Dibbell was born in
New York City. He grew up in
Claremont, California and resides in
Chicago, Illinois. His uncle is
rock critic Robert Christgau, and Dibbell has also published music criticism. He is a non-resident fellow of the
Stanford Center for Internet and Society and he previously served as George A. Miller Visiting Professor of Media at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also a founder of the academic gaming research blog
Terra Nova. His 1993 article "
A Rape in Cyberspace" detailed attempts of
LambdaMOO, 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 for
The New York Times Magazine and about
griefer culture for "
Wired" 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 the
University of Chicago Law School (where he was an editor of the
University of Chicago Law Review) in 2014. Dibbell now practices law as a partner in the Business and Technology Sourcing practice of the global law firm
Mayer Brown. ==Works==