How Many SLers Remember Its Era of Epic, System-Wide Griefing?

August 24, 2020

Via Gazira Babeli's blog which has more details

Discussing the topic of drama and griefing in SL, longtime SLer Jumpman Lane compares and contrasts what griefing is considered now, versus what it once was:

Drama is not new to Second Life. It's also not as bad as it's been in the past…by a LONG shot. I went to the gteam meeting today. What shocked me was that the discussion was dominated by a gal crying in voice (TEARS) about being "griefed" at a club. I was incredulous and made it known. I asked for examples. One of the crying woman's pals sent me 3 note cards that detailed the "abuse." It was all in effect an ex-employee of the club spamming details and club gossip in nearby chat.

What struck me was how readily the gteam Lindens took this as HIGH drama and SERIOUS business. That's not griefing. Griefing is when people log into Second Life with the intent of wrecking the days of people they don't even know. This was a personal dispute, best handled by the tools of the game (specifically the ban/eject tool of LAND POWERS).

I related how griefers in days past, crashed sims to form swastikas on mainland in Second Life. There were people there who remembered such days. I wasn't sure if the Lindens in charge of the gteam now, recall such things. This was evidenced, again, by how seriously they seemed to be taking this rather personal dispute.

I remember well the years of epic SL griefing, when for example, self-replicating objects threatened to bring down the entire grid in a "gray goo" attack:

A "griefer" — person who disrupts video-games — is attacking the online world Second Life with self-replicating "grey goo" that is melting down the Second Life servers. "Grey goo" is shorthand for an apocalyptic nano-gone-wrong scenario wherein nanoassemblers replicate so profligately that they reduce the world to slurry.

That was back in 2006, however, and I can't recall anything as havoc-wreaking as that happening in a long time. Or how about the first appearance of copybotting, also in 2006 and the grid-wide protest that followed?

It's a credit to Linden Lab that they've plugged up enough potential exploits to preempt anything like gray goo attacks from happening. But it's fascinating that there may be a new wave of SLers who don't know much about the virtual world's days of peak anarchy — and so consider "griefing" to be more on par with sending excessive text chat.

Posted in Comment of the Week, Social Structures, Social Upheaval

9 responses to “How Many SLers Remember Its Era of Epic, System-Wide Griefing?”

Alicia

August 24, 2020

Just one problem.
They don’t care.
For Linden Lab to care, they would literally have to gut and ban every copybot, every griefing tool… including the Soul Steal HUD (… and every last one of its variants) which is still on the MP, clamp down on the bot accounts by making them non-existant (IE: roughly 1/3rd of the logins are bots that are always kept on just to falsely inflate a sims numbers), making every creator adhere to strict optimization guidelines which should have been done a decade ago when they introduced mesh, enforce their own rules when it comes to grossly-blatant copyright violations by both LL and creators (IE – LL in violation of their own policies; and creators who are taking advantage of LL’s negligence) who continue to create and make money from IPs they do not own (Marvel, DC, Disney, Louis Vuitton (logo), Dior (logo), etc. because you need to be licensed by said companies to do so.), and the list goes on and on.

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Adeon Writer

August 24, 2020

I’ve always said for years that Greifing/Trolling/Botting in a game is proof that it is still alive and relavant.
When that stops, outlook bad.

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camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra

August 24, 2020

The tighter limits imposed after these attacks can be either looked upon as a hindrance or an encouragement to better ways of working.
Having to precache your rezzes in advance rather than forcing a massive storm of rezzes in a hurry means having to be more methodical about planning your use of assets and the timing of said rezzes, as well as give viewers more time to cache them prior to viewing.
Having to limit your text comms use means learning to be more concise in what you pass to the user and to objects, resulting in less heavy data use from wall texts. This also has follow-on benefits when doing comms between scripted objects and the outside of the grid.
Being unable to truly create new assets directly in world without a bot in the line means you plan your scripts and object design more carefully to gain the variety you need.
A wall is sometimes just something you prop a ladder against in order to climb higher.

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Luther Weymann

August 25, 2020

Once upon a time many years ago on an empty Anshe Chung region that is a sandbox, I rezzed a 256x256x256 mega prim in the exact center of the region just to see what it looked like. That size mega prim is the same dimension as the region. This resulted in my viewer crashing and a reglog to the region where I was pushed up much higher than the mega prim. And then the embarrassment began. After many repeated attempts to delete the mega prim, I just could not delete it or take it back into inventory. This resulted in me having to contact Surreal Chung, who was on duty and humbly request she remove it because I could not just walk away from the mess I had made. After a few embarrassing questions from Surreal about why I would do something like that, it finally disappeared, and I never did that again.

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TDGunner

August 25, 2020

Griefing is what ruined SL. @Adeon Writer what you have said for years is wrong. Most people want to come into a game and enjoy themselves. Griefers only serve the purpose of pissing people off. I cannot tell you how many people rage quit SL because of griefers. Crashing sims, orbiting people, deforming them, restricting movement, does that sound like keeping things relevant? No. What it does is tell the users that this is not a safe place, or a fun place. The poor newbies that were griefed mercilessly by people who gets off on causing others a hard time. LL’s inability to crack down on griefers caused a lot of people, that could have been loyal users, to leave.
One guy, who played girls on SL, had over 40 accounts that griefed everyone. One 40 something in his basement whose only joy in life was disturbing the peace. Finally after 10 years they banned him; but he’s back with a new account.
Yeah, greifing means a place is relevant. GTFO

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Adeon Writer

August 25, 2020

It falls under the same category of “piracy should be taken as flattery”
You need to be a certain level of good to be worth stealing.

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Mondy

August 27, 2020

I can remember a time when griefing by self replicating objects was fairly common, and although it was annoying, it was also an event. People would COME to a sim to see sometimes hilarious flying…appendages? or whatever infantile creations had been brought into being. Sure it was stupid, but it was also a talking point and often amusing. You also got to see the Lindens arrive to clean up the mess if the sim didn’t crash and the owner couldn’t deal with it themselves.
The last griefing act I witnessed was at a sim about a year ago, when I arrived at a club and found I, nor anyone ele couldn’t move, the entire sim had been covered in some kind of invisible, semi permeable objects that made movement almost impossible.
Places really need to lock down their user permissions. But it’s still not fun for the owners to clean up.

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Jackie

August 28, 2020

Knew a guy who did fun griefting such as turning the sky from blue to green a smiley face moon. He loved combat sim and making folks he knew fly three Sims away for kicks.crashing Sims and hurting others wasn’t cool with him.

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Jumpman Lane

August 31, 2020

I absolutely have to make it to the next Gteam meeting. I showed up 30 minutes late and admittedly got side-tracked discussing how “old” my Carducci’s Sticky Green Cigar is.
I just had a sense at that last meeting that even the Lindens present had no clue about what griefing was like back in the day. LOL

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