The Man, The Myth
I’m kidding about the title. But in all seriousness, I’m not the dick many Second Lifers think I am.
I titled my blog “That Griefer Guy” as a joke, because I’m often known as just that, as if my only purpose as a Second Life creator has been to create chaos and disruption in sandboxes all over the grid. The reality, however, is that I’ve never griefed anybody. Ever.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Once, when I was a n00b, I inadvertently set off a Hand of God (anybody remember that thing?) in a sandbox and sent 10+ people flying into orbit. Don’t worry, they all recovered, though I was banned from that sandbox for a couple of days. Might still be; I dunno.
I don’t eat babies, I don’t kick old people, and I don’t grief; in fact, I’m kind to children, small animals, and (most) n00bs.
It should be kept in mind that I came into Second Life in 2005, and things were very different in 2005. Most combat was done in Rausch, and most people went there to one-up each other with whatever latest whatnot they gleaned from SLExchange or by popping around one or two shops in world. It was an environment in which those of us in the weapons trade had a kind of hacker mentality: we wanted to push the limits just to see if we could, and it was in that spirit that we created increasingly powerful push mechanisms and tried to see if we couldn’t thwart shields with various attempts at attacks.
At the time, my father had cancer, and I was his sole caregiver, so I was understandably broke (his insurance company sucked beyond words, and he was unable to work). I started selling my creations just for a little extra money so I could justify the time I spent on SL. It surprised me as much as anybody when people started buying my stuff, and I was able, on a temporary basis, to support myself with the work I did in SL.
I still have that hacker mentality. Any time I create a product, the goal behind that product is to do something new, something that pushes the envelope a bit in terms of capability, power, whatever. I want to see just how powerful I can make my weapons, just how interesting I can make my HUDs, etc. etc.
And then of course, there were market pressures. Once I began supporting myself in SL, I became partly responsible to the market. After all, I can’t pay my rent if nobody buys my goods, so I try on occasion to make what my market demands, if only so that I can feed my cat (Toby eats a lot) and occasionally myself.
I’m not rich – I live in a crappy one-bedroom apartment in Queens, NY populated with mostly Ikea furniture that is quickly passing its expiration date (trust me – plywood and canvas does have a shelf life). I have an aging computer that’s still kind of pissed at me for enabling glow and shine. I struggle to pay my bills and NYC’s $145 parking tickets just like anybody else, and having a low sales day stresses me out more than most receptionists or bookkeepers experience on a daily basis (I know, cuz I’ve done both jobs).
Here’s the thing – I trust my customers to make their own decisions. Sometimes that trust is misplaced; sometimes customers use a product to grief, to spam, or to generally be annoying. But for the most part, that’s their decision, and Second Life as an environment provides its citizens with plenty of tools (such as push- and damage-restricted parcels, mute functions, etc.) to police those usages on their own terms. I suppose I could limit the functionality of my products to only that which could never be used for annoyances, but that doesn’t seem consistent with the philosophy of an open-development virtual world.
So if somebody griefs you with a tool designed to combat griefers, or spams you with a HUD designed to encourage flirtation, or cheats in your roleplay game with a shield designed to thwart attack, I ask that you please try to remember that it’s the person, and not myself, that is making those decisions. I understand this sounds uncomfortably like the NRA (“HUDs don’t grief people; people grief people.”) but there’s a significant contextual difference here that I like to think most avatars are smart enough to keep in mind.
