Ah the urge to reply to this: "Quoted in the January 18th edition of the Daily Telegraph of Australia, Dr. Jessica Wolfendale said that "A lot of people in these games don't draw a strong distinction between the avatar and themselves. When you read accounts of people who are involved with [multiplayer] games, they say things like 'I was hurt' and 'I was insulted' when they are talking about attacks on their avatar." Wolfendale is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne's public ethics center."
(if this has been mentioned I apologise)
When people are involved in a minor car crash, a bump if you will, they immediately say 'HE HIT ME!' not 'His car hit my car.' People treat things that they control as extensions of themselves but rarely apply the same level of response to an external interaction from another body that they do when something interacts with them personally. A car bumping a car from the back is not sexual assault it's faulty brakes (or some such) a Home avatar sticking his nose in another Home avatars butt is digital douchery, again not sexual assault. Somewhere in the back of most peoples heads there is that distinction between themselves and the car and the empathy ('HE HIT ME!') is more or less grammatically easier/lazier to use in the immediate situation.
People like the person who feels sexually assaulted quite often just need to take a step back or lithium to realise they just need to press a button to make it all go away. It's not nice, especially when you are simply trying to have fun, and there should be a report button (I can't remember if there is one) and it's understandable when people get annoyed or upset but it's not greater crime than tea bagging, real or in Halo 3.
To the above pillock I say 'cock', either as an insult or as a suggestion.
