Beware the virtual roaches! They can be real.

On Friday the 13th, Greenies Home Sim and the Zero G group were alarmed with the following message:

*** ROACHES ALERT *** code green STOP cockroaches escaped from roach motel STOP all greenies snipers return to home sim STOP bring zapguns STOP lots of them STOP ***

Zap a Roach Game

Suddenly, all over the Greenies' kitchen (Teleport), virtual roaches were running, taking a bit of avatars wearing zapguns, and making a scary 'njam njam' sound. That sound still resonates in the ears of all who fought bravely that night!

Roaches are still there, at the kitchen, and there is only one way to kill them: zap them! Why should you do so? Besides the fact that you help keep our kitchen health control safe, there are some prizes to be won: fun ones when you kill a certain amount of roaches - now that is a tasty roach - and a big prize for the daily winner. More information about that on the Roaches pages. There and on the Rezzable Games page you can also find the recent highscores for zap-a-roach: who zapped the most roaches today and is thus likely to win the prize, who got what yesterday and who are best at doing pest control over time.

Virtual roaches, real phobia

The launch at the roaches led to me to ponder the nature of the human mind a bit, though. We were so glad when they were finally doing their roach thing - which is basically crawling until they get zapped. Until, IM pops up: 'Seems one of our DJs has severe arachnophobia and can not work at Greenies as long as the roaches are there.'

Afraid of Ghosts by Trisha Brunner.

Rest assure that at that moment my jaw dropped down on the desk and my head hit the keyboard. Causing arachnophobia? My roaches? But they are obviously primmy and virtual?! Not real? Encapsulated in a terrarium that's called 'PC monitor'! Surely, one can not 'engage' in a virtual world that much?!

But yes, it seems the human mind can do exact that: when it is a real phobia - a form of anxiety disorder, regardless if the object that causes the fear is real or in the virtual world, the phobia is still triggered. This might explain all the people scratching themselves when we went to see Microcosmos on big screen, but still.

I was left flabbergasted. Miss Gweneth Lange did a great job at explaining it to me further: 'All I can do is explain the phobia because I have it badly. It is not a matter of justifying it to myself that its just pixels. It is the fact that they look and behave very real and yes, very engaging. From that alone, it triggered my phobia and a panic attack. While others may not understand the fear behind a bug, others who experience it do.'

In the end, we solved things. Both lovely ladies now can turn off the roaches from a distance, even before entering the sim. But regardless how much I can try to understand how they feel, I can not imagine those same feeling happening for me. Especially not because of a virtual insect or bug. It did warn me though, that although the virtual world is just 'pixels bowed around a mesh', it can be all to real for people. If roaches trigger phobia, then maybe a lot of virtual smiles can make people feel loved and happy? ;)

Zap-a-Roach at Greenies Home Sim. Teleport there now!