Former world chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov has
been on the receiving end of an unconventional prank launched by his political
foes - one that draws its inspiration from the virtual world of Second Life.
Kasparov was attending a weekend meeting of a coalition of opposition groups
which had assembled in Moscow to launch a symbolic alternative parliament. As he
was addressing the gathering of more than 500 delegates, he was buzzed by a
remote-controlled flying phallus.
The device - which appeared to be a modified twin-rotor toy
helicopter - caused an sudden commotion with security guards springing to
attention.
A video shot at the event shows the modified chopper briefly evading
capture before a man later identified as a security guard leaps from the stage
and swats the device with a well-aimed left hook.
According to the Moscow Times website, the prank was staged
by "a couple of pro-Kremlin Young Russia activists" who had launched a "plastic
phallus on propellers".
The use of a flying penis as a tool of disruption is the same tactic used by
cyber vandals - known as griefers - when they launched a high profile raid in
the Second Life virtual world in late 2006.
In that
incident, a group calling themselves Room 101 - a reference to the torture
chamber in George Orwell's novel 1984 - disrupted a gathering by
triggering a program code that generated a phalanx of virtual flying phalluses.
[See story
here].
Their target was Anshe Chung, the virtual persona of a woman called
Ailin Graef, who a month had earlier declared herself to be Second Life's first
real dollar millionaire.
As the self-replicating 3-D objects flew across the stage in a
steady progression, Anshe Chung was forced to abandon the meeting.
Kasparov laughed off the Moscow incident remarking that the incident
showed that his foes' arguments were "below the belt".
"I think we have to be thankful for the opposition's demonstration of the
level of discourse we need to anticipate," the former chess champ reportedly
quipped.
-Stephen Hutcheon, SMH