Mr.Bungle

Description of Mr.Bungle in LambdaMOO:

        Cyberspace enables individuals to choose and create any character, name, and description.  The puppeteer behind Mr. Bungle chose a repulsive description compared to most of the descriptions on the MOO:  "And there was cruelty enough lurking in the appearance Mr. Bungle presented to the virtual world--he was at the time a fat, oleaginous, Bisquick-faced clown dressed in cum-stained harlequin garb and girdled with a mistletoe-and-hemlock belt whose buckle bore the quaint inscription ``KISS ME UNDER THIS, BITCH" (Dibell).

Heinous Acts of Violence/Victims:

The character of Mr.Bungle used a ``voodoo doll,'' a subprogram that served the not-exactly kosher purpose of attributing actions to other characters that their users did not actually write" (Dibell).  The voodoo doll subprogram manipulated and violated various characters in the living room:

"That he began by using his voodoo doll to force one of the room's occupants to sexually service him in a variety of more or less conventional ways. That this victim was legba, a Haitian trickster spirit of indeterminate gender, brown-skinned and wearing an expensive pearl gray suit, top hat, and dark glasses. That legba heaped vicious imprecations on him all the while and that he was soon ejected bodily from the room....That he turned his attentions now to Starsinger, a rather pointedly nondescript female character, tall, stout, and brown-haired, forcing her into unwanted liaisons with other individuals present in the room, among them legba, Bakunin (the well-known radical), and Juniper (the squirrel). That his actions grew progressively violent. That he made legba eat his/her own pubic hair. That he caused Starsinger to violate herself with a piece of kitchen cutlery. That his distant laughter echoed evilly in the living room with every successive outrage. That he could not be stopped" (Dibell)

Cyberspace gives individuals like Mr. Bungle an opportunity to commit cyber rape and violence.

Thanks Zippy

        In the virtual world, the only means to stop horrid acts like the ones committed by Mr. Bungle is through text.  The violent acts continued and were unstoppable until: " at last someone summoned Zippy, a wise and trusted old-timer who brought with him a gun of near wizardly powers, a gun that didn't kill but enveloped its targets in a cage impermeable even to a voodoo doll's powers. That Zippy fired this gun at Mr. Bungle, thwarting the doll at last and silencing the evil, distant laughter" (Dibell).

Zippy silenced and stopped the violence, thus attests the power of  a MOO wizard. Eventually Mr. Bungle was toaded by the wizards of the MOO.  

Alias Identity  in LambdaMOO

        Even after being toaded from the LambdaMoo, the uncanniness of cyberspace enable Mr. Bungle to reincarnate into Dr. Jest.

"This truth was rather dramatically borne out, not too many days after Bungle departed, by the arrival of a strange new character named Dr. Jest. There was a forceful eccentricity to the newcomer's manner, but the oddest thing about his style was its striking yet unnameable familiarity...Mr. Bungle had risen from the grave. In itself, Bungle's reincarnation as Dr. Jest was a remarkable turn of events" (Dibell).

This raises the question:  Is their true punishment for cyber violence/misconduct?  The opportunity to reincarnate is quite disturbing.  Even though no physical harm was done in real life, the virtual body was violated, thus makes it difficult to prosecute the criminal  because it happened through written text.  Cyberspace is for fantasy and the imagination.  Mr. Bungle exhibited his imagination, though extreme, but demonstrated it with a violent and vile demeanor that virtually mistreated, offended and harmed other participants.  

Real Life Persona

        Mr. Bungle's real life persona may or may not have reflected his online identity but cyberspace enabled him exercise his imagination:  "The puppeteer behind Bungle, as it happened, was a young man logging in to the MOO from a New York University computer. He could have been Al Gore for all any of the others knew, however, and he could have written Bungle's script that night any way he chose" (Dibell).  His imagination may have been extreme but it was through the written word that committed his violent exploitation of fellow characters. The ambiguity of identity and character in cyberspace lets acts of rape and violence occur commonly while in MOOs and MUDs.                               

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