Julian Dibbell's "A Rape in Cyberspace" - Juicy Campus

Our latest reading entitled “A Rape in Cyberspace” by Julian Dibbell was very interesting. The chapter retells the story of Mr. Bungle committing online sexual harassment to two LambdaMOO characters and the issues that arose from the incident. On page 380, we hear legbda’s (one of the raped characters) reaction to the incident. She says, “I tend to think that restrictive measures around here cause more trouble than they prevent” and suggests that Mr. Bungle become “virtually castrated.” In other words, she wants Mr. Bungle’s character destroyed and wiped from the community. She feels his punishment should be to never show his (virtual) face in the online LambdaMOO community ever again.
One question that can be derived from her reaction is: does someone who “virtually” harasses someone in an online community deserve to be banned from that online community? In my opinion, free speech online is free speech. If legba was offended by Mr. Bungle, she should block his comments or just log off when he tries to contact her. For example, the website JuicyCampus.com is becoming increasingly popular among college campuses across America. The website is totally anonymous and encourages enormous amounts of bashing and gossiping.

To learn more about the website, check out this CBS News report about JuicyCampus: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/26/scitech/pcanswer/main3968514.shtml

If someone was gossiping or bashing me on that website, I merely would stop reading the comments because what I don’t read will not bother me. This is how legba should react to Mr. Bungle’s virtual remarks. Because there is such a thing as free speech in this country, it is hard to punish the person writing the criticizing statement on the web. Sometimes it just pays to be the better person and walk away from incident with maturity. There are hundreds of derogatory posts on JuicyCampus written about people that are even harsher than what Mr. Bungle expressed in LambdaMOO. I bet if people didn’t make such a federal case about the “raping”, the whole community would have quickly moved on. The problem here was that the “rape” victims were too enveloped in LambdaMOO that their reactions and emotions got the best of them.

Another point to bring up here is that if people just ignore that they are getting "raped" or bashed online, the act still continues, however they are just ignorant of it. Everyone else can still read what people say about you on JuicyCampus and remind you of it later. Therefore, there is only so much ignoring can do. Also, it is important to mention that free speech isn't 100% granted. There are some limits such as libel and slander. You can be sued for making up false claims and accusations. Perhaps, JuicyCampus will create outrage in the future that many petitions will form and get it shut down. There has to be a way to prove that the website is unethical and at some points can cross the line of free speech.