Wired's Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, Sociopaths of the Virtual World tries to shed some more light on the griefers and griefing from the perspective of the bad guys themselves. Which is nice and fair. Poor kids have their right to say what they have to say and I believe I am not the only one that is interested in the origins and causes of deviant and stupid behaviour like that. Some say that knowing one's motives can lead to understanding and approval. So I gave them a try.
Point is, I don't believe in perfect law and order. Not only that they cannot be achieved, I don't find them beneficial for the individuals and the society. Having somebody to, if you allow me that type of expression, spank us from time to time and give us an opportunity to refresh our notions and views is great. Just recall the role of Jester in A. C. Clarke's The City and the Stars
But I need no excuses. I want to see the motive.
Amid the complex alchemy of seriousness and play that makes online games so uniquely compelling, the griefer is the one player whose fun depends on finding that elusive edge where online levity starts to take on real-life weight — and the fight against serious business has finally made it seem as though griefers' fun might have something like a point.
In five pages of reading the only motive I found is that griefers are telling us that internet is "no serious business" and that some people are played themselves too far getting too serious about just an on-line game. OK, I can agree with some parts of that. But… who are you to tell us so? And do you have to annoy the rest of us in the meanwhile?
Now we have to believe that pathetic story that a griefer has a point and is almost enlightening element of our world. Griefers that care about fellow resident, guarding their sanity and doing regular reality checks. Yeah, right. I will admit that some griefing attacks changed the way I live my second life, but hardly that I find those griefers as buddhist masters with bamboo sticks. And, despite my personal benefits, I cannot find any good word for those actions. It is motivation that counts too. And I cannot believe in good intentions of somebody who is chasing me with dick attachment or releasing thousands of zombies to scream all over the sandbox.
Let's not lie each other, motivation and intentions are far from good. It is just kids trying to compensate lack of power in first life and all other areas of second life too. Most of them thinking of themselves as hackers (missing the term completely) while being nothing more than frustrated kids who payed some change for a script that makes noise, litters around or orbits young girls in the sky. Hon, there is a better way to send girls to the sky.
Then again, let's forget about frustrated kids, let's take an example of somebody who really have skills and imagination to make a mess on a sim. Let's be open-minded, let's be very open-minded, and say that not all things that are declared as vandalism bad. Some are actually good and creative and productive. Think about the art of graffiti. Let's say that somebody really creates an event by crashing your sim. But even then… how about not ruining people's biz, not making unreparable damage?
Thing is, there are different things that are going on in second life. Some people are just having fun, some are playing a serious game, some are not playing at all but using a communication device. And many of us use second life as all of those. While I can be amused by griefing attack while I am just exploring around and have fun and even can get guns and respond, if I am using communication device then griefing is nothing else than denial of service attack. And those are illegal. You call the police when somebody does that. I mean, police from real life, not fellow roleplayers. Revealing the big truth of seriousness of life got on the other side of the law.
And then, we have to ask ourselves, who got carried away by being to serious about it all?
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