Philip Linden: “Welcome to Second Life, Griefer!”
by Alphaville Herald on 21/11/05 at 4:12 pm
By Prokofy Neva, posted and edited by Undercover Hat
Through one of those strange set of circumstances that make you cry, “Only in SL!,” the very first person to make it from Orientation Island to the newly-launched Help Island the other day was an avatar sporting the name Griefer Overlord. So I am told on good authority from a well-known greeter and helper who witnessed the arrival
Philip Linden was of course on hand, and mechanically greeted the new fellow with a, “Welcome to Second Life, Griefer.” Indeed! This newbie Griefer put the memorable quote on his profile and went on his merry way.
Today I was flying around Crameri, a new mature area in the far northern continent, with my eye on a tiny waterside plot I was going to buy, when I checked out how the view would seem. Across the bay, Anshe Chung had a huge, protected island on the water for sale. I saw a giant build that I could already tell was ugly and thought it odd – why would Anshe be selling land with such stuff on it? Peering closer, I saw the standard griefer toolkit: a large, plywood cock and balls (later helpfully labeled “cock” in case you had identification problems); a big choppy Pac-Man kind of smiley face; some sort of slide show with a large woman chattering some kind of nonsense; and particles spewing.
W-Hat is back, I immediately said to myself. Zooming in on the avatars, and seeing one named Groovenstein Korvin clinched it for me. Groovenstein I had last seen in Ross, griefing my event. I had tried to hold a job fair for would-be employers and job-seekers, and a posse of W-Hat fresh alts and old hands like Operating Thetan showed up the heckle, fly around, intimidate, and generally make a nuisance of themselves to prevent people from functioning. I was puzzled why they singled me out, but I guess it’s because I challenged their event griefing in the past. They kept piping up with fake resumes like, “I’m looking for a job as the World Trade Center,” a reference to their infamous stalking of me in Baileya with a huge WTC replica – something they’d offensively deployed in world earlier to many people’s dismay, with the nauseating slogan, “I’m falling for you.”
Um, no we’re not. Not this time, assholes.
Looking over the bunch, I spotted one very new days-old fellow in coat and tails with a monacle, with the lovely evocative name of Griefer Overlord. My word, we’re starting to slack in the imagination department, as usually the names are like…um…Lulu Lulu, was one of them griefing me in Ross, now no longer in the list.
Now, you ask, how could I be sure that the seeming innocent groovily named Groovenstein was anything related to W-Hat? Because he was with the group that said cried “Plastic Duck says ‘hi,’” when they griefed in Ross. And the signature is there — please, spare me. [Groovenstein is in fact dr_groovenstein from the Something Awful Forums
-- Undercover Hat]
One of them cried the faux-Islamicist chant that this alt Rotten Thatch, now gone from the list, cried as he crashed first an airplane, then a building into me and my restaurant in Baileya.
All fun and games, but I’ll tell you what was really creepy for me. These characters suddenly appeared with my RL picture, copied off the Herald’s website, cut up to pieces, and spewn around with a script making it look like confetti or scenes on a cutting-room floor. Very, very eerie. I find having a picture of myself forced on my like that in a game as creepy as being called by my RL name when I never gave it to anyone. Everybody thinks now that the Herald has snapped me, it is open season on me in Second Life, to harass, heckle, intimidate, badger, and gender-bait me. It is not. Having my picture in the Herald is not my wish personally’ it’s just that I don’t say ‘no’ when asked because I don’t oppose the freedom of the press. That’s not a license to harass me, however. What’s not on the SL profile is not fair game in the game – that’s supposed to be the way it works.
There’s always the issue when you get griefer attacks like this – like our little cartoonish miniature version of terrorist attacks in RL – whether you fuel them by giving them exposure.
Thinking about it, I concluded that the value in making sure everyone has these names and can ban them from their lots as they see fit outweighs the possible fueling of their misdeeds. Of course, they can always make new alts.
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