How have you been griefed?

We've all -- or most of us -- been "griefed" at some point during our time in Second Life. Sometimes this has likely been no more than a minor annoyance, on occasion it may have been more disturbing or upsetting, and still other instances may have seemed downright hilarious. In any case, I'd love to hear your stories here, along with any particularly interesting, clever, or useful ways in which you dealt with the situation (beyond the obvious "muted 'em," "sat down," "ARed them," or "TPed away." I'm not going to define what is meant by "griefing" here: you can determine whether this term applies to your own experience yourself.

By way of context, I am interested in these stories because I have been updating the Newbie Woman's SL Survival Kit, and am now working on the "SL Safety" section. Your stories will help give me a better sense of the varieties of griefing newbies may face.

I am also preparing an exhibit on representations of sexualized violence in SL. I don't expect that many of the examples that will appear in this thread will apply to that, but if you DO have a story of harassment or griefing with a sexual association or subtext (as for example, verbal sexual harassment, stalking, or just being rammed by a giant penis) that you don't mind sharing, and wouldn't mind me citing anonymously, I would love to hear it from you, either in-world, or via a PM. Please note that my interest in representations of sexualized violence is not restricted to male-on-female griefing or harassment; I am, for instance, very interested in whether such behaviour is at all common within the SL LGBT community.

[DISCLAIMER: This is not a survey for a college or university course; I have not been sent here by my supervisor; I have been a very active member of SL for well over a year now; I am not going to send you to SurveyMonkey.com to fill out a dumb survey. And I don't think of any of you as lab rats. Except for those of you who choose to represent as such in SL.]

I've been "griefed" in many ways by many people. Here's ome basic examples of incidents I consider griefing.

1. Avatar deliberately starts rezzing physical megaprims in an attempt to disrupt an event I am hosting, also shouts insults at myself and other avatars in the area.

2. Mario cubes and other objects rezzed at infohubs and other public places. At one time they could take down the sim. Nowadays I think of them as "nostalgic."

3. The "Grey Goo" attacks of Autumn/Winter of 2006. Especially the big green, obscenity shouting boy bits on Christmas morning.

4. Being shot at n non-combat situations and areas

5. Having a resident put a shouting script in a prim hidden on their parcel: script would insult me by name.

6. Being bumped by trollish, nude avatars in PG and/or infohub area.

This is how I have been griefed in the Forums:


I have replaced each instance of an extremely offensive word with clover, if you haven't worked it out already.

Pep (The friend of my enemy is my enemy.)

We run a BDSM sim with a park/playground, store, club, quest and some of the sim is private residential.

Aside from the occasional replicating prim griefing we see regularly on our sims, there are two types of griefing we get once or twice a year that stand out above and beyond the normal occurrences of griefing.

1. The "you're going to hell" scripture quoting spam prims. about once or twice a year we get a few of these dropped into our sim. Easy enough to deal with, find them, identify the owner, remove them, AR the owner, ban the owner.

2. This one is so much more troubling to me, and it tends to happen a few times a year: we get a group of 10-20 avatars tp in, (these are always Christian groups based on their actions and tags). They almost always are shouting scripture and statements to the effect of BDSM is evil, you're all going to hell etc. Almost invariable they also drop the prims I mentioned in 1, and spam notecards to everyone near. A little harder to deal with but still not horribly difficult, ban/eject, file AR's.

What bothers me most about these types of griefing attacks is that scripture shows us that Jesus preached tolerance and acceptance. These types of attacks IMHO are hypocritical and downright mean, I do not go to Christian sims spouting the pillars of BDSM, and putting them down for living a certain way. Why do they feel the need to do this?

In the sims I frequent (mostly BDSM sims) I have never once witnessed anything as far as personal griefing of any nature, be it sexual, dominance or otherwise.

I hadn't seen that until you posted it in the other thread today, but I've had a look at its origins and, from what I can make out, it wasn't griefing at all. It was retaliation, which doesn't count as griefing. Also, from what I can make out, it was merited retaliation.

Well, that just about takes the biscuit. You are suggesting that a foul mouthed outburst wishing death by cancer is an appropriate response to a comment that someone's avatar's thighs were a bit chunky?

Pep (I am pretty sure you are not a hysterical "female" but you are apparently losing your sense of proportion; are you on meds at the moment or something?)

Wow, a few of these go way beyond my personal experience. It's interesting, Mari, because I am guessing that such examples as #1 are probably specifically targeting you as a recognizable "public figure" in SL? Do you know if the scripts in #5 were hard coded to attack you, or did they grab the name of the nearest avatar, and insert that into the text?

I have seen a few avatars who very much self-identify as evangelical Christians around (although not nearly as many, I think, as I was seeing a year ago?), but I had no idea that there were groups that they were undertaking collective action in this way. I suppose I should be unsurprised.

I didn't say that it was an appropriate response - I said that, from what I can make out, it was merited; i.e. you brought the outburst upon yourself. Can't you get anything right today?

I amazed that someone who drags out the dictionary every time he posts something nevertheless doesn't have the imagination to repeat the same things over and over and over and over again.

I've not been griefed much except for a time where some idiot in a huge truck decided to run over everyone on a beach reserved for romance. Guess he was dateless and angry.

I suspect that people who have urges to bully and annoy people are suffering from a micropenis condition and get off on knowing that people think they're a__holes, for some bizarre reason since I can't imagine any other reaction from their victims.

Imagine, if you will, someone logging in, thinking to themselves: "Today I will make sure that a dozen more people think I'm an idiot. Yessiree, what finer way to spend a saturday afternoon."

And the difference is . . . ?

Pep (You're not very good with words, are you.)

I can't contribute anything dramatic to the thread. The only two times that I recall being griefed were minor. Once, when I was chatting with someone on the roof of one of my skyboxes, I was caged and, with the culprit inside with me, the cage went tumbling over and over for a shoirt distance. The other time was when I was testing in the beta grid and a guy rezzed cubes all over me and what I was doing. That my lot, I'm afraid.

LOL!

Not a very clever griefer, was he?

1. pink goo

2. shouting boxes

3. huge and I do mean huge penes all over the skybox, poking out of the roof. Probably five to six times the size of an avitar. No place to walk.

I HATE that I have to see this here too. We can't decide what is griefing for another. If Pep considers it griefing to be wished a death by cancer, then he's griefed. Even though he's pissing me off by posting this all over the RA forum now, I STILL totally agree with him. It was a horrible thing to say to anybody. And that may because of my own personal RL association with death by cancer. It's my opinion. He may have some personal RL association with it too, because it has obviously really bothered him, where other insults have not. If somebody told me Treasure has linebacker's thighs, I'd respond, yeah she does, know why? Cause she's mine and that's how I like her to look. We are talking about avatars here. There's very little anyone can say about my choice of my avatar's looks, actually, there's nothing at all that I can think of, that would bring on a response like that. Pep, I have already taken a break from the undying thread because of this. Do I need to leave the entire RA forum to escape it? It upsets me in a visceral way every time I read it. I know that is not your problem, it is mine. But are you going to post it in every possible thread here?

I am intrigued by these references, which I've seen elsewhere before, to pink or grey goo. Anyone have a snapshot, by any chance?

I'm sorry for the above tirade, Scylla, I did not mean to derail your thread. My sim was griefed by screaming purple cubes, naming residents on my sim, as if the screaming chat was coming from them. Racist, vitriolic things. Had to find the root cube and return it, AR and ban.

Then, we had the 'SL Police' rez a bunch of crap with sirens and flashing lights and police cars on a resident's land. The resident had his land open to rez, his fault. Take pictures, AR and ban, return the garbage.

Another time, was caged and orbited on my sim just for saying 'hi' to a stranger. Was my first time being caged and orbited. Kept my head, took pictures with the interface of the cage showing, AR and ban.

Griefing is a vastly overused word in my opinion, almost to the point of inducing hysteria in some people. What most people call griefing, I call annoyances. I've been annoyed on occasion, but nothing to an extent that I've twisted my panties into a bunch over it. I've been lucky I guess. I've never experienced anything near some of the stories described in this forum over the years, many of which would classify as greifing.

No but I do of the penes and so do the Linden's.... The pink goo looked like a low floating cloud all over the land. Unless your head was under it, you couldnt see where you were walking.

YOU have not derailed the thread, Treasure. Sensible and level-headed talk doesn't have that effect.

The SL Police are role players, right? Do they actually think that they are doing real policing, or are they just playing cops and robbers wherever they feel like it?

Both. Just depends on the individual.

I agree, I think. For instance, I personally wouldn't classify obnoxious or offensive chat as "griefing," unless it were specifically intended to be disruptive (as, for example, in Kira's example of the proselytizing evangelicals). But I know some who do.

Ew. Weird. And yet, at the same time, clever!

Thank you for the compliment, although I am pretty sure your (lack of) command of the English language is such that you did not mean what you actually typed. In truth, your error hits the mark though. Thank you as well for the allusion to the dictionary, but I am afraid that you shouldn't judge others by your own inadequacies; the vocabulary I use here is run of the mill stuff for me, and in fact I try to tone it down occasionally when it is apparent that the participants are having trouble comprehending my posts, which is most of the time. Perhaps they should include a box for "reading age" in the forum profiles so a more accurate assessment could be made of how far to dumb down.

Don't give up your day job for that psychic's gig, dear. You *do* have a day job don't you? Or do you teach?

Is *that* what makes you log on?

Pep (I did wonder.)