I am not in the mood to tell you another "boy meets a girl in second life" story. You know how it goes. Skip the dancing and the intellectual foreplay, sooner or later, they will look for a bit of fun in the poseballs. One teleport and a couple of minutes later two of them are running through animations, exchanging sweet words and naughty thoughts…
You know that most of the men have that latent fear, something that has a name related to praying mantis, the naughty insect whose female cut off male's head after mating. And she eat him then. For some unknown link between humans and mantises there is that fear about her going very evil in the moment when he is weak and not ready to fight and defend himself. It happens in the world of insects. It frightens humans. Well, it can happen in metaverse, too. Actually, it can be much worse than you think.
So in one moment everything is sweet words and naughty thoughts, fingers stroking the keyboards and caress the mice, heavy breathing and big smiles… At the next, while temperature is getting so close to red she moves back towards inventory, like pulling the safety pin of a hand granate… she's finding the prepared folder → right-click → replace outfit. And in a few seconds needed for the items to load and shape to change, he is confronted with 6 feet tall, wide shoulders, tattooed man with Lockermeister equipment. Both of them still running the same animation! *big grin* Surprise!
This was a short way to secure somebody's nightmares for a week. If I was doing that, I would count the time needed for the poor guy to get a grip, grab a mouse, decide what to do (standing up from the animation, logging out, pulling the power cord from the wall, run away from the house…). I would also miss the presence of a webcam to see poor human's face in that moment.
But let's get serious about this. It is griefing. It is an attack based on the different conceptions of the environment. Victim perceives things differently than the griefer and that gives the later some advantage. And an opportunity for a nice practical joke. And yes, you can hear the griefer saying nonsense about internet and second life being too serious and people being homophobic and sticking too firmly to their genders and being too augmentative….
But it is just a griefing. And you can't even file an abuse report. What would you say to Lindens?
Leave a Reply