Garry Kasparov targeted in real-life repeat of the “Anshe Chung incident”
By Eric Reuters
Ask a Second Life business owner what makes their job difficult, and griefing — the antisocial Second Life phenomena of one user taking joy from harassing others — comes in for frequent and heated vitriol. In two of the most notorious griefing incidents, American politician John Edwards’ virtual site was defaced, and a 2006 CNET interview with Second Life real estate magnate Anshe Chung was interrupted by a barrage of flying virtual phalluses.
Pranksters have duplicated the “flying penis incident” (as it’s widely known) in a real-life stunt aimed at chess grandmaster and Russian political dissident Garry Kasparov. A phallic-like object attached to a small remote control helicopter interrupted a Kasparov speech at a Moscow conference of Russian opposition parties. British tabloid The Daily Mirror has video (nsfw), and quotes a Moscow Times report attributing the joke to “a couple of pro-Kremlin Young Russia activists.”
On one level, griefing attacks can be undeniably funny. But the phenomena has emerged as a problem for the virtual worlds industry. While Second Life is a favorite arena for griefing stunts, other virtual worlds like EVE Online and Habbo Hotel have also wrestled with organized antisocial groups. High-profile events and conferences based in Second Life require the presence of dedicated security personnel ready to eject troublemakers, significantly raising the cost of entry and risk of bad press for real-world organizations. For many events, invite-only policies have become common practice. No American politician in the contentious U.S. presidential race has maintained an official Second Life presence since the March 2007 griefing attack on Edwards’ site. As virtual worlds companies struggle for mainstream acceptance, griefers may be causing real-world misery for the bottom line.
As for Kasparov, he soldiered on after the interruption. “I think we have to be thankful for the opposition’s demonstration of the level of discourse we need to anticipate,” the former chess champ said, according to a translation in the Belfast Telegraph.
