Rape In Cyberspace
"A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society" is an article written by journalist Julian Dibbell. [1] The article was first published in The Village Voice in 1993 and later incorporated into Dibbell's book titled My Tiny Life which recounts his experiences and observations from his time on LambdaMOO.
The article describes one of the first widely known instances of virtual rape that occurred online. The incident occurred on the platform LambdaMOO and Dibbell details the aftermath and the consequences of the attack on the LambdaMOO virtual community in his piece.
Contents
LambdaMOO
The unprovoked attack described in “A Rape in Cyberspace” took place in the virtual reality of LambdaMOO, a text-based online community which is an extension of MUD, a multi-user dimensions computer game. [2]Players interacted with each other, objects and locations by using avatars. Players are given the freedom to customize the text description of their avatars any way they would. [1]
