Griefing: Make New Friends (and enemies) and Influence People

Hopefully for the better, though you may find that hard to believe.

Let me preface this article with a statement: I am a griefer. I have incinerated bits and bytes worth millions of interchangeable video game currency units, right before their owners tear-filled eyes. I have set up metaphorical tents and cookfires over the corpses of my enemies. I have fired weapons capable of destroying planets at the fleeing escape pods of people just like you, and I’ve done all this with no real excuse other than because I could.

Having said that though, I’m not sorry at all. Nor do I consider myself a particularly mean or otherwise horrible person. Since by this point you probably do consider me all of those nasty things I said above, let me explain.

Griefing can help people.

And I mean beyond the obvious self-serving way where it provides EXP or gold or credits or items or plain old fashioned cruel joy to the griefer. More specifically what I mean is: being griefed can help people.

Woah, what? Let’s read that again.

Being griefed can help people.

I know it’s hard to get your mind around it, but it is what I honestly believe. For example, lets start with what I said back in that first paragraph: I grief because I can. What does that mean? It means that, somehow, though chance or (more likely) through different choices that we’ve both made in whatever online game we’re playing, circumstances have occured in which I can not merely “beat” you but actually cause you some sort of harm to the greatest extent that interacting purely through the medium of an internet game allows.

I can grief you because you’re bad at this. This is helpful, because assuming you don’t quit in a huff or write a 2000-word essay on exactly how whichever tactic, skill or weapon I used was quite clearly “bullshit cheating” you are going to take whatever action you can to prevent yourself from being griefed in the same way again. On a broader scale, every time you get upset, really upset about a game you also get just a little bit closer to realising how silly that is and choosing to instead not be.