Top all-time · #3756
Julian Dibbell
Personal blog · juliandibbell.comculturewritinggames
Julian Dibbell's personal blog at juliandibbell.com covers culture, writing and games. Since 2009, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 21 times, most often “A Rape in Cyberspace (1993)”. The last post was in 2009, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked as the reference for "A Rape in Cyberspace", Dibbell's 1993 Village Voice account of the LambdaMOO Mr. Bungle incident. Commenters cite it for online harm and digital identity.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- A Rape in Cyberspace (1993)7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-04-14
- A Rape in Cyberspace (1993)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2012-04-02
- My Tiny Life – Crime and Passion in a Virtual World (1998)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-29
What Hacker News says?
Depends on how you frame it, really. Julian Dibble's "A Rape In Cyberspace" is a oft-referenced piece here, written about LambdaMOO in the mid 90s, but still applicable to online environments today. (CW for reasons apparent in the title of the piece) http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
Comment linking /articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
on “Buttplug: An open-source software suite for teledildonics”Submitted The Cult and Cults of Brasília (1992) as a story · 30 points
HN discussion> I think I'd like to build a connectable MOO-like world in which people could set up their own areas/rooms and connect them to a limited number of neighbors. Give them item creation and scripting capabilities as well. Simple, hackable, and almost completely user-created. Woops, that'd just be text-based Second Life. This sounds a lot like LambdaMoo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LambdaMOO ). An interesting write-up…
Comment linking /texts/mytinylife.html
on “Making the web fun again”Submitted A Rape in Cyberspace (1993) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYes, everyone interested in this topic should read that link. And associated topics -- search for 'Mr Bungle LambdaMOO' and in particular: http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html A Rape in Cyberspace How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society First published in The Village Voice, December 23, 1993
Comment linking /texts/bungle_vv.html
on “Reddit takes a new direction”Submitted My Tiny Life – Crime and Passion in a Virtual World (1998) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionHoly shit, I can’t believe I just read a story about LambdaMoo that didn’t mention the Mr. Bungle incident. Is that legal? http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-r%61pe-in-cyberspace... - content warning: rape, or rape-like things, it’s complicated —— MU*s were pretty important to me. I fell into them, I left them, I came back, I met the person who’s now my significant other and creative partner on a high-concept S…
Comment linking /articles/a-r%61pe-in-cyberspace/
on “A Mansion Filled with Hidden Worlds: When the Internet Was Young”Submitted A Rape in Cyberspace (1993) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttp://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html
Comment linking /texts/bungle_vv.html
on “Video game execution watched by 325K players”Submitted A Rape in Cyberspace (1993) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionPerhaps relevant — loss of control can be much more impacting depending on how much weight you give to that online persona: http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
Comment linking /articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
on “Tales of the M1 GPU”Submitted Dept. of Mixed Bags: MY TINY LIFE Is Free At Last(2008) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionReally, 1990s writings on the impact of the Internet I find tend to remain remarkably applicable in this way. There's a particularly notable[0] article quite relevant to the topic of digital identity and harm, and to events earlier this year: "A Rape in Cyberspace; or, How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society" (1993) http://www.juliandibbell.co…
Comment linking /texts/bungle_vv.html
on “The dark side of the Internet (1996)”Submitted A Rape in Cyberspace as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCyber-rapist reminds me of A Rape in Cyberspace[1], from 1993. Which, 20 years later, seems much tamer in comparison to mobile anonymous physical stalking apps. At least back then, your stalker had to sit in front of their computer. Now we recognize that as something closer to trolling. [1] http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
Comment linking /articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
on “Internet-induced fear culture (or: Why Girls Around Me isn’t the problem)”Submitted Unpacking My Record Collection as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWhy is identity tied to a name? Identity is such a fluid construct, and the arbitrary forcing of it into First/Surname seems on one hand anglocentric, and on another hand, trying to impose on online identity the vestiges of real-world identity that we don't need on here. I would think given the discourse around online identity (i.e. http://www.juliandibbell.com/ and http://www.mit.edu/~sturkle/ ), including feminist…
Comment linking /
on “Vic Gundotra: Pseudonyms are coming to Google Plus”Submitted Kittens, Kittens, and the Online-Cultural Crisis of Propriety as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSame thing, different day: http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
Comment linking /articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
on “Mother opens up about being ‘virtually gang raped’ in metaverse”A known problem since the early days of the public internet, http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
Comment linking /articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
on “Meta to bring in mandatory distances between virtual reality avatars”The more things change, the more they stay the same. In the early nineties, there was A Rape in Cyberspace http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html
Comment linking /texts/bungle_vv.html
on a deleted thread
