North Dakotan Griefs @ Metanomics

At the risk of encouraging this kind of behavior…

I attended the Metanomics presentation today in SL.  The host usually has guests on and he interviews them about the business of Virtual Worlds, and Second Life in particular.  Today, the guest was Forterra CEO Robert Gehorsam.  All well and good.

Now they can’t afford to have a big crowd in the SLCN studios during the show because of the lag effect, so they have all of these partner locations around SL where you can go and watch the show live on a video feed.  Meanwhile, the local chat of these remote locations bridges back and feeds into a common chat.  Which is then broadcast back out to all of the remote locations, and onto the Metanomics website.  This is rather a cool idea.

Today, about three quarters of the way through the show, a griefer shows up at the remote location I was at —  which happens to have been NMC Outreach.

Now remember, anything that is said in local chat at the remote locations goes out via the bridge and is merged with *all* of the local chat.

This kid (and obviously he was a kid) starts commenting in local chat to the few of us who were there in attendance on that sim.  Everything he said was immediately piped out to the entire audience.

Now the interesting thing is that he wasn’t born yesterday.  In fact, he was born today!  And… he’s from North Dakota.  I know because he belongs to two North Dakota groups.  One of them is the University of North Dakota.

Now, I spent my earliest formative years in Montana.  Yes, it’s true.  And back home we used to tell North Dakotan jokes.  This guy seems to live up to the stereotype:

[12:58]  Griefer: Second Life really sucks ass doesn’t it?
[12:58]  :: SeanCinquetti: “centrally isolated” love that term
[12:59]  :: Sonja Strom: [Griefer’s name] ?
[12:59]  Griefer: Hey you all suck
[12:59]  :: Sonja Strom: why are you here then?
[12:59]  CallieDel Boa: No not really, took my other world 7 years to become somewhat stable, SL is only 5 & 1/2
[12:59]  Griefer: because I am checking out how much this program blows for universities
[12:59]  Wizard Gynoid: [Griefer’s name] is griefing at nmc outreach
[12:59]  Griefer: What class is this
[12:59]  :: Fleep Tuque: With teleporting here, geography seems less relevant unless you m ake a REAL effort to create a sense of “place”
Tammy Nowotny: cool! a round workd wd be a good idea
[13:00]  :: Jane2 McMahon: [Griefer’s name], on the contrary, many postsecondary institutions find SL valuable in program and class delivery
[13:00]  CallieDel Boa: Perhaps you’d like to talk later, I work with people at Universities, seems those who do not understand didn’t take time to learn how to use Second Life.
[13:00]  :: Joia Sands: voice is breaking up a little again
Fleep Tuque: Best not to feed trolls. 😛
[13:00]  Griefer: WHat university is this
[13:00]  CallieDel Boa: After the show please I’ll be more then happy to help
[13:01]  :: Fleep Tuque: How many folks attend events or locations and hardly even notices the terrain or surroundings?
[13:01]  :: Al Supercharge: pdf page 12: “Integration of client pre-requisite SCORM e-learning modules hosted on the
clientâs LMS” “Integration of client-related Flash-based mini-games” please elaborate ?
[13:01]  Griefer: Wow this is fucking is stupid
[13:01]  Griefer: good bye
[13:01]  :: Fleep Tuque: I TP in and out of things all the time
[13:01]  :: Tammy Nowotny: Callie rocks
[13:01]  :: Joia Sands: Fleep, not me…I totally notice, enjoy and interact with the location/terrain
[13:01]  CallieDel Boa: [Griefer’s name] just left, disregard his comments

I just bring this up in this manner because there seemed to be no way to deal with this problem.  I was searching through my inventory for my Quantum Core in case I had to orbit him to shut him up.  Luckily, he left before I had to do my civic duty.

This was a bit timely, because only a short time earlier the topic had been the perception of young people about Second Life.  It has been noted before at Metanomics that younger people tend to find Second Life disappointing and boring.  Presumably, this is because it is not as slick as popular video games and there is no spoon-fed content.

So, consider this guys.  You have to think of a way of policing this kind of activity.  Got to nip it in the bud quicker than this.  Know what I mean?