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Girls Who Like Boys Whose Wives Are Unamused
Wall Street Journal takes time out of its busy day reporting on the incipient collapse of the mortgage market to pose the question: in Second Life, is this man cheating on his wife? Complete with helpful chart!
Their bond is so strong that three months ago, Mr. Hoogestraat asked Janet Spielman, the 38-year-old Canadian woman who controls the redhead, to become his virtual wife.
The woman he’s legally wed to is not amused.
Of course, World of Warcraft forum readers have seen this all before.
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about 3 years ago
Yeah, you can love your virtual friends, but don’t LOVE your virtual friends.
about 3 years ago
Yes, yes he is.
Regardless of if you’re cheating emotionally or physically, you’re still double dipping the chip.
Make a decision and live with it.
about 3 years ago
Actually, this IS a newsworthy story. They just got the title wrong. Shoulda been “Man finds virtual woman played by real woman in Second Life”. Furthermore you missed the massive news in the middle:
If this has been done a couple of months ago that would have been one of four million characters. Could it be that Linden is putting out real numbers at last?
On a related note, SOE has been promoting their real/virtual dual wedding they did at the Las Vegas Fan Faire/EQ2 this week (46 year old woman, 31 year old man). Who needs dating sites and IRC anymore?
about 3 years ago
Hell, everyone in ULTIMA ONLINE has seen this all before. I’d like to congratulate the WSJ on their acute Google-fu.
about 3 years ago
Did no one at WSJ think of titling this article “Second Wife?” I mean, WHAM slam dunk.
about 3 years ago
Yeah, it’s cheating.
What a fucktard.
about 3 years ago
In response to Todd’s comment, the majority of WSJ readers probably can’t appreciate that a _game_ can have significant emotional impact. To people who haven’t spent so-many-hours-I-can’t-even-guess in an online world, the idea of social relationships formed online/in-game/over-Ventrillo. So presenting it as neutral question and then heaping on all the damning evidence amidst some effort of presenting both sides would move the conversation farther a long than titling it “Second Wife.”
What strikes me as odd is that the guy has only been married for 7 months. If you’re emotional life is so obviously somewhere else, why go through with the marriage?
about 3 years ago
Please we saw this back in text days. Same issue, same arguements etc. History … repeat… blahblahblah you know the drill.
about 3 years ago
OMFG we used to see this happen between chess opponents in ancient Sumeria, that’s how old this news is!
I wonder if his RL wife gets half his virtual stuff in the REAL divorce?
about 3 years ago
I don’t consider it cheating, myself, although I’m a fan of polyamory in general so my opinion probably isn’t the norm. HOWEVER, I do think that reaching an understand ahead of time with your spouse about what they consider this sort of activity to be classified as is of vital importance. At a minimum he lied to her and betrayed her trust.
about 3 years ago
Google cache to the last link… it appears to be dead:
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:N_tCrTaNuLQJ:afkgamer.com/archives/2007/08/11/guild-for-sale/ http://afkgamer.com/archives/2007/08/11/guild-for-sale/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1
about 3 years ago
For some reason this didn’t post the first time..
Here’s the google cache to the last link in this post, it appears to be dead: http://tinyurl.com/2wang3
about 3 years ago
Nothing wrong with polyamory, but it is cheating if your partner is unaware and unconsenting.
Also; OLD NEWS. This has been going on long before UO.
Apart from those being cheated on, who cares?
about 3 years ago
It’s so quiant when the mainstream media latches onto a concept they see as new and radical which the geeks among us have acknowledged as part of virtual life for years.
And I must say this quote:
“You try to talk to someone or bring them a drink, and they’ll be having sex with a cartoon.”
made me LOL IRL.
about 3 years ago
I don’t know many people who would be comfy with their wife/husband having another spouse. Even if it is virtual. Obviously they have issues in their relationship that go beyond the game, or else he wouldn’t be looking in the game to fulfill those needs.
about 3 years ago
I’ve got to agree, Moorgard. Seeing stories like this always makes me wonder what next ‘shocking revelation’ we’ll see in print.
Maybe that people dress in animal costumes and do bizarre sexual acts. Or watch cartoon porn. Or are trying to develop robots.. for sex! Oh hay, how about “it’s a bad idea to give out your real name on public forums!” That one hasn’t popped up in a while.
about 3 years ago
Oh, Second Life has lawsuits for that too, doncha know.
about 3 years ago
What I found really ironic is: “The real Mrs. Hoogestraat is no stranger to online communities — she met her husband in a computer chat room three years ago. ”
Helloooooo! YOU met him in a chat room and now you are surprised that he spends his time meeting people in a 3D chat room? I wonder how much time he spent chatting in IRC with the current Mrs. Hoogerstraat before they were married? Something tells me it was probably along the same lines as the time he now spends in SL….
about 3 years ago
Actually, the really eye-opening thing was the graphic that talked about Entropia Universe. 600k players, paying an average of $50/player/month? Holy crap, some people will play anything if it’s pretty enough, I guess. Let’s put it this way, that’s the equivalent of 2 million $15/month subscriptions, which was about as many people playing WoW in North America and Europe when everyone was initially hailing it as the undisputed MMO next coming.
Of course, this ignores any cash they have to pay out to players, which I suspect isn’t very much overall.
Still, a bit of an eye opener hidden in an otherwise silly article.
about 3 years ago
The answer is that he is obviously cheating.
Btw, defining something as newsworthy requires context. As someone pointed out above, regular readers of WSJ are less likely to be exposed to these type of challenges related to virtual communities. It IS newsworthy to them.
And, personally, I thought the article was a bit more well written than some of the others we’ve seen along the same lines.
about 3 years ago
In an experiment conducted at the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, test subjects were hooked up to neuroimaging machines while they played a simple computer game in which they moved colored discs to form a pattern. When told that they were playing with a person rather than a computer, participants showed increased activity in areas of the brain that govern social interaction.
I found this interesting. I know I like playing in an MMO more even when I’m soloing, just because I feel like there’s other people around. It’s a very different feeling than playing a game by yourself. I think a lot of people who like soloing must be like that.
about 3 years ago
He’s only been married IRL for 7 months … wow … that flame died down quick.
I wonder if she can take half of his virtual holdings when she divorces his real ass.
about 3 years ago
Want an enigma wrapped in a conumdrum?
Is he cheating on his virtual wife, when he has sex with his real one?
about 3 years ago
“Is he cheating on his virtual wife, when he has sex with his real one?”
You just blew my mind.
about 3 years ago
Is he cheating on his virtual wife, when he has sex with his real one?
If she is anything like my wife, they’re not having sex while he is off on one of his gaming binges
about 3 years ago
Is he cheating on his virtual wife, when he has sex with his real one?
Only if he does it in text.
about 3 years ago
Not just seen it in wow … I have memories from the drama in EQ
about 3 years ago
>Actually, the really eye-opening thing was the graphic that talked about Entropia Universe. 600k players, paying an average of $50/player/month? Holy crap, some people will play anything if it’s pretty enough, I guess. Let’s put it this way, that’s the equivalent of 2 million $15/month subscriptions…
I wouldn’t draw any conclusions along those lines without more knowledge about the reporting of those numbers. It does list Second Life as having 8.6 million users on the same chart.
about 3 years ago
This seems a lot more like the ‘office spouse’ syndrome than bona-fide cheating to me. I mean, because they, in the context of their on-line/virtual/so-called lives, term it a “marriage”… WTF does that have to do with the real-time/meatspace/legally wed wife that he goes-home/logs-off to? Likely his behavior in SL has more to do with the nature of his relationship in RL than his wife cares to think about.
Are people really that insecure? Completely rhetorical; obviously some are.
about 3 years ago
Mr. Peach, unless you have an office marriage then this is not the same. The guy is an idiot. If he kept his wife in the loop and it’s no big deal then hey go to town. But if you’re that much of an online junky that you want to do these kind of things you should at least mention it at dinner beforehand. No she may not understand you and may in fact throw a pepper mill at your head (that is what would happen if I told my wife) but at least you’d be an honest loser.
Betrayals of omission are still betrayals. The Catholic Church says as much so it MUST be true!
about 3 years ago
If this guy was exchanging steamy love letters with someone he had never met, would that count as cheating on his wife?
Because, basically, that’s what he’s doing. It’s nothing new. He’s far from the first person in the history of the world to have a long-distance love affair, nor the first person to be caught red-handed by his wife. Wives (and husbands) have been intercepting love letters from parties other than themselves since long before the invention of computers.
Nothing to see, move along. No new “syndrome” or “addiction” or whatever they’re calling it this week. Just a man who thinks marriage is about who you have sex with, not who you love, and a woman who thinks a man she met in a bar is going to stop going to bars now he’s married to her. There are most likely far more issues, and far deeper issues, in that already-failed marriage than anything the article even touched on.
about 3 years ago
Thing is, men have been so over-exposed by our media to ‘perfect’ women that our imagination is well ahead of reality. Hence, men are not content with our ‘ordinary’ wives, and harbor fantasies about the secretary, the cashier, and in this case, some virtual bimbette. I would bet good money that if he’d meet this SL Wife, they’d last 4 weeks, tops. Then he’d have to go back to something that’d meet his imagination’s expectations.
about 3 years ago
Thing is, women are also over-exposed to the media ideal of the ‘perfect’ man. So much so that the expectation is that if you meet some idea, you’ll attract the perfectly successful and upwardly mobile man. I think of it as the ‘princess’ complex, everyone can be Cinderella, so long as they get that moment to show how beautiful and unique they are… Just like everyone else.
about 3 years ago
Well, he’s lasted 7 months with the last one.
I wonder how long he knew his current wife (not online, I mean) before they married? Engels has it right. He was looking online for the “perfect” woman, found her in a chat room, and now they’re married IRL, it’s not so perfect anymore. People in chat rooms (or SL) don’t snore, leave dirty sweat socks in places no dirty sweat sock should be, bitch about guys leaving the seat up, make spaghetti for dinner three nights in a row, go bald, or any of the other inconvenient things real human beings do.
Typing that got me thinking … y’know, in a sense online friendships are a return to a more formalized sort of friendship from a hundred years ago, when upper-class people only saw their friends (and let their friends see them) at their best. People in “society” only saw carefully presented images of each other, minus of course the occasional unfortunate and quickly hushed-up lapse. The old becomes new again.
about 3 years ago
I’m sure the congress will pass a law forbidding the virtual wives, for all the right wingers out there. But don’t pass any laws that regulate the banking practices out there. Did they all forget what happened to most of the Savings and Loans. Just a little common sense that’s all we ask for, and pray for.