What is a Griefer???

Ok, 'nuther silly newbie question... I don't know if it is because I accept people in SL for whatever hangups I perceive and expect the same in return, or what... but I don't really know what a "Griefer" is.

I asked someone once, and they gave me kinda a lame answer "You'll know one when you see one" ????? what kind of answer is that!! I saw a guy with humongous wings, but I wouldn't necessarily call him a "bird", so, that answer doesn't work. (BTW, the wing thing was really cool)

I had a guy throw a cage on me involuntarily while I was shopping, then he started throwing bombs around the poor store ----- would that guy be considered a "Griefer"? and if so, that is the first time I've encountered one, so there must be additional definitions, or I'm not paying good attention.

and how did he get a cage oround me anyway???

Meggy

Griefer: Someone who enjoys ruining everyone else's fun, while drawing attention to himself/herself. Usually adolescent males with no life and even less moral fibre.

The morons who run around SL caging, shooting or orbiting innocent bystanders are the most readily visible form of griefer. But anyone who intentionallyy sets out to ruin other people's fun, usually while trying to draw attention to themselves, also fits the mold. So a person who buys the parcel next to your nicely landscaped home and fills it with flaming phallic symbols and blaring music is a griefer, as is the guy that intentionally dumps prim garbage on your land, or owrse yet, builds stuff on his land next to yours in a way that it intentionally pushes over into your space.

Yes, that was a griefer you encountered. Basically a griefer is anyone intentionally behaving in a disruptive way as to interrupt one's game experience. From caging to push weapons to simply stalking someone to verbally harrass them.

Honestly, I'm not sure how the caging scripts work. I know one way out of them is to move your camera out and try to right-click a nearby prim and choose sit. Sometimes this is difficult though. If someone uses a push weapon on you without prior consent you can choose to report them if you feel it was honestly a griefing act (there is a selection from the top menus to see who pushed you).

I TPd to a sandbox once, and landed in a cage. Clicking ouside it did no good, I think it was impossible to click on anything through the texture. I even panned my view backwards, but it wouldn't let me click on the ground outside the cage.

I came up with a novel idea I've not heard about before, though I'd be very surprised if no one else has: I clicked on the map button, clicked on a spot near where I was, and TPd there. Instant release!

Of course I reported it.

The cage & bomb guy you described was definitely a griefer.

Here are two griefers I ran into as a newbie. I was several days old and I decided to return to orientation island as i thought i had missed some of the lessons. There was a griefer in a sort of a darth vader get-up who told me I was ugly and jumped around in my personal space. There he was at orientation island being mean to newbies like me who didn't know what end was up and hadn't yet put together a good looking avatar.

The second one was more insidious. I was maybe 2 or 3 weeks old. I had a first land plot and had recently purchased a 3000m plot as well. I was at my first land practicing building and I got a tp invite to my other land and newbie that i was, i accepted. There was a guy with a crude avatar and clothes who offered friendship. I hadn't really met any people or made any friends at this point. I asked why do you want to be friends. He said, "Dunno." He clicked on the offer friendship button a dozen times and the window kept coming up. I'm generally a kind, friendly person. I finally accepted the friendship offer. Then I tried to have a start a conversation in chat. Immediately he said, "I gotta go", and left. I looked around and there was a big penis vehicle that he left behind. The whole encounter was such a nasty mindf***. Really got under my skin. I had some uncomfortable moments encountering strangers in the week or two following that but I was friendly and i met a fun guy who became my first sl romance. I have made a few wonderful friends and also got to help some genuine newbies who were lost and just needed a little information.

I have a theory about griefers and would be interested in feedback from others reading this thread. They might be less likely to be interested in quality appearance or clothes. They certainly get alts so that banning has no effect. If someone has quality skin or clothes I am more inclined to trust them.

Even though I am just shy of two months old... I have noticed that I do trust those who have invested in their appearance. But I've also carried on perfectly nice conversations with people who spent some time/money, and then all of a sudden they have a hard-on (can I say that here??) and asking me to come see their etchings...

Go figure...


Meggy

What is a griefer? In the regular world, I believe they're known as "obnoxious assholes." Hope that helps!

Meg> Ugh! Seriously? Man, I'd knee the guy...if I had the animation for it. ;D I haven't had much trouble with rude boys but maybe, just maybe, the fact that I have a partner listed in my profile AND state I'm attached in first life puts some of them off. However, my main guess is that I've managed to avoid 'high trolling' areas and I've just been lucky as I'm sure most horndogs don't bother to check profiles.

The only really icky incident I had was some guy who mistook me for a child and called me 'little girl' and 'sweetie' and wanted to know if I had a 'daddy' or if I'd come sit on his knee. Needless to say I left. Quickly. X____X

If I get griefed in a sandbox I post a message including the griefer's name in block capitals in chat. If you get caged, right click the cage, right click 'more' and the next 'more' and then click 'rate owner' - that gives the owner of the offending object, be it a cage or a lump of concrete.

The best way to find your answer is to do a forum search. many many topics about it...

I've been in that sandbox cage too!!!! I just TPed home.

I also constantly get obnoxious IMs out of the blue too.

I agree with all of the above. There is another milder of annoying person. They are not so much "griefer" as ... big labrador puppies. The jump around, chew on things and slobber a lot but they can be trained!

One encounters these people, well males really - sometimes naked, sometimes carrying a crude weapon or driving a large ungainly vehicle. The immediately want to be your friend/lover, shoot you with a flashy but harmless object or invade your space. They bump into you constantly because they have little control over their avatar. They've hoovered up free rubbish from somewhere and are wearing outlandish outfits, if clothed at all.

Generally speaking, they can be trained, if one has the time, by explaining to them that SL is NOT what they think it is. It is not a first person shooter, unless one goes to a combat zone and expect to pay for weaponry. Its not a 24/7 orgy, unless you go to a sex club, expect to pay if you want an escort. Vehicles don't work all that well especially not free ones. Basically - just apply a sharp tap on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Verbally of course. You should see there little faces fall. But still mostly they stop bounding around in a puppy-ish way piddling on everything.

"I'm not being aggressive. I'm being dominant"
The Dog Whisperer

Griefers are magical scripting people who decide to use their mystical ways for evil.
It's a fact. ;D
Okay, aside from satire, they are just people who like to ruin fun with their fancy blingy toy guns and missles etc...
They are bothersome.
And that is what a griefer is!
~Brita

"disturbing other people's fun while drawing attention to one's self..."
From this definition, the most nefarious form of griefer is one who writes incredibly long, flaming posts on the message board of a SL news site, calling people terrorists and criminals for so much as setting a foot onto their land

Hahahahahha....................I thought that was a definition of a troll.

The ToS 4.1 subsection (x) prohibits the following conduct: "stalk", abuse or attempt to abuse, or otherwise harass another user." The 'Community Standards', incorporated into section 4.1 of the ToS also prohibits: harrassement, assault, disturbing the peace, and indencency, among others. (http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php.)

Conduct which violates the ToS is considered 'griefing.' However, 'griefing' can also include conduct which would be perfect legal in the real world, including, but not limited to, standing up for your civil rights in a way that offends or annoys another resident, protesting, and displaying offensive (but not illegal) images within one's own property.

One problem with relying on the ToS and community standards to define griefing is that Linden Labs -- for good reasons -- does not want to be involved with the regulation of resident to resident matters, including (1) transactional matters, (2) property line disputes, and (3) where residents do not see eye to eye. At the same time, there is no resident body with the ability to resolve purerly resident to resident disputes. In some cases where 'virtual violence' is justified, the ToS precludes self enforcement remedies, creating a hole in the ability to obtain justice (i.e. enforce a contract, effectively communicate to another resident that they are violating one's fundamental human rights, or force a resident to remove a spite fence.)

There's griefing that clearly violates the ToS, and then there's griefing made necessary by the abesence of adequate laws. Lawfull protesting, conduct which is generally calculated to cause annoyance, can, and often is, reported as an abuse of the ToS.

Everybody's definition of greifing varies. Some people tolerate a much higher level of abuse before reporting it as a ToS violation. Most people agree that completely unprovoked acts of annoyance, harrassement, assault, taken by one resident against another where the parties have no prior history or relationship with each other, constitutes griefing within the meaning of the ToS. Property settings can also have an impact on whether there is true, or perceieved, griefing, including whether the property is rated pg or mature, build, push, and damage settings.

Ultimately, its up to you to decide what level of conduct to tolerate. If you favor residents rights, then it's your responsibility to be more tolerant and refrain from LL intervention. To give yourself the power to enforce your contracts with other residents, you may protect yourself by including no-AR clauses so that, in the event that the contract is breached, you can be someone insulated from an AR in the event the other party decides to file an AR on you the next time you shoot them or commit some other act of violence against their person or property. I.E. one party can't justifyably say they are annoyed or harrassed if they agreed to tolerate the conduct complained of.

Also, note that LL's defintion of assualt and harrassement differs from the legal meaning. In the real world, assualt meand to place another person in fear of immenent peril of bodily injury. Isolated acts of orbiting and shooting residents cannot reasonable be considered to place a person in fear of bodily injury to their person. Injury to an avatar is simply not injury to one's person.

Little Gray

This is one of the most chilling things I think I've read here yet. It's rampant cart-before-horseism: have you yet stopped to consider the converse point of view?

Men who behave badly in that manner do so because all the other options for acceptance are being denied them; from the perspective of a young guy, SL consists of a series of traps whose rules are invisible until they have been sprung. Go to a combat sim and you are cannon fodder; go to a mall, and find out you have no money. Go to a sex sim and find that you are bitch fodder - lacking dress sense in SL is the best way to prolong online virginity yet found, and there are certainly people who pretty-up their Av just in order to increase their rights to be verbally abusive to anyone who even asks them the time of day. Click on someone with the wrong mouse button and get banned and orbited because they are wearing xcite parts - that you can't see!

All those people who complain about griefers should realise that while some of these guys are just born assholes, an increasing number of them are made that way, basically as a result of profiling - you know, that thing that's not supposed to happen in airport security searches. Profiling rules the roost amongst the elite in SL... and make no mistake; the social elite here rise because they have some very specific talents. SL rewards the obsessive-collective, the creative, and the visual/sculptural type, and gives them the means to be fantastically unpleasant to those with other talents. I'm frequently very disappointed by the behaviour I see from these people.

Anyone who wonders at greifer behaviour should follow the advice given by Marilyn Manson when interviewed over the Columbine shootings; LISTEN to these people for once in your lives. Hell, spend some time in an alt with basic clothes and mousse hair, or think of those giant waving penises as being more like the red nose on a clown than a prop from "Flesh Gordon" - maybe that young horny kid is depressed by his libido. Invert the current view of the power imbalance in society, and suddenly griefers become a lot more understandable.

I really like your post. I think everybody needs a chance to be understood, not instantly banned. To me personally, I will never refer to anyone as a "griefer"... it is a term I don't wish to acknowledge. Maybe after spending more time in SL my attitude will change, we'll see.

A griefer is someone who gets enjoyment out of destroying the enjoyment of others. Why they become a griefer is unimportant. It doesnt matter to me if they are naturally inconsiderate of others via some genetic brain malfunction, or theyve turned to the dark side because of some bad experience they have encountered upon their arrival here. If they are simply rotten scoundrels acting out because dad never payed attention to them as a child, then theres nothing you can do here to change the way their mind works. If they are pissed at the entire world of SL because they were banned from somewhere because of their unverified account or whatever, they should take it out on the individual they feel did them wrong, and not take out their frustrations on the rest of of us. Most griefers ply their trade because acts of violence and bringing misery to others is fun for them. They derive pleasure ruining someone elses day. You remember these guys from junior high school, stepping on your lunch and laughing about it. They kept it up until one day, after ruining an especially nice sandwich, a victim snapped and beat the living shit out of them. Too bad we cant render the same justice here. Be constructive, be entertaining, be anything, but dont be a pain in the ass. Nobody appreciates it.

Gummi's post is very profound, and i agree with it. Also I think the term griefer is used too broadly. To me a griefer is as someone else stated someon who purposely causes mayhem, attempts to disrupt or impede the normal activity of the program, where as the annoying guy with his "Little Master" hanging out propositioning me repeatedly is just a jerk. I expect SL to contain roughly the same proportion of them as in RL.I usually try to polite refuse their advances, maybe give them a few word of advice then move on.

What is a Griefer???

Anyone with brown parted hair style , white teeshirt , blue jean's and open toed shoes thats holding a gun and yelling " WHERE CAN I GET SEX HERE ?? !

While newbies in white shirts and jeans waving giant penises around may be considered griefers by some, the following is the truest form of griefing I have recently experienced in SL:

I was in a skybox at near the very highest level sitting and talking on a sofa with a close friend. Suddenly someone shows up with a jetpack attachment and walks into the skybox. He refuses to leave, asking to be paid off to leave. He jumps up and down making all sorts of very silly stupid gestures. He makes rude comments to the both of us. He WILL NOT LEAVE (and the security system was not functioning.) Then he wanders into the next room, clicks on pose balls and asks for sex. Clicking on his profile shows him to be a few days-old newbie, but his knowledge of SL reveals him as an alt.

Now THAT is griefing to its fullest definition, IMHO.

The guy in the newbie suit with a giant poor mans dick running around asking everybody for sex is just a dork. Reletively harmless in his annoyance factor and easily removed. The guy who plywoods the front door of your shop thus costing you business, or fires up the hand of god weapon blowing everybody off the sim, or creates grid crippling devices is a griefer. Intent of malice is the key point.

I am in agreement.


Gummi's post about "walk a mile in my griefer's moccassins" rings true as well... we could all use a lil' love and undersstandin' now can't we?

Though, even when minding my own business, behaving like a good citizen... as one who has experienced several severe verbal lashings from some narrow-minded folk who don't like some of the groups I belong too... (hmmm, and those aren't even visible without actually looking in my profile for them...) I "get" the whole acceptance thing.

As I stated in my original post, I had never really encountered what I thought were "griefers" until this cage guy. And, really, according to the definitions I have received, really wasn't a griefer cuz' he didn't really affect my enjoyment of the game. I just thought he was an asshole, but so is my boss... so is my partner.... so is the butcher at the grocery store... ah... life

Some people bring Trolling and Greifer to such a high level they create a whole new category, oooh Treifer!