It seems a topic about which I wrote some months back has resurfaced: Virtual Age Play. To get up to speed it’s probably worth reading my original post and the comments on it (reLink – and I’d like to add that since that post, someone who disagrees with my opinion has obviously submitted my email to some unpleasant pornographic websites with which they were apparently familiar and which then started flooding my account; thankfully, Yahoo does an amazingly excellent job of filtering that crap). There were unsurprisingly few bloggers willing to touch on the subject, and while it wasn’t the first time the topic had been raised in Second Life, it was the beginning of more serious MSM interest.

Apparently another blogger, and Second Life resident, has recently raised the virtual age play issue again (Link) and that post was flagged by the Boing Boing megasite (Link). Given the current headlines surrounding the capture of JonBenet Ramsey’s alleged murderer, I think the subject may now have some serious legs, especially since Boing Boing is continuing to raise the issue (Link) of people facing prison time for doing little more than simply drawing unpleasant images. I’m glad. This needs some serious and seriously intelligent debate.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I certainly find the material offensive, but equally offensive is having a bunch of holier-than-thou fanatics trying to enforce penalties for what people imagine. Those same people are probably imagining some pretty sick stuff themselves. Of course, if they’re posting dissenter emails to sites that carry the real thing, I guess their fascination is based on reality. Funny how that so often seems to be the case.