You may have heard that virtual gaming worlds can engender real-life economies. As it turns out, virtual breakups — and, more to the point, virtual revenge — may also have real-world consequences. As PC World/The Washington Post reports:

The line between virtual reality and its flesh-and-blood cousin blurred a little this week as a 43-year-old Tokyo woman was jailed for murdering her virtual ex-husband’s* avatar.

After she suddenly found herself divorced in “MapleStory,” a popular 2-D side scrolling MMORPG, the unidentified woman used her ex-husband’s ID and password [which, the AP notes, she had gotten from him when all was well in both worlds] to log into the game and kill him off. Call it Death by Deletion.

When the man discovered his beloved avatar was gone, he contacted authorities, which led to the woman’s arrest. “I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning,” the woman told investigators. “That made me so angry.” The AP reports that the woman had no intention to carry out violence in reality.

The charges are “illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data,” which carries a sentence of up to five years in jail or a fine up to $5,000.

I’m not saying anyone’s justified in killing anyone, except perhaps a Pirate Octopus. But yeah, before you dump someone — anywhere — it wouldn’t hurt to at least have a talk. No man, after all, is a Maple Island.

*From Wikipedia: “Players may participate in in-game marriages at the town of Amoria. Guests may be invited to the wedding, and the marrying couple will receive wedding ring items. The wedding ‘ceremony’ requires the completion of various quests. If a premium wedding ticket from the Cash Shop was purchased, the player is entitled to have a party after the ceremony. In Amoria Dungeon, players can fight exclusive monsters. The KoreaMS version of Amoria has been altered to remove the training grounds and the Chapel area, leaving only the Cathedral. MapleStory currently does not allow same-sex marriage.”

Via Broadsheet:

List of the Day has a series of photos in which scorned women get back at cheating exes. I feel a heady mix of emotions when I look at this compilation, which includes snapshots such as half a dozen hatchets buried in the hood of a car and other boil-the-bunny shockers: horror, amusement, sadness, shock. I feel hungry, but only because it’s nearly noon and I ate an early breakfast. Mostly I feel grateful that some combination of anger management, decent exes and propriety has prevented me from lashing out in such an operatic manner myself. Then again, I’m still young. Kind of.

If only someone had managed to convince Shanta Dargbeh. Oh, dear.

Sometimes people take one look at the name of this website, see the words “breakup” and “.net,” and — without a further glance — think, “Oh! That must be a place that encourages the posting of vengeful, personal, and possibly actionable rants about their exes!” Nope, sorry. That’s YouTube.

Celebration anxiety from January 5, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

God, I’m glad you were here for me on a most gloomy day!

A year ago I was dumped by my boyfriend of 3 1/2 years. I loved him so much but he didn’t want to be married as he had already been there, done that. He knew I wanted that and he didn’t. He said, “I’ve met someone that I want to be romantic with.” Like I was some passing fancy! He loved me! Grrr! He also told me that he “didn’t feel paid attention to” — yet he’d never said that before. To top it off, the next Friday night, the NEW GIRL was sleeping over at his house … as I drove by to spy.

Otherwise, I’ve done good, though: not stalked him or her, not sought revenge like the Chocolate Ex-Lax cake I have often dreamt about making, not calling him or her (though I did page him a couple times to no number), not sending him dead flowers or keying his car.

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