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For the Sake of Spite

I did it. I dove deep into the Fallout 4 void for the day. It was lovely. I've been working a modified schedule at work and my days off are out of wack. Plus, my husband has first dibs because unlike me, he does not care for spoilers

I was skimming reddit on Tuesday and I saw people raging out about spoilers. Some where accidental. Different people have different enhancements for reddit and some show pictures. Other's where purposeful, planted by ether members of our community or other's who had decided to creep in and upset people.

It is my great fortune that I am not spoilt by knowledge of the end of something or what will happen. Why this is, I am unsure. I'm prone to read the ending of a book that I find very enthralling if I catch myself reading to fast or skipping bits to get on with it. It does not ruin it for me. It lets me appreciate hte journey to get to the ending. That trip is what I enjoy.

My husband also enjoys that trip. However, the first time he meets the ending he likes to be surprised. He will then go back through and play a different way. Once he has exhausted that, he will check to see if he missed any experiences. He drains a game like Fallout/Skyrim/GTA dry of its content.

I took a hiatus from the internet community for about six years. I played games and was online all the time, but I did not belong to any community. I had given up forums. I had moved away from my MUD. My world was a very small place composed of my dogs and my husband until I found Eve. Because of this, I missed the rise of reddit and twitter. When I came back into the interactive community of the internet I discovered myself in a place where things like spoiler trolling was normal and faggot had become acceptable language to some.

Often I feel weirdly out of place and time. The spoilers that I saw in the Eve community for Fallout reminded me of the ones planted by groups in the game. I've always thought that they were mean. I say that as someone who cannot be spoilt by knowing what happens in a story.

Meanness on the internet? Who knew?


  1. Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Exchange, is now working on forum software: The Civilized Discourse Construction Kit.

    Not sure why, but as soon as I read this I thought of Eve.

  2. I've come across plenty of examples of people who simply enjoy ruining the experiences of others. I don't understand how someone can be so smug at being an arsehole.

    1. I have thought long on griefing and those who derive enjoyment inflicting pain and upset on other people... the only thing I believe for sure is that we who cannot understand them should be glad we can't... or we would be like them. Other than that I just don't get it.

    2. I would very much enjoy griefing, but I don't for the same reason I don't shoot hard drugs. I'm not an animal that does something in the short that feels good but damages my health in the future. While I could lie to myself and say it's just a game, the subconscious backlash of that is not healthy. I might be a misanthrope but I'm not a psychopath.

    3. @Hiljah And if you play D&D you'll become a satanist! Long term ofc.

    4. oh yer well wer did you get your maps from cos some satanists dont even believe in christmas and whats all this about drugs how can sum1 say drugs are same as griefing at all said? griefing is same as minning no differeent how is it so diff? why cos sumthing is bad do people who think they are good guys say it is like killing a baby or sumthing it is just like saying mario is evil when he kills his mates in mario kart cos he did it in just a game. some people in hisec smdh to the side by side. the man at the top say he has come across plenty who enjoy ruining the game. ehwhy? it is like saying the team who wins at baseball are griefing. or the guy who lost at chess got didded over by physccopath cos he lost ands didnt win. then the man with two faces thinking he is in batman says he has thought bout them enjoying pain and upset. who do get upset? wot a joke no1 gets upset playing video games this is not 1993 when xbox 360 was around lol

    5. @Kaeda I''ll give it a 3/10 for being classic, but it was also tired and half assed.
      @anon I'm going to give this a 7/10. It might be partly because of the funny voice I read it in, but you really had me laughing. The line about batman was inspired.

    6. Grading replies Hiljah? How fiendishly original.

    7. So in the context of EVE, what sort of play do you consider to constitute griefing?

    8. @Hiljah, I wasn't trolling. The notion that people's very character can be altered by what they do in make believe is silly. Half of Hollywood would be deeply schizophrenic if that was the case.

      Pretending to be a bad guy doesn't turn you in to one, sorry. vOv

    9. I didn't say it turns you in to anything. I said it's not healthy. If I found a new guy in a starter corp and then killed him every time he undocked until he quit, I wouldn't be pretending to be a bad guy, I would be a bad guy.
      As fun as that would be, I wouldn't ever actually be happy. When I say it's not healthy, I mean it damages your ability to be happy. Maybe getting someone to quit crosses a line for you, but what is your line? How does it compare to the line you have in real life? Do you make excuses? "The oil company I take money from is really trying to save the Earth."? "That girl was asking for it."? "God hates..."? Try being the good guy some time and see if you need excuses. See if it makes you happy.

    10. Games have rules, as long as you don't break the rules you aren't doing anything wrong. Specifically targeting and griefing somebody repeatedly till they quit is against the rules btw in EVE and a ban-able offense.
      I used to blow up carebears in highsec for profit, not because I want to grief those people, but because it is one of the few ways in EVE you can pretend to be a pirate and make an actual profit (the aim of piracy) doing so. Also because getting people to shoot you is a lot of work, challenging and unpredictable. And I'm very happy when I successfully get a bling marauder to shoot me and I then kill it. Not because I (potentially) upset the owner (he did shoot first after all) but because it pays off what was quite likely a few hours of effort invested on my end.

      I also used to take time out of my eve day to answer noob questions and help people out vOv

      Being a good guy and being supposedly bad guy aren't mutually exclusive, in fact that seems like a very one dimensional and potentially dangerous way of looking at yourself or other people.

      I have no clue about oil companies I've been cycling everywhere for 3 decades :P Girls are just prettier humans and to be treated like you would treat any human. God is a fairy tale (one you shouldn't need if your moral compass is functional to begin with).

    11. Oh goodness, this thread continues? I won’t speak for others, but one of the delights I find in playing games is precisely because they aren’t morally consequential. If I may ask Hiljah . . .

      At the moment of judgment, when you stand before Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates do you genuinely believe the keeper of the keys to the kingdom is going to give “I played the good guy in Eve Online” any serious weight? Somehow, I don’t suspect “I spent years fighting the depredations of CODE. via glorious space pixel combat, open those Pearly Gates Peter!” is going to cut it. By parity of reasoning, if playing a ‘good guy’ in Eve doesn’t get you right with God, playing a ‘bad guy’ in Eve probably won’t distance you from the Lord either.

      I worry sometimes when people hike up the moral consequences of their Eve play. Playing a space criminal endangers your immortal soul? Seriously? Or, if you want to secularize the language, playing a space criminal endangers your mental health? Again, seriously?

      Yah gotta watch those slippery slopes Hiljah. There is a profound difference between space pixel shenanigans and real life rape. If you can’t see that, if you honestly believe playing the ‘good guy’ in Eve is anywhere near as morally consequential accepting “No, means no” with respect to rape than I truly fear for not only your immortal soul, but for your day to day mental health as well.

      This is what I was originally commenting about.
      @Kaeda you're not a greifer, you don't sound like an arsehole, and you have no idea what I'm talking about.
      @Dire, you do sound like an Arsehole. You know you can treat people poorly in a video game or via the internet right? Glad to hear you don't rape people. Do you tip? Or does your angel guy not care about that? "Thou shall follow these rules, but if you want to just be a general prick, go for it."

  3. In the days pre-internet, print game magazines would run hint columns... with *hints* in them, based on questions submitted... via paper letters. Somehow, people survived this agony.

    1. Anon I think the difference is access... pre-internet you had to make the time effort to physically acquire a magazine either from your mailbox or drive to the store in order to 'get' new information on the topics you are willing to pay for, either on subscription or at the register...

      Now at any moment of the day or night... when yer at work, at a traffic light, in the elevator, in the can, walking around, driving (grrrr people on phones while driving)... you just whip out yer phone and immediately get 'the newest of the new news', 99.9% of which is free. on ANY topic you choose...

      Not sure we can survive this... =\


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