Why do griefers grief?

I call them Congressmen.

Boredom maybe, theres only so many things that keeps them entertained in their mother's basement.

Then add lack of fresh air and sunshine. And possibly Radon poisoning.

This is something almost as old as being able to link computers across a network. There are people out there who get their jollies interfering with other people's recreation. An old example is people who go to message boards specifically to cause flame wars by posting intentionally insulting posts.

This has always been prevalent on online chat, be it an AOL chatroom, and IRC channel, or now, a SL sim.

Sometimes they will have some dislike of a person or group--a homophobe attacking a gay IRC channel for example. But usually these are simply malcontents who enjoy showing off their "l33t sk!1z".

Unfortunately many are of college age, so age verification will not keep them out.

As time goes on, LL will be better able to deal with them by giving sim owners better tools for dealing with them. But they will probably always be a part of SL.

ROFLMAO!!!!

Best answer yet!!!

But yea, to be honest, I'd assume most griefers are folks with sad, sorry lives who cant or dont have the balls to do anything in RL, so they come to SL or other places to get out their frustrations of being SO insignificant in the scheme of life that no one would really care or notice if they disappeared. 'Twould be nice if they at least mentioned SL or "something" in their Suicide notes they leave to their mothers when their bodies are found after a bad experiment in auto-erotic-asphyxiation. At least we'd know who they are then !!

what about the person simply liking to torment peoples?

I think it's called sadism.

Why do griefers grief? The same reason some people go out of their way to ruin other peoples lives by spreading lies about them. The same reason abusive admins of estates and businesses choose to give their kind a bad name by pissing off their visitors/customers. Their all MORONS! They enjoy hurting other people because it makes them feel good. The best thing to do is take their jollies away. They will continue to find more jollies but once they are all out completely they will move on and either leave SL or perhaps change.

heh good reasons im sure, but why assume that? some griefers, you'd be surprised to know are alts of well known fine upstanding SL Citizens, who want to blow off steam, or call attention to a issue that LL has ignored and well...ahem....

i'll go with reasons number:2,5,11, and 15.

Well you have to know that there's several kinds of griefers

Newbie Griefer: doesn't "get" SL and thinks it is a FPS or whatever. They grief because they don't know better, and may not even know they are griefing (in which case it isn't really grief). Example are the "newb nukes" which are a fixture in sandbox areas.

Serial Griefer: what most of this thread discusses. Reasons for this type of grief have already been mentioned; boredom, relief of RL frustrations, character flaws, etc.

Guild Griefer: people who are from "outside" of SL who join along with others for grief. Patriotic Nigras comes to mind. This kind of griefing is very hard to stop because there is outside organization/group comradery that keeps it going.

Ideology/Cause griefer: these people grief to make some sort of point. For example, you may have humans who grief furries, or vice versa (and I've seen several "anti-human" groups dedicated to harassing humans). Then of course there are the infamous grief wars between the in-world presence of the French political group Front National and their detractors.

Oldbie/Area Regular Griefer: these people normally don't do much griefing, but will grief someone via orbiting etc. if they are "annoyed" by someone. An example is when I was hanging out in a WA with scripts enabled with a friend, and a WA regular and '05er deemed us "loud and annoying" and started orbiting us right and left. These people, if they own land, are the first to ban at the drop of a hat, and off their land they may continue this trend with "justified" orbiting and trolling. Wonderful what self-righteousness and a sense of entitlement can do

To which I might add Business Griefing: Sending griefers to disrupt a rival shop or club with the aim of driving customers away.

Also...

I think many griefers grief for the same reasons that college freshmen go "party crazy", drinking to excess, etc. Their parent's aren't likely to find out, their friends (if they have any) are likely doing the same thing and cheering each other on.

There's (rarely) any immediate or significant consequence to their misbehavior, and some turn it into a game, to see how far they can push the envelope before it catches up with them.

Whether that's being irresponsible or irritating, doesn't matter.

Some people self-moderate... some people need guardrails.

I think Robert Heinlein had the right idea. Not sure about hung like tic tacs though lol. I just turn of everything on my land like building and scripting etc and hope to god (or someone) I don't log in to mayhem.

I do think griefers have a defect in their personality. What right minded adult would want to cover everything in grafiti in RL (no its not art when its on someone else's building) or generally cause mayhem in SL?

Maybe the next time any of us come across a griefer we should IM them the hyperlink to this thread so that they can reflect on how pathetic 99.9% of the world thinks they are.

I look forward to the day when a griefer's home address can be publicly traced and then I will sit back and enjoy the spectacle of somebody wrecking their PC and damaging their property so they can see what it feels like.

Salem...your primary sin is in thinking that SL is a "game". However, I believe there are at least 50 topics on the 'what is SL' debate. However, since the exact placing of SL is debatable, that means it is most definitely not a 'game' by the common definition of game.

Otherwise...yea...griefers grief because they have no idea of anything else to do. Me, I grab my deck and go skate when I'm bored like that.

Some griefers have agendas. I know there are anti-capitalists out there (gah!) who try to ruin commerce in SL. It's kinda like nut-jobs who bomb abortion clinics.

Other griefers think it's 'cool' to grief. They get around a pack of friends who feel that 'petty vandalism' is the cool thing to do. I've known many full-grown adults who act in this way. Pack mentality...ooo...look at me...I'm so risky and dangerous and different and I don't care what you think about me so much that I'm willing to annoy the hell out of you to get approval from my friends!

I don't think it's important to know WHY people grief...just know that ignoring them and ban/ejecting them is the best way to deal with 'em. If there is ONE common thread among ALL griefers it is that they are attention whores. Don't give it to 'em.

Accounts setup after August last year can only register on the forums if they have payment info on file. I can't see any griefers currently active falling into either category.

lol.. i certainly enjoyed reading this thread. Griefers are griefers,, that's wat they do is to grief... hee hee

... they grief because it gives them something they can have in common with their "friends". Most of the things they do because they can do them in front of their friends to gain approval from them, or they go off and do on their own so they can come back to their friends and report their activities and gain their approval that way.

The critical factor is that they do it to gain approval from their friends, and they would not feel this hunger if their lives were not otherwise completely devoid of such validation or approval.

Their own fear of being dismissed by the group keeps them doing it, so once one of these sad people joins one of these groups, it's a self-sustaining, closed system. This is what makes the griefer groups such as the Patriotic Nigras so difficult to deal with in general. The only way to shut them down is to make the process so difficult and so disagreeable to them as individuals that it's just not worth it to keep going.

Occasionally one of them wakes up and realizes that they're not winning anything of value by their association with the group, and defects or leaves. When that happens, they are immediately ostracized and griefed by their former so-called "friends" (who of course were never their friends in the first place). Griefer groups like this are a sadistic, sociopathic lot who think nothing of turning on their own people - I believe this is because each one of them has a lot of fear just under the surface. Anyone who disagrees with them or changes his mind threatens the stability of the group, and since each person is desperate and grasping for the tiny benefits the group has to offer them personally, defectors and detractors are attacked with vengeance and zeal.

It's only the lure of peer approval that keeps them running at all. Without it, there would simply be no organized griefing groups.

I think there's just 4 kinds of griefer...some mentioned above.


New guys: They think combat is a much bigger part of SL than it really is. I was given this impression when I first showed up in 05.

Jerks: They get a rise out of whiny people and pick on people just to pick on them. I've met a few. They're usually pretty funny but use their abilities to annoy instead of create...or create to annoy.

"Rebels with a cause": these "groups" that do the equivalent of suicide bombing of public places...like SLLA's attack on American Apparel's store. This shows what passes for the West's "activism" these days. That's another story, though..

Ridiculous scripts and prims on an av: These people slow the whole sim down once they show up. The Clone Army was like this. If 10 of them showed up in the same area with all that armor and scripting going on they'd crash a sim. They didn't intend any harm...yet they kept using that stuff!!

Anyway, I don't have too much experience with griefers. I have my land in an out-of-the-way area that doesn't seem to attract trouble-makers. I also don't react the way most griefers want so I become a pretty boring target pretty quickly.

I can tell you have a little bit of that griefer DNA in you.....

If this is really the picture you paint of a griefer's real life, then why do you not feel sorry for them? I can assure you that the damage they have done to your fake existence pales in comparison to the pains of their miserable real lives.

My amateur sociobiologist in me leans to a less heartless explanation: creatures of any intelligence level enjoy playing games. It's hard wired into our behavioral instincts for a very specific purpose, and that is to facilitate in the learning about the environment around us. When you see two puppy dogs play-fighting, keep in mind that that is a fortification mechanism that strengthens their ability to hunt prey. It's practice! Right from the Purkinje cells in their cerebellums down to each actin and myosin fiber in their strengthening muscles. It's such practice that makes perfect, and ultimately assists in survival.

People, I have observed, especially adolescent males, love watching physics in action. As an astrophysicist myself, I can go on for days about what percentage of my college peers enjoy playing fast-paced shoot-em-ups involving lots of explosions, fast motions, and splattering brain matter. While congressmen may attribute these fascinations with a sense of evil, it is my firm belief that this is our species' equivalent of basic animalistic play-fighting. We are, after all, a very mental species, so it is expected that play-fighting may manifest itself in ways that are unexpected, and in ways we may never conceive to be sociobiologically induced. Our brain is the biggest tool, and hunting weapon, we have.

Now bring the lack of social skills into the mix. With the internet taking off as quick as it is, is there any wonder why we have so many socially inept people on this planet? Reading emotional states over wires is impossible without detailed observation of mannerisms and the perception of pheremones. Add to this to the rise of ADD and Autism in todays youth (myself included), and one can see the difficulty in people in any community (especially virtual ones) from simply getting along.

But, as land owning businessman of second life, many of you still complain about these miscreants as they are limiting your success, driving away customers, and possibly bringing the entire virtual economy to a halt through their disruptive actions. I can understand your frustration, but keep in mind you are engaging in your own sociobiologically driven agenda: the accumulation of wealth. As a caveman, you were required to fetch the days' meal by hunting for prey. In todays' "civilized" economy, you find money in any way imaginable and pay someone else to kill the cow for you. Instead of actually hunting for the meat, your duty is to hunt for information that constitutes the opening of new markets and the availability of new customers. Like most everyone alive today, you think of only yourself and your immediate family. Regretfully, in a world of limited resources, its the only way. I am not suggesting these selfish attitudes are necessarily bad, but I am not saying they are particularly "good" either. Your impetus to make neat stuff and accumulate money and accolades is really the same as the griefers' need to flex his muscles and demonstrate his superiority: Its the struggling need to maintain your own individuality in a world becoming more and more focused on the collective whole.

For the majority of what has been built in SL, I have no sympathy of griefer attacks. Who needs another minimall? My typical nightly excursions onto the internet are a way to escape from the BS of a bazillion highway billboard signs that pervade RL. I gave up television because I was sick of getting bombarded by 10 minutes of commercial for every 20 minutes of actual, “useful” information. Second life has some great spots to visit that inspire me and expand my mind, but far fewer than active worlds(AW) did years ago.

Perhaps you are right, maybe the griefer griefs because he is pathetic and lonely, but perhaps he is pathetic and lonely because he has lost to the overhwhelming competition, or is simply sick of the bullshit. He is capable of, very easily, accumulating or writing a script and actually asserting dominance over another human being for once.(Another inherent biological drive) Until we stop being so damned competetive with one another clawing to the top of the food chain, there will always be gang members, computer hackers, schoolyard bullies, and griefers.

Everyone in RL fights with eachother to "be the best" and to bring home the food. Those without the physical or intellectual muscles(or an entitlement of status at birth) simply starve to death. In SL, the same is true, but the playing field is slightly more level. Everyone is really against everyone else when money is involved. In AW, there was little or no virtual economy, and the content was richer. There was far less harassment, and more things to see and do.

You may claim that biological drives do not at all justify griefer behavior in the grid, but it is my take that the complete over-commercialization is a bit excessive too. People are engaging in some cut-throat land baron crap, flooding the market with junk, and only allowing people on their land if they intend on buying stuff. All the while, billboards creep in from every angle, spam messages flood the chat window, and I am left wondering “How is this better than RL?” What a pathetic waste of rackspace.

Play-fighting is good, and creating neat stuff and expecting something in return is good. It's all a matter of where we draw the line. My only point of this excessively long writeup is to simply give an interpretation as to the original question of WHY these behavioral ghosts are present in the machine, in RL or SL.

To make SL better, consider these guidelines:

* Quit fighting. All of you. Build a SL superior to RL, where everyone is on an equal footing. Quit trying to duplicate RL. Instead of opening a business in SL selling your own variant of useless products that already exist, try making something unique and wonderful. Aim to entertain, inspire, and educate. Make your SL destination that which enlightens humanity much the same way as a planetarium or museum does in RL. Quit fighting over land too, for that in of itself has grown quite infantile. Be a capitalist if you feel the need, but do something awesome.

To help in this endeavor....

*Lindens, great and revolutionary creation, but you know well enough it isn't finished. If SL is going to make it to the big time, it needs to be more free for everyone. Finding that balance is a pain, but consider the current web: there are private sites you pay to host, where business is conducted, and there are public sites where anyone can express themselves. You already have this bifurcated system, however there needs to be stronger tools for the private land owners to protect themselves. Likewise, there needs to be public areas that have the community of the default home locations, but also somehow provide a limited building environment not quite as flexible as that of a full blown sandbox. Consider giving avatars the ability to “mute” an entire players object set! This would not only make those objects visually invisible, but also restrict those objects from any kind of interaction with the avatar. Parallel universes naturally is something only an astrophysicist would suggest.

(RANT)
For those of you on this forum bitching about the infantile suicidal kiddies out there, grow up. Sometimes it takes some troubled minds to do wonderful things, and as a sufferer of many of the ailments mentioned in previous posts, I feel quite offended that once again those of us who are paralyzed by genetic abnormalities are labeled as the abnormalities of societal well being. I am helping to find exoplanets in RL. What marvelous contributions are you making to civilization?

--Evolve

A very insightful Post, Cozmo. I have thought and said many of the same things, but not nearly as clearly. Part of your post IS something I say a lot;



I thank you for that post, sir.

Cozmo's discussion is indeed very insightful, but unfortunately, I think it fails in the case of griefing because of an internal contradiction.

If we are indeed "hard-wired" to strive and compete with each other, to flex our muscles, to dominate, and to otherwise demonstrate personal superiority, then griefing will not be solved by an injunction not to compete. Such appeals will only carry weight with people whose griefing careers would be extremely brief anyway, or nonexistent.

I think the problem here is, griefers express that "hard-wiring" in ways that nearly everyone else involved agrees are destructive in general, however gratifying they may be to griefers in particular. They do a lot of that here because the open environment of SL makes it possible to do that, and it evidently is the best thing they can think of.
I predict limited success redirecting such errant souls, or even supplying needed adult supervision when their parents in RL have clearly failed in that endeavor. I think what is needed is to find ways to make SL an unrewarding environment for such destructive expressions of these presumably universal DNA-driven instincts, while keeping it a free and open environment for more constructive expressions - like building neat stuff nobody else thought of.

Then, too, some of it may be developmental. There is a certain stage in adolescence where mischief and pranks strengthen one's sense of capability and seem appealing. Most people outgrow it by age 18; some don't. Age-verification of some suitable sort should help reduce the number of such griefers.

As some posit, attention-getting might be one possible motive. In such cases, firm rejection and ostracizing should be an effective counter.

Finally, there are those looking for outlets for what psychotherapists call "free-floating hostility," which means taking "it" out on somebody, anybody when you get the chance. SL needs to be an unwelcoming environment for that sort of behavior in particular, because if it is "rewarded," it will not only not go away, but increase exponentially.

Some strategies that seem to help, depending on the nature of the griefer:

Educating a newbie griefer about the mores in SL and alternatives like combat sims has been found useful in some cases.

In others, being presented with superior force is very effective indeed: They will then go elsewhere to "flex their muscles" - those who are not the equivalent of a 6'3" Marine with karate training and concealed weapons will learn not to pick a fight in a biker bar. (The landowner-powers package of freeze-humiliate and/or lecture-eject-ban-AR is the most effective method around I am aware of; in circumstances where that is not available, there are some other alternatives available.) "Elsewhere" can mean "outside SL." There is a case to be made for negative conditioning!

For the otherwise defenseless, sitting, teleporting away, or logging off are personal options, but I think are at best palliative to the larger problem: Many griefers responding to their "hard-wiring" will only feel validated and empowered by such reactions, and perhaps go on to make more people cower at their "terrible might.".

Piling up enough ARs to get a griefer banned by LL is clearly a help, especially now htat it has become measurably more effective. But here, the existence of unverified accounts is a sharply limiting factor.

Put simply: If SL is the body, griefers are its germs; SL needs to spruce up its immune system.

...and after 3 pages of responses, you can pretty much sum it up w/ the 2 quotes above.

B the "performance art" part types I mean they want attention so they make things or situations that represent what's in thier head.

Compare a kid who uses thier angst to drive them to success in the business world, which gets them attention, power and respect...to the kid who instead hopes to get attention, power and respect by joining a gang.

The second kind is usually what I have run into as far as griefers.

Oh yeah, why haven't any RESPONDED? They can't post in the Forums without a verified account right? Some of em have ways around hardware bans, so they would be able ta respond...but since almost all "real" griefers use unverified Alts...they couldn't post in here...or maybe I'm wrong *shrugs*

There are as many different reasons for griefing as there are for road rage, and likely some are common for both.

Some people bring issues with them, some respond viciously to imagined slights.

Some determined griefers usually enjoy playing mind games. Some will rationalize it away as being "all just a meaningless game". Few have any respect for anyone less smart than they are... or that fail to understand the 'rules' of their game masterfully well.

In a long stretch of the imagination: I blame the politically correct movement, because its existence has encouraged some to adopt an absurd counter behavior. One where people fake being rude to each other because only true-friends can get away with that kind of nonsense. Now, people are sassy and rude and passing off that kind of behavior as "real" or "honest", when, in reality, it's just as fake and shallow as being overly PC.

Some Griefers just take it a step further. They play the 'rude' game.... half expecting you to play the rude game right back at them, in the spirit it was intended: as insignificant playful hostility. A shared joke that all this online stuff is absolutely meaningless.

And when they encounter someone that takes the rude-game too seriously... the griefer thinks they're derranged idiots with messed up priorities who deserve to be taught a lesson. They know that lesson will never be learned though, no matter how painful the lesson may be... so it becomes curiosity to see what kind of pain threshhold the "idiot" has.

Which makes griefing, in some cases, more of a clash of cultures and ideologies.

Which means, of course, the PC types should be tolerant of a griefer's culture, and respect those differences. Yes, absolutely we should!! And the only way to do that, is to dismiss them as the trivial and insignificant people that they assume everyone else online is. Doing anything otherwise would be insensitive to their heritage.

I think the irony is that the kids joining the gangs get more respect from their peers!



I think the issue with griefing is that there is absolutely nothing to be lost. They can just easily make an alt account. Really, limiting alt account creation could work. IP restrictions dont work due to NAT limitations with most ISP's. but I think what would work is limiting new account registrations to non-free email services. If you block hotmail accounts, you may find a significant improvement, although a question arises as to the percentage of users with free email. How many of the users of this forum do not utilize ISP, work, or school related email addresses as their primary contact?