I am trying a little live blogging here.
My roomate just came in, and knowing my newfound involvement with social media, informed me that the current episode of Law and Order: SVU surrounded a girl kidnapped because of her life in an online world.
I just started watching about ten minutes into the show, but apparently a 20-year-old woman was kidnapped who had quite a different lifestyle in Alternate Youniverse, a SecondLife-type program. Her avatar is a 14-year-old girl who owns and runs a prostitution ring/strip club and has had problems with a stalker.
The images of the "game" (although we social media buffs know technically it isn't a game since there is no end goal) look strikingly similar to what we saw in Dr. Shamp's lecture.
The story is unresolved right now, but it is interesting how the online universe is becoming more publicized in popular nighttime television shows like these!
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At the end of his lecture, Dr. Shamp mentioned rape crimes becoming an issue in Second Life, not as a sexual crime, but a crime of power. This episode used the transfer of prostitution in the online world to rape in the real world to develop a crime.
There were interesting differences between Alternate Youniverse and Second Life.
AY had much more available information on users of the game, different rules for changing the time of day in AY, and geographical locations in AY similar to actual places...all very convenient and necessary for solving the crime and wrapping up the show.
I thought this was a cool show, and I hope someone else saw it because I can't find a link to the episode. Try this for more info on "Avatar" though.
http://www.nbc.com/Law_&_Order:_Special_Victims_Unit/
I watched this SVU last night as well and made me immediately think of Dr. Shamp's lecture...freaky. As I was researching this I found a blog that said there is actually a place to buy a rape in second life: http://bdat.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/buy-rapes-in-second-life-wtf/. This sort of thing makes me wonder ... is a virtual reality a little too much?
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