Julian Dibbell (; born February 23, 1963) is an American author and technology

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

with a focus on social systems within online communities.Leonard, Andrew (January 22, 1999)
The unbearable realness of virtual being.

Salon.com ''Salon'' is an American politically progressive/ liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events. Content and coverage ''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, including re ...

Life and career

Dibbell was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. He grew up in Claremont, California and resides in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. His uncle is

rock critic Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on w ...

Robert Christgau, and Dibbell has also published music criticism.Christgau, Robert (1991)
Classic Rock.
/ref> He is a non-resident fellow of the

Stanford Center for Internet and Society The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is a public interest technology law and policy program founded in 2000 by Lawrence Lessig at Stanford Law School and a part of Law, Science and Technology Program at Stanford Law School. CIS brings togethe ...

and he previously served as George A. Miller Visiting Professor of Media at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

. He is also a founder of the academic gaming research blog Terra Nova. His 1993 article " A Rape in Cyberspace" detailed attempts of

LambdaMOO ''LambdaMOO'' is an online community of the variety called a MOO. It is the oldest MOO today. ''LambdaMOO'' was founded in 1990 by Pavel Curtis at Xerox PARC. Now hosted in the state of Washington, it is operated and administered entirely on ...

, an online community, to quantify and deal with lawbreaking in its midst. The article was later included in his first book, ''My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World''. Dibbell has also written about Chinese

gold farmers Gold farming is the practice of playing a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) to acquire in-game currency, later selling it for real-world money.

for

The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...

and about

griefer A griefer or bad-faith player is a player in a multiplayer video game who deliberately irritates and harasses other players within the game (trolling), by using aspects of the game in unintended ways such as destroying something another player m ...

culture for "

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

" Magazine. He chronicled his attempt to make a living playing MMORPGs in his second book, ''Play Money: or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot''. Dibbell graduated from Yale University, summa cum laude, in 1986. He graduated from

University of Chicago Law School The University of Chicago Law School is the law school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is consistently ranked among the best and most prestigious law schools in the world, and has many dis ...

(where he was an editor of the

University of Chicago Law Review The ''University of Chicago Law Review'' (Maroonbook abbreviation: ''U Chi L Rev'') is the flagship law journal published by the University of Chicago Law School. It is among the top five most cited law reviews in the world. Up until 2020, it utili ...

) in 2014. Dibbell now practices law as an associate in the Business and Technology Sourcing practice of the global law firm

Mayer Brown Mayer Brown is a global white-shoe law firm, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It has offices in 27 cities across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, with its largest offices being in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Ne ...

Works

*Dibbell, Julian. ''My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World''. Owl Books, 1999. *Dibbell, Julian. ''Play Money: or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot''. Basic Books, 2006. *Dibbell, Julian and Clarisse Thorn. ''Violation: Rape In Gaming''. Amazon CreateSpace, 2012.

Notes

External links

Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dibbell, Julian 1963 births American male journalists American technology writers Living people MUD scholars 20th-century American journalists Yale University alumni University of Chicago Law School alumni American lawyers