Is an "online wife" adultery?

Hi! I’m Dina; a junior Bio major, concentrating in nutrition. I like to take long moonlit walks on the beach..........just kidding. But I do like eating fish (SUSHI). My favorite color is green, although I’m not Irish, but I was born on St. Patty’s Day. I watch Ali G like it’s my job and Law & Order too. I’m not that great with computers and technology in general. I pretty much just use what I need: facebook, youtube, aim, google and Microsoft word and definitely my e-mail!

So, yesterday I opened my homepage and I saw this article on having an “online wife”. The article is about a married couple who are having marital problems associated with an online game called “Second Life”, which is a type of “metaworld”. Second Life is a virtual world built and owned by its online resident avatars. So it is real people playing the game and interacting with other real people through online characters. It seems similar to the game SIMS. But in Second Life the characters can be made to look like real people and act like real people. They go through the day like real people, going to work, shopping, and even mowing the lawn. You can buy, sell and trade digital merchandise with other players. The Linden dollar is used in this game to buy merchandise, but you must convert the Linden dollar to US dollars before making a purchase. So you are actually spending real money in order to create and live in this cyber world. You can buy a house, clothing, food, etc. There was even someone arrested (in real life) for stealing virtual items from other players. The US congress is even considering ways that these virtual economies can be taxed.

The man in this article was playing this game for up to 14 hours at a time. He had a wife and a job as a nightclub owner in this game. This man claims that it’s harmless and it’s only a game, but his real wife is claiming that her husband is cheating on her. So is having an online wife adultery? And what is the appeal of spending your whole day in this cyber world (which costs real money)?

I wouldn’t go as far as calling it adultery. But it could be considered possibly an emotional affair or maybe abandonment, depending on how addicted one is to the game. Spending 14 hours on a game where you communicate with real virtual people, instead of paying attention to your real wife is definitely not being a good husband. Spending so much time talking to this online wife could defiantly results in emotional ties being formed, which could escalate to an actual real physical affair if they decide to meet in person. And then that would be adultery. Some people might ask how is playing a cyber game for hours different then watching TV for hours. Well, I think that in this cyber game you are interacting with real people online so emotional connections are made in contrast to watching TV. But what if this man plays another cyber game besides Second Life and has another online wife….then is he cheating on all three of them? Weird!!!

I don’t really understand the appeal of this game Second Life. It could be fun if you play once in a while but it seems like this man is addicted. He is living out his fantasies in this make believe land. He is clearly unhappy with his life and trying to compensate. It’s unfair to his wife and it’s really sad. He needs to get a real life pronto!

The Dark Beating Heart of the Internet: The Chans and Anonymous

My name is Jenna Holloway. I am a rising Junior at Cornell majoring in Information Science with special interest in Human Computer Interaction Design. I am a graduate of the Japanese FALCON program, an intensive year long, three semester program in Japanese language study. My hobbies include video games, doodling, internet culture, and casual non-stressful exercising. I also enjoy eating marshmellows in the rain, racing people up stairways, and attempting to be humorous.

I am interested in the online "#Chan" communities. The chan websites are often referred to as "the dark beating heart of the internet". They produce many of the online memes (i.e. the LOLCats, O RLY owls, and the "I'm in your blank, blanking your blank" memes) and carry out large scale anonymous hacker attacks on users and websites.

The chans are all presented in forum style. This type of website is referred to by Wallace as an "asynchronous forum". Chan websites attract hundreds and thousands of people to post anonymously on their forums. Each forum board, titled with a letter, is dedicated to a different topic. The letters are more or less uniform across all chans. For example, board /i/ stands for Invasion, /b/ stands for Random, etc. If you have never been to a chan website, some common English chans are 4chan, 420chan, 7chan, or 12chan. (Warning: visiting a chan website can lead to potentially disturbing images, content, and language so proceed at your own risk)


The original and biggest chan is 2chan.net started in Japan and is all in Japanese. The Japanese chan started the concept of "invasion" or attack on other websites and people. They have attacked many people over the years, one of the most famous being David Arudo, an American who moved to Japan (went to Cornell, actually) and started a blog on becoming a citizen. 2chan attacked his blog and Arudo sued 2chan in Japanese court. 2chan's owner reportedly said during the litigation that he would only pay if there was the death penalty involved. The whole thing got very involved, so you can read more of the story at Arudo's blog here.


Chan users are collectively termed "Anonymous". Anonymous has been known to carry out many "attacks" on various people and websites. They form these attacks on their invasion board. Some of the more recent attacks have shut down christian teen websites, a local fox news website, a virtual pet website (subeta), and many personal blogs and myspace pages and accounts. Each chan group has its own personality. They tend to "invade" or attack people when they think they will get a good laugh out of it and it will be a challenge. (They tend to refer to this as getting "Epic Lulz", or at least according to fox news. ) Groups of Anonymous often move from chan to chan when one chan gets shut down or hacked.

The most intriguing parts of the chan websites is that their users are always dynamic and always unidentifiable. Sometimes, if a user identifies himself on a chan website, he will immediately become the target of an invasion himself, so this keeps incentive to stay anonymous.

So, my question is this: What motivates a completely anonymous group of ever changing users to carry out attacks on other websites and people? Its not personal recognition. Its often not for personal revenge. Its not for some "moral" ideological purpose. Its purely crazy, mass mob, anonymous groups moving around the internet attacking people.

If you are interested in learning more about the chan phenomenon, you may want to watch fox news' coverage of the Chans here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pyR_90RdOg (albeit this is a little sensationalized).

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