I generally loathe the "[insert topic here] in Second Life!" journalistic premise: methinks it simply a 3D update of the old "[blank] has a website!" craze of 1995, or the "[blank] has a blog!" mania of 2004.
But who can resist this hook? Terrorism in Second Life! No, not griefy, let's-pretend terrorism as was recently practiced by the self-proclaimed SLLA (or Second Life Liberation Army), but actual, real-world, first-life terrorist groups like Al Qaeda using Second LIfe and other MMORPGs to keep in contact, launder money and even operate virtual terrorist training schools (talk about distance learning).
OK, so it may not have actually happened yet. But Game Politics points to this speculative article by a counterterrorism expert about the potential for such dastardly stuff to happen inside Linden Lab's glorified chatroom.
(The real genius is GamePolitics' spot illustration of a Mac Classic toting machine gun and cartoon anarchist bomb, reproduced above. Brilliant!)
Link: GamePolitics.com » Blog Archive » Real Terror Cells Inside MMO Virtual Worlds?.
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