How To Kill A Griefer

It is obvious that we have a problem. It is not that we have people running around naked, throwing self-replicating objects and being morons in any way they can think of. It's that we have no way to get rid of them. We might complain, fill abuse reports, fight with them, wait for Lindens to handle the problem… but none of it will solve the problem. The worst of all, we are rarely willing to admit that we are helpless and without a clue what to do.

There is a nice attempt to define what is griefing at Terra Nova. I'll try my luck with defining griefing as any obstruction of the system or individual which is based on anonymity and temporarity of the griefer. We can go scientific about griefers and distinct them by their activities and targets. Some are attacking persons, other attack sims. Some are running around in ugly naked bodies while other make harmful scripts. Some have random targets while other know who they attack and sometimes they even have a "reason". Some are working in groups while other are solo-players. 

They do various things for various reasons, but all of them are exploiting one basic fact: they doesn't care about the things we care. They don't care about things we can do to them. They don't care to be banned, shoot at, insulted… whatever. And they know that is their strength. Same action will hurt you but not them. Let's see what we can are trying to do:

• By rules, law and ToS, in the case of being griefed you should stay calm and report abuse. Then Lindens will examine the case and suspend or ban that account. We won't talk now about if Lindens process those reports and how quickly. Only thing that matters now is whether that works or not. And it doesn't. You ban them they register again, or better, they already have another account. And there you go, all over again.
• If you own the land where griefing is happening you can ban the violator. Providing that you are present at the moment and not blocked by thousands of malicious scripts. Banning seems to be a partial solution. You have removed the problem, but you haven't killed it. You've just sent it to your neighbour.
• If you have ownership over the land you can also try to prevent the problem. You can set land permissions to make griefing impossible. Just restrict everything. No rezzing, no scripts, no nothing. Be aware that you also forbid those to the rest of the population. Is that the world we want to live in? I hope not. Just remember how you felt when you couldn't rezz couple of balls right there where you are, just to hug somebody in that moment. Or how awful is when you find out that none of your scripted clothes and accessories is working. You can look around and be sure that all the men you see are impotent. You can say that there is no need to rezz everywhere, and that running scripts in attachments is not important, but remember that second life is what it is because of its freedom, because of possibility to express yourself. Killing that freedom is killing an essential part of second life.  
• You can shoot the bastard. Get yourself a nice gun with orbiting bullets and do it. Sure, one thing to do before even trying is to check whether land permits scripts, rezzing and pushing. Otherwise you're on a good way to make yourself a fool and make a day for the griefer. Yes, I know it is forbidden, and for a good reason. You can miss and orbit somebody else. You are justifying the use of orbiters. Worst of all, you have done nothing to the griefer. Yes, you have orbited him, he had to relog and…? And nothing. You made him laugh. Orbiting doesn't hurt. But still… In the cases of personal attacks yours truly responds straight to the head. I know it doesn't help much but why should they have all the fun? And it makes me feel better. Not that I advice anybody to follow my example.
• If griefing is just verbal and/or visual you can probably ignore it. Mute the offender, and move your camera so it is out of your sight. And forget about it. Maybe you'll have to use some anti-push device too (which is quite lagging and not comfortable thing) but that is probably most efficient thing you can do. That is, IF you can. Griefers are like any other internet troll. They are fed by your reactions. If you don't react they will get bored quickly and go. But it is hard to ignore them, right? London explains it: 
  

  It is because we are virtual. We exist, but at the end we only have our emotions and our words to express them. When my words where distorted and used against me in a word fencing game I hadn’t accepted to play, it was denying the only thing I had to express myself, my words. It was denying my identity.
  That’s why trolls are so powerful in Internet, and why people keep feeding them; it is a matter of live or death, even if it is virtual.

  But, remember that ignoring is even better than shooting. You are not just sending them away, you are doing the only thing that actually hurts them. Lack of your reaction is their failure.

  

•  When one cannot ignore, victim usually starts to insult. And that is the worst thing to do. Not that it's pointless, it is giving the griefer some extra fun. And stronger the insults more fun he have. That can go to the unbelievable extents. Once I was witnessing griefing in the fashion mall. He was doing standard repertoire of pushing and harassing girls, when one of us started to fight back. Or she thought she is fighting back. At one moment she tried to insult him: "you are ugly" and I thought I will kill her right in that mall. Yes, sister, you got the point. He is not aware of the avatar he created (and it was one of those examples when none if the sliders is where you expect it to be) and he is not enjoying that you have reacted to his appearance before he even said a word. He was waiting for your pretty barbie ass to tell him he is ugly. And he'll feel bad about it? Yeah, right!

• Probably the last thing to do is to try to talk reasonably. Try to be superior, calm and to talk the griefer back to the civilization. I must admit I have tried couple of times and all but one were complete failures. That one? After a bit less than an hour, dozens of escaping traps he rezzed, staying calm each time and persistence, I succeeded in quieting the wild boy for that time. I don't know what he was doing tomorrow, but if he stopped griefing, I will count that as one of my greatest second life achievements. But even if that one was a success, that was one in a million. And it took me an hour of very hard work. 

One thing we are hate griefing for is that we hate our own weakness. Griefing shows us how vulnerable we and our system are. Any kid can get a pushing or caging gun and make a mess just for fun. With no consequences. There is nothing on the grid that keeps us safe. Us, our builds, our sims. Writing a script for self-replicating object is less than hour of work for most of us that have ever touched that "new script" button. And running that will crash the sim and everything on it will have to face its helplessness.

Any unloved idiot can take off all clothes, attach a freebie cock and bump the girls around. No, it is not harmful. It is annoying. Months ago, when I was writing about virtual rapes, many were there to tell me that it is not the same as the real rape. Like I am stupid and blind. But I kept insisting that there is a connection tough I wasn't able to see it until now. Virtual sexual attack is harmful because it faces us with our own insecurity in real life. It shows us how fragile and exposed we are. 

And it's the same with all the forms of griefing. They are possible because griefers perceive the system differently than us. It lives because there is nothing we can do about it if we don't want to ruin the system. And it is effective because it hits us not only in the second life, but in our insecurity of the first life.

Any solutions? 

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