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So by now you may have heard of the "huh, that's weird" little news blurblet that is the Second Life Divorce. A UK couple who were married after bonding over their play in Second Life divorced after the female half of the couple caught her husband engaged in flagrante digitalo. That's right, he was cheating on her with someone else's avatar. This marriage is deleted!
In case you've never played or delved into the phenom (many have, as resident estimates of this world range from two to seven million), Second Life is a virtual world where you control an avatar that can look like you or be totally alien. You can buy things with the in-world currency like clothes, swanky houses, and, um, genitals. Sweet! No more Barbie crotch! You interact with other characters, so in that sense it's kind of like a big chatroom.
A chatroom is where the married couple in this divorce case met in 2003. Amy Taylor, 28, was in an unhappy marriage and David Pollard, 40, caught her eye with his words. Their love affair soon began:
Amy says: 'David seemed so caring and kind, and we sat up at night sharing our deepest and most intimate thoughts online. It sounds crazy to say, but within a couple of weeks, I think I had fallen in love without ever having met him.
'Then when David suggested I travel down to Newquay to stay with him for a holiday, I jumped at the chance. He was waiting for me when I arrived, and we threw our arms around each other and kissed. I think that was the moment that we became a couple.'
They were soon married in real life, and commemorated their marriage by marrying in Second Life as well. Pollard and Taylor drifted apart a couple of years later, she into World of Warcraft, and he into other buxom online avatars. Taylor then decided to hire a virtual PI to tail her suspicious-acting husband in Second Life, but turned up nothing. It was at this point in the story that I have to agree with India Knight:
Now, I don’t know – I may be terribly old-fashioned. But if I caught a husband having virtual sex with a cartoon, I might suggest we turn off the computer for a bit and maybe waddle off to the pub for a bit of human interaction. This is not an option that struck Taylor. Instead, she used Second Life to hire a virtual private detective, whom she paid in Linden dollars, the game’s currency (obtained by paying real money), to investigate Pollard’s “adultery”.
As an aside I am sorry to say that much of the rest of Knight's article, as well as much of the rest of the blog and press coverage on this case, has to do with the discrepancy between the real-life appearance of the couple and that of their avatars. I'd like to say "Who gives a rip?" but it seems that a lot of people do. I am not interested in that aspect of this story at all, but the chortling and "who do they think they are?" tone is a reminder of how far the size acceptance movement has to go.
So, back to Knight's quote...indeed, where was the communication in this case? It sounds like mostly hurt feelings and reactions, rather than open discussions. What is cheating, when you are in a relationship that assumes monogamous fidelity, but you know your partner is out frolicking with cyber babes with paste-on naughty bits?
It's this quote that gets me the most:
Meanwhile, her estranged husband David, speaking for the first time about this truly bizarre state of affairs, insists: 'I only ever cheated on her once in Second Life - it was the first time, and I was caught. But when I tried to point out that it was only a game, she went absolutely bonkers.'
Pollard acknowledges that it was actual cheating, and in the next breath tries to hedge with the notion that it is "only a game." Is it? Pollard is now engaged to the women he was cheating with--that sounds pretty serious to me.
In the end, I am left less shaking my head at "wacky internet shenanigans" (as a long-time blogger I know you can make real, close
