In case it's relevant to anyone else... or your students are worried
about being captured and held against their will.
If your students are worried about being "captured" it's actually
harder than you think.
People can, of course, role-play being captured. It all takes place in
text or IM chat. Don't want to be captured? Don't play along.
You can also be caged. That stops you moving around the sim, but won't
stop you teleporting out of the sim (and usually won't do anything if
you teleport elsewhere within the same sim). OK, you have to go away
to get out of the cage, but it's hardly a life-time of servitude that
awaits.
Finally you can choose to opt-in more than just role-playing. There
are various systems out there - Gorean Combat Meters for example, that
keep a record of your health and can result in you getting a message
that you've been knocked out or killed. They're 100% in-world, and
more or less role-play with chatty props. The one that might come up
is Restrained Life. With Restrained Life, it's possible to be in a
situation where you can't stand up from a chair (or other pose-ball
driven item), can't teleport, can't send or receive IMs etc. You can
be, quite efficiently, reduced to "I must log out to get away from
this" and find if you log in without thinking, you're right back where
you started. This is the closest in technical terms you can come to
being captured and held notionally against your will. Before you run
screaming for the hills - to use Restrained Life you either have to
download and install the patch to the standard client, or download one
of the alternative viewers with Restrained Life built in AND turn it
on via preferences or similar. THEN you have to either wear the RLV
relay HUD, or an RLV-enabled item such as a collar, THEN you have to
not read the instructions and set it to let anyone capture you. There
are people who do all of this but at each point it's an active step.
And even if you do ALL of that, you can get out of it by just logging
in using the standard viewer at any point you like, and taking the
attachments off.
Linden Lab, quite deliberately, chose to make Second Life a place
where avatars are basically free. Sadly that includes the freedom to
verbally abuse you, and that freedom can be and is abused. If you
want, for some reason, not to be free, it requires a number of quite
deliberate, active choices, but it can be done.
I'm not trying to downplay the potential emotional impact of someone
roleplaying sexually aggressive behaviour. Particularly if you're the
survivor of just such an attack. But the ability of someone to do more
than write that attack (i.e. the ability to make your avatar respond,
follow them, be unable to escape etc.) relies on you opting in to let
them - which seems like unlikely behaviour in such a survivor.
Actually, I've never heard of a text "attack" that was unwelcome
happening quite like that, but that doesn't mean it hasn't. (I'm
distinguishing the term "attack" internally, and now explicitly from
the "wanna fuck" type approach that I suspect most female avatars in
Second Life have been subjected to more than once, and which I regard
as unacceptable behaviour in both SL and RL, but which I don't feel
constitutes an attack for some reason.) In most places though, if you
stumble into someone that wants to roleplay in a way you don't like
and you say no, they may well swear at you and abuse that way (which
can also be distressing enough) but they'll probably move on. If they
don't the options of teleport home and/or quit are always good ones to
remember. So's a good abuse report.
El.
On 25 Oct 2009, at 16:12, Iggy O wrote:
> I think this topic merits a different subject line, since we are
> drifting a tad from the "wellbeing" issue related to certain sims,
> such as the UC Davis Virtual Hallucinations.
>
> Ephraim Dalglish wrote:
>
> "I quite firmly believe, then, that it is truly irresponsible to bring
> students into SL without giving them a fairly comprehensive picture of
> the culture, and the perils, to be found here....
> Before bringing a class into SL, then, I give them a pretty thorough
> briefing about how the culture here differs from RL, what sorts of
> hazards and/or "disturbing material" they might happen across, as well
> as a few basic safety tips, including (of course) the most important:
> NEVER reveal anything about yourself that might assist someone in
> tracking down your RL identity. There are a few good online resources
> that assist in providing both a good overview of the culture, as well
> as safety tips. I also give them a sort of guide to conduct, adapted
> from one used by a colleague."
>
> Please share those resources here.
>
> That said, Ephraim, caution is a matter of degree. I found that the
> first time I used SL with a class, I went overboard. We had a campus
> detective to specialized in white-collar crime (and who has an SL
> avatar) lecture the class about privacy, disclosure, and "creeps."
>
> We overdid it. The Millennials I teach are so darned cautious
> already...they barely wanted to go anywhere for fear that some Gorean
> slaver would toss a net over them.
>
> My watchword eventually became "you have no privacy online, but you
> have nearly complete control over disclosure." This has worked well,
> plus a lesson or two in muting and ARs.
>
> This is my fourth class using SL, and I now have my students sign a
> waiver that includes several SL issues, though mostly it's so I can
> say, later, "you signed, saying you understood the attendance policy,
> etc."
>
> One statement on the waiver is this: [I have] Agreed to represent the
> University of Richmond in a responsible manner in person and online as
> a writer, as well as in Second Life as an avatar. Furthermore, I
> understand that SL will contain some content (either violent or
> sexual) found broadly offensive but unless I choose to research such
> content, it will not be part of my coursework.
>
> The first assignments that they do are all at vetted non-social sites
> (NMC, Vassar, Mexico's pyramids, The International Spaceflight Museum)
> or social spaces I know well (such as Virtual Dublin). I waited for
> students to come to class with questions about that "other content."
>
> One went to Luskwood on her own, and the Furs there were nice and not
> doing anything inappropriate, but it led to a discussion of SL
> subcultures. That led me to warn them about Gor, what might be in
> adult-rated regions, etc. This was three weeks into this term. My
> class so far handled it well, wondering why people would engage in
> such actions but saying, basically "what they do in a private region
> is their business."
>
> My experience with SL may be limited, but I once took a newly born
> female avatar to some of the mature-rated WAs to see if I could
> encounter someone like the Gorean "fisherman" from Meadows' book "I,
> Avatar." This story always seemed suspect to me, though given what
> happened to Meadows' RL and SL friend Carmen Hermosillo, I could be
> wrong. I you need a scare, btw, read those parts of Meadows'
> compelling book.
>
> The avatar I was driving got "hit on," but after several repeat
> visits, I encountered nothing worse than some griefers of the usual
> sort. So again, caution is good, but overdoing it may stunt the
> students' experience. Your own campus I.T. policies and culture may be
> the best guide as to how far to go.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Joe Essid, University of Richmond Rhetoric & Communication Studies
>
> Iggy Strangeland: Reaction Grid
> Iggyo: Metaplace
> Iggyo Heritage: Heritage Key
> Ignatius Onomatopoeia: Second Life
>
> blog:
http://iggyo.blogspot.com> Web:
http://virtualworldsedu.info/> _______________________________________________
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