News of the Weird reported this bit about an article in the Wall Street Journal (08/10/07):

Ric Hoogestraat is married to Sue and works at a call center in the Phoenix area but spends 30-plus hours a week inside the online Second Life video game, pretending that he is the digitally drawn Dutch Hoorenbeek, a 6-foot-9, muscular babe magnet who lives on his own island. That unnerves Sue, according to an August Wall Street Journal profile, especially since Dutch recently “married” a digital woman and set up housekeeping with their two digital dogs. (The real-life creator of the new Mrs. Hoorenbeek has never met Ric and says she never will.) Dutch and his wife spend hours shopping and motorcycling together, leaving Ric little time for Sue. “Is this man cheating on his wife (meaning Sue)?” the Journal asked. Lamented Sue: “You try to talk to (Ric) or bring (him) a drink, and (he)’ll be having sex with a cartoon.”

I’ll be interested to see how this plays out in divorce court. It probably isn’t cheating by any standard legal definition, but there’s at least some “alienation of affection” going on.

(Kids, if you’re planning to become lawyers, go into Internet Law; it’s going to see a boom in the next couple of decades as more stuff like this crops up.)