A couple things make this story a little different than your typical man-leaves-wife--wife-kills-man story. The first is the two weren't really married. In fact, it's not clear if they've even ever met. They were married in the virtual world Maple Story. The second is that the murderer didn't really kill the guy. She hacked into his account and deleted his character out of spite.
She faces five years in prison for the hacking.
While I do post on random message boards, I haven't gotten into the virtual world thing too much. I've tried Second Life, and I wasn't all that excited. Even though I'll always be a gamer at heart, I avoid MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. Maybe I'm just anti-social when it comes to games. (Though there was this one MUD I played five hours a day in the mid-90's when I first got the internet. I can't even remember the name of it now. I went by the name Kid Wicked. I was kewl, and I killed monsters.)
Although the news is certainly blowing this "murder" way out of proportion, this reminds me of something I think about a lot. Some people take interactions on the internet a lot more seriously than others. This causes problems.
I've always been a not-as-seriously as others person, and that has led to a fair amount of virtual strife on the few messages boards I frequent. Not so much now as about five, six years ago. But it begs the question, why? Why is this so?
If I call one guy on the net "A Fascist, Penis-licking Nazi Who Probably Steps on Baby Turtles Just to Watch Them Die" he doesn't even notice there was an insult in the sentence, but if I say it to someone else, I may have to make sure my doors and windows are locked that night even though I'm 1,000 miles away. And those two people could otherwise be identical in every other way from age/politics/job/time on the internet, etc.
I'm sure most of it has to do with people's real-life personalities. Some people are more sensitive than others. I get that. However, in my limited experience, a person's real-life persona is a very poor indicator of their internal-internet-seriousness-level.
From xkcd
It's a head scratcher.
Bitch.
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