Thursday, January 17, 2008

Monkey See

Anti-Griefing groups make me laugh. The kind of laughter that accompanies watching someone light themselves on fire or voting on American Idol. They're so pointless and unnecessary that I wonder why they're still around and banks are kaput.

First, their premise is entirely off the mark. Most are worse than the griefers they're trying to suppress. I was standing at Periwinkle watching a dope run around nude. It was kind of offensive but it's Second Life and we've all watched someone au natural dance in front of us. Cue this overbuff and ripped police man with dark sunglasses and all. Detective Dopey caged the nudist and proceeded to orbit everyone within a mile radius. He was attempting to throw the griefer off the infohub, but Dopey didn't realize that the griefer was caged and couldn't go anywhere. Fifteen people probably crashed from being kicked to 150,000 meters in the sky because Detective Dopey wanted to play cop. Then he told us to file ARs on the griefer!

We should have filed an AR against him. The nudist didn't do much more than smear our snapshots, this phony cop actively crashed people out of their clients.

There's the other end of the spectrum. Anti-griefing groups that show up and nag the griefer that they're very very bad people and should stop. They'll tell people to send ARs while spamming group chat with such witty lines as "Stop. Please. Don't." Idiot. Like I need you to tell me to send an AR? I'm so clueless that I was just going to stand there drooling like a zombie. Thank you so much! I don't advocate NOT sending ARs, but the condescending attitude of these passive aggressive twits just astounds me. They'll even tell you multiple times and if they think you aren't complying with their rules they'll threaten to AR you. I watched one scream and turn purple at a friend of mine. He was AFK, but I wasn't about to tell Screaming Mimi that.

I think griefing is no where near as prevalent as these groups would like you to believe, anyway. In my one and a half years on Second Life, I've witnessed maybe three total griefing attacks. I even camped around hot spots like Baku and Ravenglass and Infohubs. Griefers are too isolated and random to really impact the world as much as these groups would tell you. And when they do attack, I'll AR them and leave. Big surprise that the griefers don't follow me and get banned an hour later. Two of the event I witnessed were in places so far off the beaten path and filled with ad farms that I honestly think the only person really hurt by them was Mr Lee and his Hong Kong.

If you're claiming to be an anti-Griefing group and you take yourself seriously, don't expect me to treat you with an angstrom of respect.

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