Unfortunately, as the interview was commencing, the event was attacked by a “griefer,” someone intent on disrupting the proceedings. The griefer managed to assault the CNET theater for 15 minutes with – well, there’s no way to say this delicately – animated flying penises.Second Life – let the backlash begin. Back in December, the Second Life flying genitalia attack gave some indication of the kind of behaviour we in the real world call ‘anti-social.’ There was also a creepy ‘rape’ screenshot that ran on Gawker – apparently from SL – of the kind we call repugnant and disturbing. Blogger Clay Shirky wanted to know how many first lives were being spent in SL. As 2006 closed, the people behind the virtual world got very excited that 20,000 people were using it at once, which makes it a community the size of say, my university. But, hey that’s the real world! In the weirder, wider world of gaming, SL is a virtual nonentity.

Now in January, some techno-journalists are waking up to the fact that not all of us are living la vida virtual. Linden Lab, which created SL, displays user numbers here, indicating that over 225,000 people logged in this past week, but first some breaking news from our Dungeons and Dragons correspondent…