Where do griefers come from, and what are they after? An absolutely fascinating new Wired article explores the phenomenon and those behind it, as well as those affected by it. Denizens of the Web's most stalwart enclaves and habituated online gamers -- an audience who'd been living in an "online world" of sorts long before Linden Lab, IBM, and a legion of earnest-minded entrepreneurs came along -- had a bit of a jump on the concepts of the virtual worlds movement, and were waiting to defend their space with simultaneous harmless amusement and utter, sometimes objectively frightening sincerity.

From the article:

"As the media hype around Second Life grew, the Goons began to aim at bigger targets. When a virtual campaign headquarters for presidential candidate John Edwards was erected, a parody site and scatological vandalism followed. When SL real estate magnate Anshe Chung announced she had accumulated more than $1 million in virtual assets and got her avatar's picture splashed across the cover of BusinessWeek, the stage was set for a Second Life goondom's spotlight moment: the interruption of a CNET interview with Chung by a procession of floating phalluses that danced out of thin air and across the stage.

People laughed at those attacks, but for Prokofy Neva, another well-known Second Life real estate entrepreneur, no amount of humor or creativity can excuse what she sees as 'terrorism.' Prokofy (Catherine Fitzpatrick in real life, a Manhattan resident, mother of two, and Russian translator and human-rights worker by trade) earns a modest but bankable income renting out her Second Life properties, and griefing attacks aimed at her, she says, have rattled some tenants enough to make them cancel their leases. Which is why her response to those who defend her griefers as anything but glorified criminals is blunt: 'Fuck, this is a denial-of-service attack ... it's anti-civilization ... it's wrong ... it costs me hundreds of US dollars.'"

Julian Dibbell's article is one of the few accurate and thorough explorations of this objectively anti-social behavior and its numerous sources in unique and long-standing internet culture, and a must-read for anyone who thinks that online society is a "new" concept.

[Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers | Wired]