I don't understand griefing

[ElPatron]

snip

I wasn't speaking on the outcome. No matter the variety. I was speaking on the act itself and the intent therein. If you are trolling or griefing someone, you're being a dick. Pure and simple. You are resorting to using some of the very worst aspects of human nature. It's one of the purest forms of Schadenfreude. You're not just enjoying watching someone in misery, you're actively causing that misery.

You are putting trolling on the same level as griefing.

Trolling is one of the best things that you can still enjoy in the internet. You are not being a dick, you are simply manipulating people.

Join a community. Rise trough their ranks. Make sure you create a persona for you that is easily identifiable. No contradicting opinions. Following the lead. Keeping the head down and nodding even at the most retarded bullshit you see.

Then explore the cracks. There are breaches in the reasoning of the sad idiotic people populating those communities. Your posts start conflicting others' opinions. Many will be bothered. You're exposing them in their own game. Part of the community sees your logic. They will follow you. You could become even more respected than the mods and admins.

The community splinters. Even if respecting the rules, admins will do some damage control and ban you. Outrage begins. Those forums go down in flames.

And you did not have to be a dick. You just had to make people see they are stupid.

Speaking your mind is not being a dick. You just convince yourself that you are spreading the truth, even if it's all an elaborate lie.

Also, may last point was an analogy. A loose analogy, admittedly, but not meant literally. It was more about saying these people are often someone who's miserable, for whatever reason, and decides the best way to make themselves feel better is to spread that misery around.

But it still struck me how you were complaining about bullies and how they are miserable.

 

[Vigormortis]

snipped

You really don't see the irony here? The hypocrisy? I mean, really?

Your little "tale" involves the idea of joining a community, essentially under false pretenses, with the sole intent on undermining and destroying it. You don't think that's a "dick move"?

I don't care what "method" you're using, that's still being a dick. What gives someone the right to do that to those people? Is it because they annoy you? Do you not agree with their ideals?

Here's a simpler, less dick-ish solution:

Just ignore them.

It's not that hard. If you see a forum, site, or community you don't like, then just stay the hell away from it. It's not your place to try to destroy it. To try to make the lives of those involved miserable. If they're ideas, thoughts, and personalities are so disingenuous as to "force" you to do what you describe, it's likely the community will destroy itself on its own.

Still sounds, to me, like you're excusing bad behavior. Behavior that, in the 'real world', would have heavy consequences.

 

[ElPatron]

snip

False pretenses? No. You just did not tell anyone about them.

Trolling isn't the act of pushing someone over the edge and then fight off anyone who tries to stop you. It's accelerating the speed at which they reach that edge.

People are people. You can't expect people to get along just because they are white nationalists, nazis, young Marxist pricks that bother you in real life and then have a circle jerk on "FUCK THE POLICE!" threads.

We are here on the Escapist and we don't pretend to like each other and agree with everyone here. Although we have been brought together by games.

Yet exposing core flaws on someone's hypocritical behavior is something we all do. Someone is meant to point them out one day or the other. Trolling is a mere acceleration of the process.

And you are not making anyone miserable if you tell them that mods and admins will try to hide things that are not flattering to them.

You are not making anyone miserable by splitting the community where they could jack off to their political views. We have political parties for that, no need for a forum.

Still sounds, to me, like you're excusing bad behavior. Behavior that, in the 'real world', would have heavy consequences.

Heavy consequences?

You mean like someone part of agency X infiltrating a corporation/political party and using deception climbing trough the ranks and finding incriminating evidence?

This example either gets people arrested, or at least stains their image.

Trolling leads to people who don't even like each other stop pretending they do. They aren't doing it to police the internet, but to laugh at people and their nature.

It's not bad behavior if you are respecting the rules. Trolling involves respecting the rules at all times to prevent bans for as long as possible.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Some people are born assholes. Watching others suffer because of something they did empowers them; gives them a high from a sense of dominance. I was an asshole punk at one point; not much to be proud of, but I know the type better than I wish I did.

Generally speaking, these sorts of assholes get chewed up and spit out in public unless they are already in a position of social dominance, so giving them an environment with relatively low costs of entry and anonymity to protect them from retribution, and you get the typical gaming griefing asshole.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

I don't always grief, but when I do, I make an artform of it, back when minecraft was in beta and dynamite lit when you hit it with anything and buckets still didn't work, I filled the hill under someone's castle with TNT, so that when they went to make a dungeon... they couldn't dig down without turning their castle, and the hill into a mess of random surviving bricks hanging surrealy over a crater... took me hours working in secrecy... then when it was discovered... detonated it... heh...

That and I was a master at training huge bunches of mobs on people in a few MMORPGs that could be fun, but you had to train A LOT of them to make it artistic, or draw a bunch from REALLY FAR AWAY.

But yeah there's griefing, and GRIEFING, you get griefed by me, you see something that took time and effort to set in motion unfolding, and it either pisses you off and blinds you to the beauty, or you laugh your ass off at how absurd the situation I've caused is... Most people laugh after the innitial WTF moment.

 

[hiphopstoner]

relevant answers i have more insight because I can get pretty heated over games.

 

[Bvenged]

Nothing gives me more joy in the world than griefing a bunch of annoying kids who treat a game of Call Of Duty so fucking seriously in a hardcore match. Even better, they deserve it.

But why?

Because they shout orders are you and act as if they are the best player in the world when they're just annoying little pricks. I was gaming online with a headset when I was 13, I never acted like half of the annoying kids you hear about on XBL do.

This. These days I only grief on games I despise and/or against individuals and/or groups whom I owe a personal vendetta against.

Such as the classic pleb who charges for an aircraft in BF3; at the first sign of damage, bails out and leaves several of his team hurtling towards the ground with not nearly enough time or altitude to salvage their lives from the impending doom. Happens more often than you'd think.

Back in '07 (14 years of age) I rarely wailed in game-chat as I stuck to the party / muted unknown players and I still had the common decency to keep my mucking around and grieving to custom games or the deserving.

 

[Dfskelleton]

It really depends. A deeply rooted pleasure in humans is to bring misfortune to others, assuming the misfortune isn't serious. It's funny to listen to people get so angry over little things, like being inconvenienced in a video game.

The thing is, that video is neither trolling nor griefing. At worst, it's maybe a breach of server rules. (because of the spray, depending on the server)

He's not ruining the game for others. He's not actively seeking out people to harass them. He's simply playing mind games. The only reason his actions are even working is because those players can't think with anything but what's in their pants.

I'm not arguing with you about that. I just thought this thread would be an appropriate one to share this on.

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

Believe it or not, I'm not denying all of that. (some, maybe, but that's not the point) What I'm getting at is, even if the intent is just accelerating the inevitable, it doesn't change the fact that the person is being a dick. Regardless of the positive or negative aspects of the outcome.

When I have a real issue with it, trolling and griefing that is, is when someone uses it for personal entertainment only. When they actively seek out a 'relatively' innocent group to harass, belittle, and disrupt simply because they like to cause conflict. Those are the bottom-feeding scum I was talking about in one of my earlier posts. These are the people that disgust me.

Now, trolling a troll or griefing a griefer? That I can, at times, get behind. As long as it's pointed solely at the troll/griefer in a "taste of their own medicine" fashion.

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

Oh, any time is a good time to share a gem like that. It's hilarious and always a classic.

I was just saying, what was happening in that video is hardly what I would quantify as griefing or trolling.

 

[Nyaoku]

In short, it's the playground bully scenario in digital form.
That or you can look at it from this point:
Q: Why play multiplayer instead of fighting the bots for free?
A: You know that behind the screen, someone else if actually being defeated by you.

It's normally a lot easier to grief people than to beat them in a game. Simple glitches, doorlocks, item hoarding, can cause the same frustration/ragequit reactions that getting a 40+ killstreak would yield. It's easier, simple as that. This is where the "I'm just playing the game a different way." saying originated. There are other reasons such as to inhibit the other team from within while assisting a friend on the other side but the previous situation seems to be more prevalent.

 

[dobahci]

Because deep down inside, some people never truly make it out of 3rd grade.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Grifing can be funny.
I'm currently playing on a privet Minecraft PvP server. Everything is allowed because all of us know each other and no one would do something that would ruin the server. Watching the reaction of people when they come back and see their whole house under water or even full of TNT in the old versions where defusing wasn't possible... it's priceless.

But we do that just from time to time to troll each other and regular backups are made to prevent permanent damage from grifing. Ruining someones work, someones invested time isn't really funny. Grifing is funny when both parties agree to it, in other cases it's just pure evil. -,-


Both trolling and grifing can be art. It just depends on how you do it.

 

[ms_sunlight]

*sigh*

If you want to be a dickhead, be a dickhead. Just don't try and justify it as somehow being virtuous, intellectually sound or inevitable. These threads always get the griefers to come out of the woodwork and justify themselves. Griefers: no matter what you say, most of us still think you're dickheads, OK?

Incidentally, if you're playing a team vs. team game and you're killing the other side, you're not griefing, no matter how unpleasantly or ridiculously you're doing it. That doesn't mean you're not being a dickhead, but if you're inherently following the aims of the game, it's not griefing.

 

[Mariakko]

Some games can get really intense and gamers get uptight about them. It blows of steam.

 

[ElPatron]

When I have a real issue with it, trolling and griefing

My whole point is that you can't put griefing and trolling in the same basket, yet you insist on doing it.

Trolling is exactly the opposite of being a dick. You can't be a dick or you get banned before you can make any damage.

Yes, it is possible to create a secondary account and pretend you are really stupid and become a dick to everyone for the purpose of introducing a topic you want exposed. And how does being a dick in a forum harm anyone?

You would be creating that account so that everyone could mock "you" and point out why you are wrong. At best, you are allowing them to inflate their egos. No real harm is done, you probably get 10 pages of people calling you a retard until a mod closes the thread.

You point out there are baits. They basically drag themselves out of water.

How is it being a dick to point out there are baits in that community? People bite them and wrestle themselves into a atmosphere they can't breathe in. Human nature.

And nobody is innocent. I can't understand why would someone justify the existence of forums like Stormfront. If they are expressing their right to free speech, then I should be able to make use of my right to free speech and troll them.

I don't know what do you have against trolls. Have they hurt you or something?

Just don't try and justify it as somehow being virtuous, intellectually sound or inevitable. These threads always get the griefers to come out of the woodwork and justify themselves. Griefers: no matter what you say, most of us still think you're dickheads, OK?

Nobody is trying to say that griefing is a virtuous work.

But I don't understand why you call griefers dickheads and don't make a honorable mention to the stupid people who make fools out of themselves so that I can watch it on YouTube?

No gratification, no griefing. It's that simple.

 

[dobahci]

And nobody is innocent. I can't understand why would someone justify the existence of forums like Stormfront. If they are expressing their right to free speech, then I should be able to make use of my right to free speech and troll them.

You're certainly within your rights to troll a forum like that, just as you'd be within your free speech rights to post incendiary and insulting comments on the facebook page of a kid who committed suicide (although the latter would certainly make you a dick)... but I don't really see why you would.

I can understand the value of using people's own arguments against them to point out their hypocrisy. If you're dealing with reasonable, moderate people, then it can be an excellent way of illustrating a point. But if you're dealing with a forum like Stormfront, most of the people who read it will probably already have extreme enough views that you will never get them to reconsider their point of view. There's just nothing constructive that can come of it.

And furthermore, it's easy enough to think of trolling as being justified when you're dealing with a forum like Stormfront, where the foundation of it is built upon bigotry and douchebaggery. But let's say you're dealing with a much more normal forum. Let's say the Escapist. People here love games, but they can be rather passionate about them, and quick to overreact. In other words, this forum would be pretty easily trolled. Would you support a troll who comes here to create threads he knows will incite an instant flame war for his own amusement? Sow dissent, get people to argue amongst themselves, and laugh. This is the bread and butter of a troll, and with a forum like this, 95% of the work is done for you already; this forum practically trolls itself.

In the Early Days of the Internet, people who specifically tried to incite flame wars or arguments were quickly talked down or voted down, and told "that's not how we do things here." It's only in recent times that people have started to defend trolling, and I don't really understand why they would. It's not like the practice has gotten any less pointless or mean-spirited.

 

[LittleBlondeGoth]

IF you must know im a Troll i join games see whats going on then i make my move. DO you want to know why i wait its because i wait for the stupid people who only play games for kill when there is an objective then immeditly when they lose say "geez guys get on the point! gah noobs" If i troll you then you deserve it for acting like a moron. Also using the word "noob" will result in me picking on you i will go out of my way to make you Rage quit. Also i troll because im normally better that you an so i can.

You might be better at trolling, but your spelling and grammar leave a lot to be desired.

 

[CaptainOctopus]

Still the best of the best

 

[Dectomax]

Because hijacking the planes in Battlefield 3 and parking them sideways, facing the wall or just at the end of the runway, so as soon as they move they crash or fall into the sea, is hilarious. I'm a terrible person, I know - but for the most part I don't grief, just on the odd occasion when I get bored of the game and need a little entertainment to motivate me to continue playing.