Why Bill was killed. Understanding social interaction in virtual worlds'

This paper deals with how we should approach the sociology of virtual worlds on the Internet. I argue for the importance of establishing an inside view based on direct experiences of the phenomenon, to avoid the risks of drawing erroneous conclusions about virtual worlds based on the physical world, and not realizing that virtual worlds are full of real people engaged in real interaction. I present an incident from a world based on the Palace technology to examplify the following points: The social interaction is fundamentally different from interaction in the physical world. The interaction is real. The social structures are hierarchical. People are not anonymous.

A. Nijholt