Strangely Evaporated

I first heard these words in the context of a dream.

A woman (me, not me) was with her friend in the midst of a snow storm. The friend died, peacefully. The woman looked at her and thought, she doesn't look like herself. She looks strangely evaporated.

It reminded me of my father when he died. He didn't look asleep. He looked...absent. Strangely evaporated.

Boys will be boys?

A couple of weeks ago a story appeared in Wired Magazine about a group of people who specialize in organized attacks on digital worlds, known as griefing. This group has been very active in targeting individuals and groups who they believe are easy victims. They do this under the guise of "because we can", and celebrate a culture of lawlessness and hate that if done in the real world would at best be considered vandalism, and at worst vicious gang attacks on peoples' persons and property.

When considered objectively, what these people are doing is interfering with the ability of a company to offer a service to their customers. By forcing people to leave their virtual land, crashing servers, and filling areas with hate-filled content they cross a line which would never be tolerated in the real world. Many would say that it's up to the world administrator rather than real world police to deal with these people. The recourse that the company has is to cancel accounts, but in an age of digital deviance, this action is a temporary solution at best.

I don't think we can wait to agree on roles and responsibilities for deciding what the consequences should be for this sort of behavior. Whether it is prosecuted as denial of service attacks, instigating viruses in software, or even disturbing the peace, there needs to be a recognition that these people are behaving in a way that negatively impacts the rights of both the virtual world providers and their customers.