Please post here if you are interested in this subject.

Let's keep the thread focused.

I played several online games, including the first MMORPG Shadow of Yserbius, but also Ultima Online and now "Star Wars Galaxies" when I have spare time.

In the past, I've noticed several groups that were a bit on the vulgar side, and dealt with rated R topics and spoke rated R language. People would throw nasty insults back and forth, make "real life" attacks on people, etc.

What I mean by real life attacks is finding personal information about a player and ridiculing them. Sometimes make fun of their job, appearance, etc. It would get as bad as photograph alteration.

There is an article about how crazy it got in Korea when their big game "Lineage" was released. High school kids flunked out of school because they played this game day and night. A lot of these guys who played stayed in internet cafes day and night, it was a serious addiction.

Sometimes, in battles between one gang of player killers versus another gang, if one gang was doing unusually well, the other side would find out which internet cafe their enemies play, then they'd take a gang of guys with them, and beat the heck out of their in game enemy!

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Today, I think there is more awareness. Problem players are banned from message boards and the actual games VERY quickly. Still, children can be at risk not so much from sex predators (but that is always something to watch out for), but also the gang-like mentality of some player guilds. Parents should supervise a little. See who your kid talks to in this game, and ask your kid if s/he's in a guild. If s/he is, go to that guild's website, and see if they're reasonably nice people, and not a bunch of kooks.

1) In online 'communities' you dont have the non verbal cues or physical presence that generate empathy. Its harder to demonize someone when you see them face to face, see thier eyes, hear their voices. (Harder, not impossible). But usually we lay off if we see someone in person. But in an online community, you dont have this humanizing factor. An important 'safety catch' is missing, and vindictive thoughts and fantasies can spiral out of control.

2) Social psychologists have been studying group behavior for years and have noticed

a) Diffusion of responsibility. People feel less accountable if they are in a group (or even think someone else is nearby) than if they are alone. If a lone person witnesses a mugging, he or she is more likely to call the cops. But if a person is in a group, everyone in the group may assume someone else will call 911 and no one will do so. That was how Kitty Genovese was killed. She screamed for help but no one called the police, because everyone thought someone else would do it.

b) Persons in groups exhibit what social psychologists call 'risky shift'--a group is more likely to enage in extreme behavior than a single person--diffusion of responsiblity again.

So with this combination of factors, online groups may be at special risk of violent acting out.

Well, except that you cant actually hit someone over the internet. It seems to me, real life communites would be at higher rist, according to the info you gave above, than online groups. At least in real life, violence perpetrated is actually felt by the victim. Online, someone may say ~punch your sim~ but no actual violence has taken place. There was no victim, no pain, no actual punch, no real violence.