Why do griefers grief?

I repeat I want to hear from the griefers.

Griefing happens more when people playing get bored.

Makes me wonder if legalized prostitution would significantly lower rape rates....

o.0

I know alot about griefing and how to prevent it, but people will never listen to ways of preventing it. If a sim gets griefed, if everybody left for 5 minutes they would find out he would have left and they could continue to play. Wearas if they didn't leave and complained, he would stay there for hours caging or whatever.

Griefers don't like to play by themselves Force them to by leaving!

Knowing griefers

It brings action to any game and fun. When they start taking away tools that fustrate others and try to prevent griefing, it just makes it all the funner. This is when my friends griefed on TSO anyways.


Griefing happens more when people playing get bored.


The best way to combat griefing when it happens is to leave the area as fast as you can. If you stay and complain or fight back, they know they have won.

Maybe what we need to do is entertain these folk with freely accessible forms of entertainment along the same lines. Any publicly available physics free-for-all.

SL isn't an FPS death arena, but could some clever business owner amongst us find a way to attract unpaying newbs to a "death island" and find some clever way of earning from the venture.

What if you had a gladitorial arena, with a competetive focus. Free entry with prize money, and spectators behind an invisible wall that could somehow block a scripts influence. You could have ladder-based tournaments. Build your own weapons, or select from a table of provided guns. (exclude external scripts and find a way for them to use the gun without ownership). Anyone seen running man?



If they aren't bored, they wont grief...

Makes me wonder if legalized prostitution would significantly lower rape rates....

o.0

Why do Boffins boff? Spammers spam? Land cutters cut land? It's their nature.

Methinks you have something here, Cozmo. This could be the beginning of something big, actually...World of Warcraft, watch your butt!

REALLY...I'm surprised nobody did it already...I swear, all last week this is what I was talkin about. Even took out graph paper and started mappin it out...I'm hard-up on $ right now though so it'll have ta wait.

Hhmm - you'd want different levels or leagues, starting with simpler toys with limited ways to do damage, and then working up to - anything goes!

This is sounding cooler by the minute.

In asking that people are polite, and socially adept, and considerate, one has to ask the converse question, which is whether one is extending the same courtesies. Just because there are easily identifiable behaviours which are bad, doesn't mean that these are the only bad behaviours...

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

This is a great post - High Minded , Inspirational, Aspires to great things and suggests tolerance for all.

If everyone did as the poster suggests in Real Life - wed starve to death.

If everyone did as the poster suggests in Second Life , there wouldnt be enough money to keep the servers running.

Idealists are great - we need more of them. We need people with simpler aspirations as well.

I completely agree with being more tolerant though - people have an irrational fear / loathing of griefers. They simply arent as scary as they are made out to be. Generally, they are just kids (of whatever age) looking to get a reaction.

Ignore them, sit on a prim - TP away for a bit - Eject/Ban then - chalk it up to something t o talk about.

Those denial of service type griefers , those LL is working on and has gotten MUCH better at handling.

... get up, take a walk, got to the park with a book, go see a movie in a theatre,hear some live music, go to a ball game, sit on a beach, whatever.

You can do ALL of that in SL See the point?

You can travel a whole lot faster in a virtual world, get more done. Given a superior simulation to what we have now, it's actually far more efficient to "real life." Of course, SL is far from this level of complexity.

Random transhumanist link: This will really bake your noodle if you understand the implications
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_probe

You can do ALL of that in SL See the point?

You can travel a whole lot faster in a virtual world, get more done. Given a superior simulation to what we have now, it's actually far more efficient to "real life." Of course, SL is far from this level of complexity.

Random transhumanist link: This will really bake your noodle if you understand the implications
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_probe

Given a suficiently advanced simulation the need for actual humans to participate in it becomes obsolete.

The classic greifing signs are all there: slightly off-centre syntax, heavy reliance on the US College value-framework ("perverts... losers... whores... 'taking things seriously'". I think there are ways to naturally attract grief from this kind of person, and part of the problem is that if you are a flighty, wordy, sexy, well-sculpted avatar, part of YOUR presentation to the world is inherently "greify". Gore Vidal said that to succeed is not enough - others must fail. Many environments and clubs in SL are built so that the "in-crowd" get the thrill of cold-shouldering the outsiders

I think a lot of these people have never been treated with any respect in thier lives before... Perhaps they are just young punks who havent really grown up

People have become more terrified of the possibility of griefers than by the acts themselves, which is in part probably part of the griefers plan. Six months in SL is not a comprehensive amount of time but I have been the victim of 3 personal griefing attempts, and 2 where the entire sim was hit. In each case I either tp'd out, logged out, ignored or in one case quietly sat in the cage and worked on my inventory. I think also the term griefer has been diluted to encompass any idiotic or rude behavior. "Give in to the Griefers and the Griefers Win....." I also admire the intent of the OP's comments, even if I am not sure of the practicality of them. But we can at least try.

*This post written by someone who freely admits she spends too much time at her own computer*

Just curious...does the name/batlecry; "LEEROY JENKINS!" mean anything to you?