL of the people who take part in this Second Life thing sound like douche bag losers to me. Get out and live a real life, instead of committing pretend crime on a game."

Anyone who anonymously posts comments on someone else's weblog really ought to be careful about disparaging other people's online recreational activities. I recall, back in 2005, a major radio host arguing that anyone who had a blog was a loser. Imagine what he'd say about the commenters on a blog.

[superdude]

Hey, that's Wesley Willis!

[tony]

Losers for spending money on virtual politics. Losers for defacing it. Losers for commenting on the defacing it. And now I am a loser for commenting on the comments. Let’s stop being losers.

[TomK]

Micheal, more then 50 % of america is crude, unimaginative, destructive and racist. Watch any network TV for a few hours. That's a winning strategy. Thats why more people would rather have a beer with george bush then al gore, who thinks critically...

[fishbane]

I eagerly await all of the civility minders on the right side of our blogotopia to denounce the blackface, just as they have been so quick to do in the past. It is just as "real" in a game as it is on a blog, right?

Interestingly, this is not without precedent. Le Pen's party in France put up an SL presense, and had the same thing happen to them. (That one featured flying attack pigs.)

[Jackmormon]

It was very wrong of me, but I enjoyed the flying pig attacks, when I read about them.

[dr2chase]

So I am a little curious about the idea that because people spent time on money on something Second Life, it should in some way be respected. My understanding of property rights in SL was that they were algorithmic (enforced by computerized rules), not legal. I would normally think that investing a great deal of time in something that is completely vulnerable to vandalism would be even less smart than leaving a $2000 bicycle unlocked on the streets of NY.

The point I am trying to make, is that if you spend a lot of time and money building something in Second Life, you might claim that you place a high value on it, but that's contradicted by your choice to do your work in a free-fire zone for vandalism. If I claimed to value my bicycle very much (because I spent $2000 on it, etc, etc) and then left it unlocked on the street, people would think I was crazy, and crazy to complain when it was stolen. Same logic applies to Second Life. And I do understand, I would love to be able to not fart around with locking my bike, and I would love to have our police and legal systems drop everything to track down stolen bicycles and bring Terrible Justice to bike-stealing EvilDoers, but that's not going to happen, and I know it.

Second Life is a little different, in that their algorithmic notion of property rights could be made stronger, and algorithmic property rights are just plain enforced, period. It might make for a delightful Libertarian experiment, but it would take a lot of thinking, a lot of programming, and probably a lot of CPU crunching to continuously enforce fine-grained rules.

[Tim Bailey]

...a pathetic waste of time.

This basically sums up almost anything you could say about Second Life, sadly. Far from being the boundless utopian fantasy spoken of in early days of the Internet, online gaming has actually turned out to reveal the dismal state of the popular imagination. MMORPG's with a set-piece environment and adventure-based tasks (DDO, SWG, and WOW, with which I have some personal experience) at least provide sufficient structure to limit the amount and quality of imagination required. Second Life is an example of what happens when you allow free-rein to people who have been spoon-fed mass-market culture: Surprise! It's a less-interesting version of real life, peopled with less interesting people doing things from the real world they can't do in real life. This is a truly impoverished conception of "imagination," but it seems to be the best most folks can manage: "Hey, I'm not a street-prostitute in real life; I'll be one here!"

Every time I've explored one of these virtual worlds, I've come out of it feeling disheartened. Jenny Diski wrote an excellent article on her experience in Second Life; After seven years of online gaming, I have to agree with her general disappointment. People don't know how to break out of themselves. Nothing says this more clearly than the bringing of real-world conflict (which is much better addressed in the real world) into virtual ones. Why does John Edwards need to campaign in Second Life? Why do people have to be Republicans there? Because their imagination is so completely bounded they can't concieve of a place that isn't America, and assume that there is nowhere that shouldn't be. They can't imagine themselves at all, in fact.

[fishbane]

The point I am trying to make, is that if you spend a lot of time and money building something in Second Life, you might claim that you place a high value on it, but that's contradicted by your choice to do your work in a free-fire zone for vandalism.

I know where you're coming from, but I think this is incorrect.

The same might be said for re-enactment societies - people spend a lot of money on the SCA, and for that matter, on Magic:the Gathering (I'm probably woefully out of date here).

The fact that it is "play" does not divorce it from "real". In fact, a lot of anarcho-capitalist theory starts coming in to play, because you are, in effect, building on someone else's yard, and so mainly (not exclusively), contract law applies. What did SL give you, on paper, in exchange for your money? If protection (law, cops) wasn't part of it, then you don't have a remedy. If that bothers you, it is probably better to stop playing - it is going to be hard to argue in court that SL is different than, say, Quake, where arguing that you didn't know you'd be killed, well, you'd be laughed at.

I'm not saying they aren't different, but law is not prepared for this sort of thing. (I'm personally a little glad of that, but for different reasons.)

Lindsay's question about ethics is tough, because of this - what are the norms of a virtual world? They obviously change between them (the Edwards camp didn't set up shop in Worlds of Warcraft).

I personally think the lines are being drawn as we go along - le Pen and Edwards will both be referents for future political related lines, at least for this virtual world, and the rest of us will watch, and judge the worlds, and the participants, as we see them.

[fishbane]

I would normally think that investing a great deal of time in something that is completely vulnerable to vandalism would be even less smart than leaving a $2000 bicycle unlocked on the streets of NY.

Sorry for my second post, I meant to address this.

I think you're conflating economics, publicity, contract, and common sense. In a perfect world, those wouldn't be different.

For just one example of how those conflicting tensions might be misaligned, have you thought about how a competent PR person might spin this for Edwards? (No, I don't have much faith in his campaign, and not because I don't like him. But they _could_.) Hell, a well run shop might provoke this sort of crap, if they had a plan...

[Candice]

Well, I'm not at all surprised (in fact, I knew that this was planned ahead of time). I'm not necessarily for OR against this. I can certainly at least understand the "they asked for it" point of view. What they kind of did is like trying to buy "cool", and nice big chunks of the internet will be set off by that kind of behaviour. Which doesn't make what happened acceptable, but in either case, what did anyone expect?

I do think it's funny that anyone thinks this was a group of Republicans. Whoever it was (and it doesn't take many guesses to figure it out, either), they were just posting whatever they thought would be most offensive...

And I like the idea that "a well run shop might provoke this sort of crap, if they had a plan..." I know that I would!