“..here on the brink of a future in which human existence may find itself as tightly enveloped in digital environments as it is today in the architectural kind..” Julian Dibbell in a Rape in Cyberspace

Jenn and I are going to make a movie. My first stop-motion movie. It’s going to be a horror movie based off of this article by Julian Dibbell. Its written in response to an even that happened in the MUD (multiple users dimension) Lambdamoo, ” a very large and very busy rustic mansion built entirely of words.” Lambdamoo is an internet game where a player can move through the rooms in this mansion by using computer commands and being greeted by a meticulous description of each new setting. Players can also talk amongst each other, and create objects that can be left in the room for the next virtual explorer to find.

The Intro to the article: “They say he raped them that night. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired. They say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to their own bodies. And though I wasn’t there that night, I think I can assure you that what they say is true, because it all happened right in the living room — right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofas and the fireplace — of a house I came later to think of as my second home.”

So we’re going to make a horror stop-motion film in response to this article and the effect it had on the virtual world. How their laws and thoughts on how to govern this virtual community were questioned by one person, a character known as Mr. Bungle, and his surprising and horrifying actions. It spurred conversations between all kinds of online political groups of MOO anarchists, technolibertarians and parliamentarian legalist users began debating over the need for written rules, and perhaps even a governing body-since 4 months prior the head “wizards” decided to stop playing God and become only technicians, where the MOOers would need to solve their own problems (a movement know as the “New Direction”). These wizards are the only ones with the power to terminate an account, and with so many people asking for a virtual death penalty, questions of morals are brought into this new reality.