The Moral Quandary of Alicia Chenaux

Say you become friends with a Second Life couple who are a husband and wife couple in real life, and they're in SL with the sole purpose of separately hooking up with other Residents, and further say they are both constant users of voice chat, so you can not only hear them constantly chatting up prospects, but also hear their real life kids running around unattended in the background. Say they're also renting an SL apartment from you, and even though they haven't done anything explicitly ban-worthy, the woman's behavior in particular was chasing people away.  At that point, Ms. Chenaux wonders aloud, "Is it enough to say 'To hell with you' and ban her from our home?... Is it time to remove her from my friends list and put her on mute?" I have no idea, myself, though I do know multi-dimensional, mixed-reality ethical questions like this are bound to keep coming up.  Maybe you can offer Alicia some advice in her post.  Image credit: Alicia.

Comments

[Mitch Wagner]

I think this is a problem where the whole RL/SL decision confuses the issue. Just look at the problem head-on, forget about drawing distinctions between RL and SL, and the problem becomes more clear.

However, I'm unsure what the problem *is* precisely.

The landlord should be clear on what the problem is:

- Is it simply the case that the landlord has a problem with the couple's disrupting their neighbors by behaving lasciviously and using voice in a disruptive manner?

- Or it the case that the landlord disapproves of the couple's cyber-open-marriage and exposing RL children to the parents' racy voice chat?

In both cases, the landlord should be talking to the couple first. The first case has a simple solution: Like real life, there are behaviors in Second Life that are appropriate in some places and not others. We don't like loud dance clubs and combat roleplay in residential areas, and it's also reasonable to restrict cybering. If the couple is otherwise reasonable, I'm sure they can work out some kind of accommodation. Perhaps the couple can set up a love shack on a separate sim? Perhaps the couple needs to leave this sim entirely. These things can be done without any bad feelings on either side.

If the landlord's objections are moral, though, that's a tougher one. Again, the landlord should talk to the couple, but the couple might simply say, "None of your business! Piss off!" Personally, I think that if the couple is using SL to cyber with other people that's their business, but if they're involving their children, that might be considered inappropraite - even child abuse. Parents should hide their porn and sexual activity from their kids; that's true in RL and SL.

[Alicia Chenaux]

Mitch, if you read what I wrote on my blog, you'll get a better idea as to what the big picture is. :)

We have spoken to them. Several times, in fact. Either they don't care, don't realize that what they do affects others, or simply don't understand what we're saying. Although "Hey, quit trying to hook up with everything that passes through here because they don't like it" is pretty much as plain as it gets. :)

[Mitch Wagner]

Sorry about that, Alicia - for some reason I didn't see the link.

In answer to your questions: Give Hester the boot. Ban her from your island for disruptive behavior. Life is to short to deal with jerks.

[Azadine Umarov]

There's much that's unclear here. Hearing children's voices in the background could almost as easily be a mp3 loop the residents are using to tweak others as anything else. Fortunately, I suppose, landlord meddling in SL does not fall under the same privacy laws as tenant law falls under in most US states.

Most RL landlords take a very hands-off approach to policing their tenants' behavior because they run serious legal risks in doing otherwise.

Perhaps SL landlords *should* follow the same example, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

[alicia chenau]

Who are you, Alicia Chenaux? I have a same name. you know? where are you from? I'm living in Argentina