Bot-avatar Pesters Second Life Users (For Science!)

holy_calamity writes "A bot-controlled avatar that tracks down lone avatars in Second Life and purposely invades their personal space has been created by UK researchers. The idea was to see if users value their virtual personal space. Bots avatars are not encouraged by Linden Labs — although this one is being deployed by academics, presumably spam-avatars (spavatars?) won't be far behind."

Personal Space

[dintech]

Sounds more like 'Second Wife' than Second Life...

Re:I for one welcome ...

[cromar]

Now, that would be a cool idea for a bot net experiment =oP

I'm down.

1. Steal top secret gov't research.
2. ???
3. Build mesh networked pan-handling robot emissaries.
4. Profit!

Re:One flaw

[sw155kn1f3]

>> Female avatars do NOT have to be controlled by a female user.

Huh? You mean that cute elf girl I've been dating... Oh shit..

Naked Ruth Bots?

[MLease]

Are they hot?

-Mike

Hiro

[hansamurai]

So how many users chopped off the intruder's appendages with a katana and then had their homemade daemons clean up their handiwork?

Re:Statistics!

[foobsr]

28 events is a ridiculously small sample size

But imagine how many nearly identical conference/research papers they can conjure up by slowly increasing the sample size they report on!

CC.

Oh, when THEY do it in SL, it's called research

[Rogerborg]

When I do it to teenage girls on the subway, it's called 6 to 12 months.

Re:interesting test for science' sake

[Rogerborg]

do Westerners stand further apart than Asians when chatting in a virtual world? I

No, they stand the same distance apart; it would violate the laws of physics if one of them was "further apart" than the other. What a peculiar question.

In related news...

[CarpetShark]

...researchers stalk people online to see if they mind.

"Online research" patent claimed by FBI and RIAA.

Re:Statistics!

[mattOzan]

"Out of 28 avatars approached this way, 12 simply moved away and 20 also responded via text chat."

So it looks like there's only 28 people left in Second Life? More than I would have imagined. They were probably just startled to see someone new.