If you've ever doubted that the emotions people experience for their on-line lovers are real to them, and sometimes desperately so, check out this story from Japan. The "murderess" got busted for violating all sorts of privacy laws to carry out her virtual revenge against the guy who jilted her.
TOKYO – A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.
The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May
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The Internet element to this story is probably why it's making off-beat news headlines today. If reporters tried to cover every angry ex who slashed their partner's tires or broke into their houses to take something, newspapers would look like phonebooks. It's odd to me that now, more than 25 years since computer connectivity first allowed geeks to frolic at whim, news media and readers alike still find it bizarre and humorous that Internet users take their on-line relationships seriously.
It's impossible to quantify just how many regular Net users are seriously involved in virtual relationships but if you add up all the people you know who have intense on-line relationships, and then multiply it by all the chat-room and dating services throughout the Internet, and then multiply it again by all the sex-worker sites, you get some vague idea of just how HUGE a number of people are falling in and out of love and sex all over the place.
As well they should. First, they're human, and to be human is to need to form emotional connections, intellectual friendships, and sexual bonds. So anyplace where people congregate socially, whether it's at a bar, an office party or in a "hot, hung, horny" chatroom on AOL, there's bound to be some degree of flirting and philandering. Second, people don't turn to cyber-flirting when their daily lives are already overwhelmingly exciting. More often, they look to cyber for a type of fulfillment they're not getting in 3D.
Cyber-relationships don't have all the same ingredients as 3D relationships. They depend on language and imagination more than anything, sometimes with a heavy dose of fantasy projection thrown in. But so what? How many real relationships are based on real things? Does grocery shopping and movie-watching with someone in 3D necessarily mean you share a closer bond with them than with someone on-line who knows all your darkest, dirties secrets?
Cyber love may be different from 3D love -- based on different things, with different limits and boundaries -- but that doesn't make it less real. The above story reminded me of that: love is love, and heartbreaks hurt just as bad on the Internet as in 3D.
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