A Rape in Cyberspace

Dibbell, Julian. "A Rape in Cyberspace." The Village Voice [New York] 21 Dec. 1993. Print.




Julian Dibbell’s blog entitled “A Rape in Cyberspace” and published in The Village Voice is about the experience of a virtual world turn upside by rape in their community. Throughout this blog, Dibbell recounts a horrifying situation that makes me quiver with uneasiness and fear. In the beginning, I was initially confused, but as I continued to read the blog it all made sense to me.
Dibbell began his blog with a vivid description of a rape that has occurred through the use of a voodoo doll. He goes on to then explains that the setting of this rape was in LambdaMOO, which is a virtual world where people can create accounts and interact with one another on the web. Dibbell goes into detail about how one character named Mr. Bungle goes on a psycho trip and began using a voodoo doll to rape two innocent female characters. The acts that he forced them to do are gruesome and despicable that even a person having no idea what this pertained to would think what kind of sick psychopath does that? Dibbell writes about how Mr. Bungle continued to do this until finally he was stop by a veteran user and was caught in a cage by the user’s gun. At last it was over, but not for the victims of the horrific rape legba and Starsinger and everyone else who witnessed it. Dibbell then poses the conflict between what has happened...was it really rape? There was no physical contact whatsoever, but Dibbell then argues that it was very nearly rape. According to him, it was a rape of the mind, which sometimes can be just as bad as a physical rape. As a human being, you would never think of such things, but when some stranger is able to manipulate you in a virtual world and implant these sick scenarios in your mind it affects you.
After going in to detail of the attack, Dibbell then writes about the aftermath and the profound effects it had on LambdaMOO. Dibbell describes how this whole tragedy has seriously affected this community. This online community where no one really knows each other in real life but yet they feel the need to lash out and speak out against something that never really happened. According to Dibbell, this incident sparked a whole new debate of whether there should be guidelines much like laws in real life society to dictate and punish the behaviors of the community. Apparently, the creators of LambdaMoo had in the past taken a very passive approach to anything dealing with the members of LambdaMoo. They encouraged a freedom of members to do as they please; however, they never believed such actions like this would be introduced to their community.
Many members out cried against Mr. Bungle and his rape actions. They had long threaded forums of how he needed to punish by toading. According to Dibbell, toading refers to player-to-player games like Dungeons and Dragons when someone was banished for an unlawful act and they were turned into a toad. In LamdbaMoo there was an outcry for toading Mr. Bungle, which results in complete deletion of Mr. Bungle from the LamdbaMOO community. Dibbell recounts his first encounter with the Mr. Bungle Affair by attending a community meeting and discussion about what should happen to Mr. Bungle. After what seemed like a town hall meeting just in the virtual world, the wizard who had the power to toad decided to eliminate Mr. Bungle completely.
At last, Dibbell remarks about how the world we live on the web is constantly becoming integrated with real life world that it is astonishing that people can congregate and band together to bring justice of an unspeakable act that only happened in our minds.