The armies stand poised, ready for battle. Their mounts steaming with the hard ride to the battlefields, the men and women readying their weapons and soothing excited pets. Just as battle is about to be joined, there rings out the clarion call of a trumpet, like the Grinch returning to Whooville, and in ride a battalion of Amazons, trailed by their tabbies, proudly proclaiming themselves to be the Weird Cat Ladies of Doom, come forth to strike a blow for all that is good and bright in the world. 

It would be hysterical, and that is the vision that popped into my head, when I first saw the call on World of WarcraftÂ's general chat channel that someone was forming a guild, and that the only stated requirements were that all the players had to have human female avatars, and they had to be willing to buy a cat. IÂ'd like to say that the obvious jokes also popped into my head, but let us not get into them, as most involve the Â"pÂ" wordÂ"…a word I find most distasteful. And reallyÂ"…the jokes are so easy my toddler could make them. I consider it noblesse oblige to leave the lower hanging fruit for others.

So, when I asked if they were forming a Weird Cat Lady guild, I was actually being seriousÂ"…because, reallyÂ"…thatÂ's just funny. Imagine my surprise when I was screamed at by the general chat spammer for being a Â"sexist f***ing a**h**** who didnÂ't understand women or catsÂ". When I explained that I was, in fact, actually a woman; with the PMS and the boobs, and the ability to make a grown man beg for mercy, and a proud member of the Weird Cat Lady Society who was the keeper of 3 cats probably older than they were, they mostly went away. (Ok, there was a brief flame war, after which they left the zone because I was humiliating them when it became terribly apparent that they were adolescent boys.)

But you see, IÂ'd had a bottle of wine and the husband had gone to bed. I had nothing better to do than poke the bear. Most of the time, I can ignore the call of the loons, but IÂ'm Mediterranean; for a good time, give me a bottle of wine, point me towards idiots and sit down and watch the spectator sport. So, in my tipsy state, I decided I would log in an unguilded character I had never played and thus would be painless to delete, and find out what exactly they were trying to do, were it to not be the Weird Cat Ladies.

Imagine my surprise to find out that what they were planning was a large-scale cyber-brothel, and that the tabbies would be a Â"signalÂ" that the player was, shall we say, open for tells. Leaving aside the absurdity of the premise that one can be a prostitute in a game where sex isnÂ't possible, I suppose some gamers, (none of us, IÂ'm sure), are desperate enough to pay another character x silver a minute to disrobe, dance and talk dirty in a private channel.

As an aside, for those of you have seen a human female avatar on WoW dance, why would anyone pay to watch the macarena? Night Elves I could see, they get a +40 to pole dancing. Gnomes are apparently born to dance like Tijuana teenagers after a bottle of mescal. But to fantasize about the humans dancing the Macarena? ThatÂ's a level of desperation that bespeaks itself of the Star Trek clad, sweat-befouled 40-somethings who still live in MommyÂ's basement. We should however probably be grateful that they are cybering rather than breeding. Every cloud has a silver lining.

When I mentioned that perhaps this business idea had flaws, in that I couldnÂ't see how there would be much of a market for it, I was told by the head Cat that they had done it on numerous other servers and other games such as EQ and EQ2, and that the most successful Â"girlsÂ", which is to say those that read the script provided and followed the guild Â"rate sheetÂ", made upwards of 10 gold an hour, of which the guild got 20%. The guild cash was then sold on Ebay with the profits going to Head Cat. One assumes that of the thousands of sales for WOW gold on eBay, the guild members are generating some as well.

When I proffered the false information that I was a straight high school guy and that I didnÂ't think I could do it, Head Cat replied that he had just graduated from high school, but that someone Â"who had experience with this sort of thingÂ" had provided the scripts. Suggesting to me that the scheme originates with some deeper connections than just a couple of kids pulling scams.

So, letÂ's think about this. Theoretically, hundreds of gold pieces are being generated by Â"cyber-hookersÂ". Statisticians have estimated that about 11% of female avatars are actually played by women. Ergo, itÂ's a fairly safe assumption that the cyber-hookers are probably being played by boys. Yes, boys. Not men, not women, not girls, but boys. Most adult gamers wouldnÂ't cheapen themselves, or waste valuable game playing time. Most girls gamers would sooner shoot a stranger than cyber with one for money. TheyÂ're gamersÂ"…not bimbos. And in every game where this sort of thing of pops up in any organized format, it always turns out to be led by a cadre of teenage boys. (See Evangeline in Sims Online for another example of organized game prostitution.)

Now, I realize that visiting a comfort girl, either live or virtual, would require some suspension of disbelief. But male gamers have been complaining for years that there werenÂ't enough females that appreciate the skills and time it takes to be a good gamer. The 11% of the population of these worlds who are actual females are a rare breed, so what are the odds that this tiny percentage of gamers would suddenly decide to stop gaming so that they could talk dirty for far less money than they could make if they just did it for one of the thousands of phone services? It boggles the mind to believe that the people who hire these Â"girlsÂ" do it thinking that itÂ's actually a girl.

And it raises interesting questions about ethics, legality and the potential for organized crime. If, in fact, as it appears, these Â"girlsÂ" are actually teenage boys, does that verge into the legal area of child prostitution? Can virtual sex for cash be considered prostitution at all? Is the person providing the scripts breaking any laws by providing pornographic material to minors? Other than the ebaying of the proceeds, are they breaking any of BlizzardÂ's usage rules? Surely visiting a virtual stripper and chat session is a better option than hopping over to Nevada and visiting the real thing, but at what cost to real women who game and would just as soon not be bothered by horny creepoids? Have we crossed a digital divide line into a form of cyborg social experimentation or theory? (See A Manifesto for Cyborgs, Feminist Views of Cybersex, and Cyborgasms and Cyber-sex Amongst Multiple-Selves and Cyborgs in the Narrow-Bandwidth Space.)

As I was pondering these deep thoughts, I got a tell from someone I didnÂ't know, who wanted to know if I Â"wanted to cyb3r!1!Â". My automatic response was Â"Oh, good lord, go away wannabe script kiddie.Â" Thinking back on it, I think my response should have been; Â"The ontology of your cyberdesires leaves me with a stunning case of dualistic ennui, your display of manly l33tness makes me want to sterilize my Ethernet connection, and you should put that thing away before your mom comes in.Â"