Monday, February 2, 2009

Notes on "Rape in Cyberspace"

- 1 in 4 women is raped in their lifetimes

- "there are some things that are the same" - such as what?

- Differences between cyber rape and real rape

- Classmates Kait and Liz agreed that what Bungles did was a form of rape, though we did not think it ought to be punished to the same degree as "real life" rape. In addition, since the mind behind Bungles was sociopathic, is any punishment going to be effective? 

- Problem: WHO is Bungle?

- MOO, MUD, etc, all made-up places, so Bungle's victims weren't real victims the way traffic accident victims are. He was harming other people's characters.

- On the other hand, those people were emotionally invested in those characters, so they were emotionally affected.

- Class talked about traumatic texts - Clockwork Orange; cartoons involving the Joker; innocent animals being brutally killed in Japan during WWII, in case zoos were hit; The Exorcist; Romanian history, Vlad the Impaler - in a made-up place, there isn't a real victim as in, a victim in real life, but some other action is being performed, and it can be just as traumatizing.

- traumatic encounter with human capacity for imagination

- If there is an emotional investment in watching a character, is there such an investment in being a character?

- National phenomena of depression across U.S. after 9/11 perhaps due to availability of TV - footage of seeing people jump from the towers played over and over, and that shocking visual was everywhere. 

- Shock sometimes necessary to motivate people into action - examples?

- Celebrities - avatars

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