Actually, I'm hardly any "mogul" as I own a mere 15 sims worth of SL land that I rent out on the mainland, which is very tough for business, as distinct from the very much more lucrative private islands. And because my rentals are open to anyone without invitation and security devices are not allowed, so as to make for open communities, I'm targeted by griefers, unlike the gated communities. So I'm hardly the evil land baron you'd like to describe me as.
And in fact, as you can see from the full text of the interview with Julian Dibbell on my blog, I never called these griefers "terrorists" in some facile and stupid way -- in fact I never used the word "terrorism" or "terrorist" at all. What in fact I talked about was "terror-forming" which is a play on words of "terraforming," or landscaping of the earth in Second Life, whereby griefers will take a land mistakenly left on edit, or infiltrate a group and get control of the landscaping tools, and heap up huge mountains or land sinks to annoy another person. It's a slang term, if you will, and Julian didn't seem to grasp it.
But I've said often that griefers are *like* terrorists in the *dynamics* of how they act and I surely stand by that: yes, griefers are *like* terrorists in their tactics and motives and ideologies.
Are you able to reason by analogy? Not every literalist tekkie is able to do this. The dynamics of terrorism in RL involve spreading fear, inflicting massive damage to property, disrupting public events, but most of all, whacking innocent people who are not directly related to your beef. So griefers in the virtual realm who are *by analogy* *like* terrorists, who hate that I've written about them, which I've done occasionally, whack my tenants, who have never heard of them or even read my blog. Sick.
Reader Comments (1)
Posted: Jan 25th 2008 8:29AM (Unverified) said
And in fact, as you can see from the full text of the interview with Julian Dibbell on my blog, I never called these griefers "terrorists" in some facile and stupid way -- in fact I never used the word "terrorism" or "terrorist" at all. What in fact I talked about was "terror-forming" which is a play on words of "terraforming," or landscaping of the earth in Second Life, whereby griefers will take a land mistakenly left on edit, or infiltrate a group and get control of the landscaping tools, and heap up huge mountains or land sinks to annoy another person. It's a slang term, if you will, and Julian didn't seem to grasp it.
But I've said often that griefers are *like* terrorists in the *dynamics* of how they act and I surely stand by that: yes, griefers are *like* terrorists in their tactics and motives and ideologies.
Are you able to reason by analogy? Not every literalist tekkie is able to do this. The dynamics of terrorism in RL involve spreading fear, inflicting massive damage to property, disrupting public events, but most of all, whacking innocent people who are not directly related to your beef. So griefers in the virtual realm who are *by analogy* *like* terrorists, who hate that I've written about them, which I've done occasionally, whack my tenants, who have never heard of them or even read my blog. Sick.
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/01/tiny-reporters.html