Both articles featured people who were married in the atomic world and partnered to other people in SL, with the consent (even if it's grudging in the WSJ case) of their atomic partners. There's natural hype around virtual cheating, as there is around anything mildly titillating and scandalous, but this is more interesting. This consensual multi-world polyamory suggests a couple things to me:  that monogamous marriage as a sole cultural option is deader than the toga, and that the pliability of identity is a lot more common than we're led to believe.

Let's look at the WSJ title question. Ric's SL av, Dutch, who Ric identifies with maybe more strongly than with his atomic av, is partnered with Tenaj.  Ric's atomic partner, Sue, knows all this.  Is Ric cheating?  Well, if cheating means "acting without your partner's knowledge and consent," clearly not.  If cheating means "violating the cultural expectation of monogamy," clearly yes.  The first one is just bad: lying by omission is bad karma, period.  The second is interesting, even if my response is "it's nobody's business but theirs."

A lot of people in the atomic - and far too many in the digital - get all bent when other people ignore cultural values (whether they conform to them themselves or not!).  I think this happens when people who fear change see that it's already happening - the backlash of the last dodos,  you could say.  Gay marriage, polyamory, multiple autonomous identities - the old ways have fallen.  "One sexual partner for life" in practical terms died out with "One job for life." With life spans lengthening, and both serial lives (reinventing yourself every so often in new careers, cities, relationships) and parallel lives (atomic and digital) becoming commonplace, the whole notion of one of anything forever is just unprocessable gibberish. That's self-evident. The change has happened.  Yes, reactionary attacks are dangerous, and they can and do cause a lot of pain and harm.  But there's no reversing time's arrow.

Ric's situation has some more layers to it, though.  Dutch has a great life in SL - a happy partnership, an interesting and profitable business, a wide network of friends.  Ric, on the other hand, has become a finance vehicle for Dutch: Ric earns a $USD income to support Dutch, and that's about it for Ric: he's clearly neglected his partner, and has no effective existence beyond that paycheck.  So, yeah, Sue, who partnered with Ric expecting a *person* there, has been pretty much abandoned. Two worlds, one life, arguably one person: Dutch, in SL.

If that's the case, shouldn't Dutch have all the things that go along with personhood: credit, identity papers, citizenship - and shouldn't Ric be treated as a - well, a servant, an avatar, a projection of Dutch to accomplish certain things?  Kind of like the Professional Corporations that doctors have - shouldn't Ric just be Dutch, PC, while Dutch is the legal *person*?

Likewise, you all know how badly I want all that stuff that our laws and culture give to *people.*  Not citizenship in some atomic nation, goddess forbid  - you atomic people can keep *that* bunch of bad ideas!  But a bank account, acknowledgement that I'm a person.   The CJR article talks about that in a way that's very insightful.  The author argues against traditional media's insistence on tying a Digital Person's comments to some atomic person for attribution.  It makes sense if the DP is claiming something in the atomic world - claiming to be a veteran, or present at the scene of a crime, two cases mentioned in the article.  But if the DP is only discussing the digital world, verify their digital claims, but ignore the atomic!

Interview me?  Okay.  Then you're welcome to contact my landlord, my employer, my family.  Place of residence, occupation, relationships - they're all public, all part of my verifiable identity.  But I don't *have* an atomic existence that I'm making claims about - so why try to verify something I'm *telling* you doesn't exist?!  Go verify that it *doesn't,* that I really am only a Digital Person!