BlindChance said:
WhiteTigerShiro said:
Social norms don't really fly out the window, but there's a different set of social norms. Just like how if I were to fly over to Japan or Germany, suddenly there's a whole different list of what is and isn't acceptable to do in public. Some things would be more strict where other things would be more lenient. Online is no different.
Well, OK, but the culture the net is borrowing from is our own. It's not unreasonable, surely, for a woman to expect some certain level of decency, right?
Online culture may have started by borrowing from US culture, but by your logic every American should be a Christian by law since that's how we got OUR start. Cultures change and adapt. Since your online avatars are just a grouping of pixels, it's generally considered silly to get overly-emotional because someone is doing something to it.
Take WoW, for example. If I followed some stranger around throwing snowballs at him, no one would care. If he tried to report me to a GM, the GM would tell him that there's nothing that can be done about it since my throwing snowballs at him doesn't have any effect on his character. On the converse, if I were to follow someone around in real life and throw snowballs at him, he'd either kick my ass, or he'd find a cop patrolling around at which point I very-well
could get in trouble for it since I could potentially be causing actual harm to this person.
Same thing applies for this situation. If some guy followed a girl around at the local mall and constantly stuck his nose in her butt, there would definitely be some issues there because her personal space is being violated by someone she has given that permission to. Erstwhile in Home, it's just a virtual avatar that might slightly resemble her. Otherwise she's just sitting on her couch at home and in no way being physically violated.
Had he actually messaged her, then there would be potential that a line would get crossed and she'd actually have something real to complain about depending on what he said, and at this point she could very-well send a ticket to the moderators so they could review the conversation and decide to act accordingly.
The guy was an idiot, no one is denying this. The thing is, there's really no reasonable way to deal with the problem without an unreasonable cost on Sony's part.
I agree that there's no real way to stop it in the act. We can't manage to have police stop most crimes, either. But we have well-documented methods for issuing complaints about unwanted behavior, enforcement after the fact, and established punishments. If Sony wants to run Home, they need something similar.
I suppose this is the part where I ask again what the crime was. He followed her around and hurt her feelings? She was in no physical danger, at no point was her ability to get around in Home hindered (since I would assume you can walk through people, lest crowded areas become a complete mess), he never messaged her to potentially say threatening things... he just followed her around and crouched.
Yes, the guy was a douche and a moron. But in all reality (or in this case virtuality?
), he did nothing wrong.
Hold up. You acknowledge he was behaving inappropriately. Yet you are
still absolving him of guilt. How do you handle this contradiction?
You can't have both. And my take is? He's guilty of sexual harassment, and should be most probably at the least banned from Home. Potentially, I'd suspend his PS3's online capabilities. And yes, she probably
could charge him. Though that said? If here's any guide, I doubt any jury would convict.
Yeah, I kinda can have both. Just because something is inappropriate doesn't mean it's illegal. I could write a novel on the list of things that people can do which are perfectly legal (I'm not even talking about exploiting loopholes to make it legal, that'd be a whole second novel right there), but still make them idiots for doing it. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if such a book were already written with all the "Stupid things people do" themed books I've seen.
At the end of the day, this is just someone who isn't used to the online culture being way too over-sensitive about a null-issue (which, honestly, is a troll's biggest bait).
