Last week our class focused on Julian Dibbell’s Wired article about the act of griefing in Second Life. Griefing is a full fledged culture in which online players commit willfully antisocial behaviors and offenses in an organized group. The article mentions that when griefers first laid their eyes on Second Life, they felt as if they had hit the jackpot. They immediately began creating offensive theme lands through re-creations of the burning Twin Towers and a hooker crime scene. The main goal of griefers is to get online gamers to realize that the internet isn’t a serious business. As they lurk around and utter obscenities, they constantly bother people and aggravate them. They can almost be compared to bullies in high school.
A blog post I found below, discusses a psychiatrist’s recommendation on how to deal with greifers.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Griefers-Gamers-Acting-like-Dicks-When-Playing-Online-Why-49974.shtml
To begin, the shrink told the blogger that such anti-social behavior is driven by need of attention. Sounds like high school bullies to me. They strive for attention and feed off of it when attacking their prey. Unfortunately, the shrink says that the only option Second Life players have is to ignore griefers. She says, “ignoring such behavior will result in lack of interest for the griefers to continue such behavior.” I agree with the shrink. If someone was teasing me about something, I think that ignoring them is the best policy. They wouldn’t get any attention from me and feel dissatisfied and move onto their next target.
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