David Pollard and Amy Taylor are two individuals who separately wanted to escape the dreariness of their mundane lives.41 Both of them lived in Newquay, a seaside resort in southwest England that has become a Mecca for drunken teenagers who come in their hordes to party away the summer. The town is far from idyllic and I would imagine living there, without a job and prospects, must be depressing. To escape the drudgery, David and Amy (who initially met in an online chatroom) joined Second Life where they became ‘Dave Barmy’ and ‘Laura Skye’ (see Figure 11). Dave Barmy was in his mid-twenties, six foot four, slim, with long dark hair, and was a nightclub owner who lived in a sprawling villa. He had a penchant for smart suits and bling. In reality, David Pollard was forty, overweight at 160 kg, balding and living off incapacity benefits in a bedsit. He wore T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms.
Figure 11: Dave Barmy and Laura Skye
Laura Skye was an equally exotic character. She was also in her mid-twenties, a slim six foot with long, dark hair, living in a large house. She liked the country and western look of tight denim blouses and boots. In reality, Amy Pollard was an overweight, five-foot-four redhead who was also living off benefits. The contrast between reality and fiction could hardly have been greater (see Figure 12).
When the couple met online as Dave Barmy and Laura Skye, they fell in love and married in Second Life. But they also met up in real life with Amy moving in with David in Newquay. After two years, they married for real – just like the Korean couple. However, as in real life, that’s when things started to go wrong. Laura (Amy) suspected Dave was playing around in Second Life so she hired a virtual detective to check up on her virtual husband. At one point, she discovered Dave Barmy having sex with a call girl in the game. In real life, David apologized and begged for forgiveness. The final straw came when Amy caught her real husband in front of the computer in their small flat watching his avatar cuddling affectionately on a couch with another Second Life character, Modesty McDonnell – the creation of Linda Brinkley, a fifty-five-year-old twice-divorcee from Arkansas, USA. Amy was devastated. She filed for divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour even though Dave had not actually had sex or an affair in real life. Soon after, Dave proposed to Modesty online and in real life even though the couple had never met.
Figure 12: The real Dave Barmy and Laura Skye
When the world discovered that a couple was divorcing on the grounds of make-believe unreasonable behaviour, the press flocked to Newquay. However, in what can only be described as reality imitating art, imitating reality, the Cornish couple initially declined to give interviews and would not answer the door. Then something very odd happened. Two enterprising journalists from the South West News hit on the bright idea of going into Second Life to secure an interview. From their offices miles away in Bristol, Jo Pickering and Paul Adcock created virtual ace reporters ‘Meggy Paulse’ and ‘Jashly Gothley’ to seek out Dave Barmy and Laura Skye for an interview.
Jo still works on South West News and she told me that she had the idea after speaking to a colleague who had been using avatars to attend online courses. As Meggy Paulse, Jo found Laura Skye in Second Life. She told me that the online Laura Skye was much more approachable and confident than the real life Amy. Eventually Meggy Paulse persuaded Amy to logoff and go downstairs and open the door to speak to the reporters camped on her doorstep. They eventually got their story.
Jo explained that Amy had felt that the betrayal online was far worse than betrayal in real life, because both she and David had created these perfect selves and still that was not good enough. In real life, we are all flawed and often put up with each other’s weaknesses, but in Second Life there were supposed to be no weaknesses. That’s why the online betrayal hurt. As Jo says, ‘She had created this perfect version of herself – and even that wasn’t good enough for him.’
I asked Jo about what ever happened to the couple. Apparently Dave did eventually meet up with Linda Brinkley, but reality must have kicked in when it came to having a real marriage when you are both poor and live on different continents. When online Dave Barmy met online Modesty McDonnell for real, David Pollard and Linda Brinkley got real. What this morality tale tells us is that the boundaries between reality and fantasy can sometimes become blurred. Paul Bloom, tells of a research assistant who was asked by her professor to do some research on these virtual communities.42 Apparently, the young woman never came back. Like some electronic cult, she preferred life in a virtual world compared to the real one. If the urge to live a life online is so compelling, it does make you wonder what the future holds. Surely something has to give, as one cannot be in two places at the same time even between virtual and real worlds. Both require the limited resource of time and that is something that cannot be easily divided.
When Online Behaviour is Off
Some individuals in power seek out sexual gratification by engaging in risky encounters. They step over the boundaries of decent behaviour. The Web has made this type of transgression all too easy. With what must be the most unfortunate of surnames, Republican Congressman Anthony Weiner found himself at the centre of a career-destroying scandal in 2011 when he was forced to resign after confessing to sending pictures of his penis to women whom he followed on Twitter.43 ‘Weinergate’, as it became known, was just another example of high-profile men using the Web to send naked images of themselves to women. In the past, men exposed themselves for sexual gratification in public places but, with the advent of social networking sites, offline flashing has moved online and is much more common.
Indeed, some argue that one of the main uses of the Internet is for sex. A 2008 survey of more than 1,280 teenagers (13–20 years) and young adults (20–26 years) revealed that one in five teenagers and one in three young adults had sent nude or semi-nude photographs of themselves over the internet.44 One online dating site, Friendfinder.com, estimates that nearly half of its subscribers are married. Either they are looking for new partners or the opportunity to flirt.45 Probably one of the most remarkable cases was US Army Colonel Kassem Saleh, who had simultaneously wooed over fifty women online and made marriage proposals to many of them despite the fact that he was already married.
‘Sexting’ is a relatively new phenomenon in which individuals use technology to engage in sexual activities at a distance. Susan Lipkins, a psychologist from Port Washington, New York, reports that in her online survey of thirteen to seventy-two-year-olds, two-thirds of the sample had sent sexually explicit messages. The peak activity was in the late teenagers and young adults. What was interesting was that this behaviour was associated with personality measures of power such as assertiveness, dominance and aggression in those over the age of twenty-seven. Power was not a factor in the younger group but was significantly related to sexting in the older men.46 The ease and speed of the Web, as well as the perceived dissociation and distance from reality, lead to an escalation of brazen activity. This can easily slide into moral indiscretions that are unregulated by social norms compared to real life. Just like bullying, the apparent anonymity, distance and remoteness of being online allows us to not be our self as we would behave in the real world.