It is no longer about occasional news and teen chats; it is time for cyber conversations usually getting no more than a glance unless Zuckerberg is in the dock, to go mainstream. The future is here, and it has caught us woefully unprepared as two headlines in the recent weeks showed. What is assured, there will be no respite.
The British police are investigating the alleged gang rape of a minor in what is reportedly the first such instance in the country. The case stands out because the attack took place in Metaverse, for the uninitiated, this is the online space and without physical involvement or proximity.
The girl — she is younger than 16 — was reportedly wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset and playing an immersive game when her avatar was attacked by virtual strangers.
The question many are asking is, without any bodily touch, does this incident fall under the definition of rape? In the here and now, digital verse is the only omnipresent reality, and it is but natural that what happens in it has a big impact on lives offline.
Police say the young girl has been traumatised as though she was physically violated, suffering ‘psychological and emotional trauma’ akin to someone assaulted in the real world. In the immersive VR experience, reality collides with the virtual seamlessly and it challenges even the adults.
Avatars virtually assaulted
So, is it time to redefine boundaries or have we already missed the bus? The debate on what constitutes ‘virtual rape’ was first sparked in 1993 by journalist Julian Dibbell in an essay ‘A Rape in Cyberspace’ where she addressed the mind space of players whose avatars were virtually assaulted.
She found much like the minor in UK that they felt physically violated like a rape victim. A psychotherapist in the US called being gang-raped in the Meta game Horizon Worlds a “surreal nightmare where she froze.” There were also obscene taunts in the background while her avatar was being assaulted.
When adults are struggling, where does that leave children, most of them unsupervised as they join into the gaming adrenalin? Roblox is an immensely popular game among the young, but it isn’t sacred either, nothing in cyber verse is.
A 7- year- old was reportedly gang-raped in Roblox playground. This mindless violence can potentially scar children, moreover is this what we really want to engage with as a means of relaxation?
Those in defence say routinely being bumped off in games like Call of Duty, doesn’t make the winners killers, but the concerns are not superficial or black and white. Should children — and we know despite the age regulations they are generously gaming — encounter extreme violence, much of it directed at girls and women, such as rape online?
At the predictable gate
Big Tech and its lack of accountability while freezing on responsibility especially to its young users. Meta’s record on the lack of a safety mechanism for its teenage users is out in the public domain.
So, what will it take for companies to pre-empt violent acts online? Intent is the big one, safeguards can only then follow. Automatic protection called personal boundary in metaverse is clearly not working.
Virtual rape is not legally a crime and across jurisdictions it also poses the obvious question, when online attackers are anonymous global strangers under what law can they realistically be prosecuted?
In a universally burdened legal system, can courts even afford to look away from the physical burden of backlog of cases? Taking full advantage of this dichotomy are online sexual predators who are watching the loopholes keenly.
The buck for now stops with the parents, is this where you want your child hanging out, a space populated with strangers and where violence is just a click away? In our capitulation to all things digital, perhaps it is time to pause and reassess what enjoyment really means.
No perfect answers
It may be the most important question for cyber space seems to have one constant mantra, shoot like no one is watching. On New Year’s Eve, a 17- year-old Chinese student was rescued in what is now becoming a roaring business of cyber kidnapping believed to have originated in Mexico.
The teen was convinced to run away and confine himself, snowed in, to a tent. He was then made to take fake photos of himself in distress as though he is being held captive which were sent by the scammers to his family in China. A modus operandi is to make the victims isolate themselves, they do not engage with anyone in person.
By using AI, cyber kidnappers clone voices of victims in distress, these are sent to relatives demanding ransom. The victim is physically safe is this new form of cybercrime where extortion is the prime focus.
Families pay up out of fear, victims do as they are told fearing their families will be harmed. Interestingly the police say those particularly vulnerable in the US are foreign students like Kai Zhang. It fits. Identifying the truth isn’t easy for families miles apart.
So, what is the way to navigate the bottomless pit that is the virtual world? No stakeholder has the perfect answer, after all cyberspace is far from perfect. Perhaps keep it simple, pace it and check in on your kids, no one else will do it for you.
