We haven't gotten to learning about "griefers" yet, but I want to take this opportunity to present a little prelude to the subject.
For years I've been keeping up-to-date with the Goons at SomethingAwful. They are masters at the griefing game. Though I've never participated in any of their operations I have kept a watchful eye on their projects. After so long, I've come to the conclusion that to know these people is to know the heart of darkness. Yet it's made them no less endearing to me. Today I want to present one of my favorite examples of cyber-terrorism, conduct by the Goons at the beginning of last year.
Awhile back, Tyra Banks put out an online video game called Tyra's Virtual Studio. It plays and looks like a lesser-quality Second Life with a more urban theme. Now, every so often the Goons will try out a new MMO and give a review after messing everything up. For Tyra's Virtual Studio, the Goons created a makeshift gang of shirtless, red-pants-wearing characters. They then took to terrorizing the online community. They harassed other players verbally, randomly spamming the "windmill" dance option, hacked the game to make their characters fly - just doing anything to frustrate the other gamers and moderators. Eventually, they managed to make the mods ban every account that had an avatar wearing red pants. This meant innocent red-pants-wearing gamers were banned as well.
Not to let an IP ban stop them, they returned, each time with some new antic. The moderators eventually went ban-crazy. Suddenly people were being banned for staring at a moderator or dancing near a moderator. Sometimes standing at one place for too long resulted in a ban. Even pretending to be or remotely looking like Jesus got a ban. By the end of their toomfoolery, the Goons claimed to have amassed roughly 71 bans.
This is a montage one of the Goons made of their time in the virtual studio:
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3 comments:
I don't think I would've known about this had you not written about it. It's amazing how a portion of the population find the motivation to fiddle with other people. Were the mods able to detect "where" these Goons were originating?
The YouTube visual was great. I laughed throughout the duration and found it amusing how many avatars with red pants were randomly dancing. However, I doubt that I would actually enjoy these red pants wearing avatars had I been playing the game. I guess it was just the awesome some that went along with the video :).
What's more, the abstraction of "anarchy" littered throughout the virtual and cyberspace worlds is remarkable in itself... ode to the bond generated by a yearning for chaos. ^_^
Certainly if you were a fan of Tyra's virtual world you wouldn't be pleased. The goons categorized everyone who played the game "confused emo teenagers" or "robots." But you can trust me when I say those guys loved the sport.
As far as I know the mods weren't able to detect anything. There was no way to tell whether a new player was a Goon or a confused emo teenager or a robot. That's why they went on a banning spree.
Though I gotta say it would be great to have goons as beta testers. If you look in the video those guys went out of their way to find glitches. Then they'd do windmills on those glitches.
And if you were to ask them why they do the things they do - they'd tell you it's for comedy.
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