Well, I'm back again.
This time I hope to be back and writing a bit more regularly.
You'll notice the flavour of this particular blog of mine will take an entirely different route than it started with. I've decided to let Sweetie do the creative blog writing, while I just make random musing posts as I see fit. I was getting a little discouraged in my own creative writing due to lack of time, and piles of stress in RL. I don't want that to stop me from writing at all, however, as I do enjoy putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, in this case).
Today I'm back because of a griefer. It's rather ironic, actually. I've already met several new, extremely nice residents due to the attack, whom I am glad to have made friends with. It has also given me back the motivation to write, as well as a little bit of incidental free time to do so while I wait for the mess to be cleaned up.
I actually consider myself to be rather lucky when it comes to SL and the dreaded experience of being griefed. During my first weeks in SL the worst I encountered were people using spoofers to make it appear I was speaking. Not terribly creative or effective, in my opinion, and so I merely muted them and went about my merry business.
Today has shown me a new perspective on being griefed. This attack does not just affect me personally. This one affects an entire region, and then some. Picture lovely open fields, secluded homes and shops surrounded by lovely trees and other various vegetation. Then picture it piled high with replicating toruses in flashing red and blue, issuing a high pitched whine that would even make the dead shudder deep underground. This is what I woke up to this morning.
I had planned on working on my shop today. The lag caused by the attack dictates otherwise.
I had planned on working on my latest furniture set today. Scratch that project too.
Thankfully I have amazing neighbors, and equally amazing customers. I logged in to several messages alerting me to the issue (my skybox is out of range of the mess, thankfully), and promptly banned the resident responsible, and proceeded to clean out any objects that made it onto my parcel despite the permissions settings.
I pondered moving my store up higher in the meantime, but it would still encounter the lag the grief is causing - and I don't want to "give in" and move due to a griefer. So the store remains at ground level, and my customers have been understanding about the noise and the occasional prim that crosses parcel border onto mine.
What I don't understand, is why people participate in such activity as this in the first place.
Some have said to me "Second Life is a game, some people think it's fun(ny) to cause games to be frustrating or difficult for others to enjoy, it's just something you have to live with in any game you play." I will agree that, yes, in games, it is common to find people who love to play the annoying troll. However, I will argue that, no, Second Life is not merely a game.
For some, Second Life is an educational resource. For others, it is a business venture. For most, it is a social tool - a 3D irc, if you will. And yes, for some, it is game sims, and gaming.
I'm not sure what exactly Linden Labs could do to improve it's response time to griefing of this nature, but I do have a few suggestions. For one, they should be able to respond to certain types of abuse over live chat, such as the object replication spam my own region is currently suffering from. Give the support team the ability to return or delete all objects owned by the griefer across the entire mainland region affected, and ban said griefer from the entire region. This would be especially useful for regions where there is a lot of Abandoned Land parcels, with no owner to contact to change land permissions, ban residents, and return objects. As it currently is, my region is now at 18 hours and no end to the object spam in sight. This means 18 hours of not being able to use my land for more than sitting still and talking. This means 18 hours of me panicking, wondering if my Fennux will fall ill because of the lag and not being able to eat properly.
As I said, the silver lining on this all has been the wonderful support of all the residents I have had the pleasure to meet due to this incidence. I would like to thank each and every one of you for your understanding, messages, and help in the matter. You are what makes staying in SL worth the time and patience, and you are what will inevitably defeat these griefers at their 'game' by remaining the wonderful people that you are.
Cheers,
Sethra
