As already announced in the talk on TGIB’s first year anniversary on January 16th, we launched several new services, and will (hopefully) include several more in the near future. I tried to lay down the reasons for this on Sunday, but in retrospect, I don’t think I did a very good job at it. I’m no crowd magnet, and I’m not used to adress larger groups of people. Still, there are some things that are important to me, and I believe TGIB can help solving them.

The challenges and problems we face now are no different than they were when I joined OpenSim. The most pressing things on people’s minds are still: How do I get my inventory? How do I stay in touch with friends and make new ones?

Inventories

This is the one thing TGIB has been working on for a year now.  I’m assuming most people coming to OpenSim have been in Second Life before; a small number might have been a member of another virtual world. For all those wondering how they can take their inventories with them, there are only little, and partial, solutions. First off, as laid out by Tateru Nino, you do not actually “own” the virtual properties you have in any virtual world. Thus, virtual worls can close down, or you can get banned from them, and all the things you “had” there are gone from you; there’s no way to get them back. While Linden Labs allows you to export the things you yourself made in Second Life (and many third-party viewers support this functionality), there is no (legal) way to take all the other things in your inventory with you, no matter how much you paid for them. That’s why we offer our creations here for download; this enables you to keep them on your own computer, and upload and use them on any OpenSim installation.

Community

OpenSim enables anyone to run a Second-Life-like environment on their own computers. Additionally, you can join many existing grids, or use the hypergrid functionality to just jump between them. So finding a new home was never cheaper, and easier. Still, most grids have very few users, and it is a rare occasion to meet another avatar by chance, and when you’re on your own standalone, you’re technically cut off from community modules like inworld groups, friends lists, and the like. Group chat does not work on most grids, and it never works on the hypergrid; friends lists (and IMs) are grid dependent too, and it doesn’t seem there is any solution planned for this in the near future. So to work around this connectivity issue we can rely on several external services:

• IRC. I already explained in a tutorial how this can be used for OpenSim. Basically, IRC can be used as a reliable group chat. Since it is independent of OpenSim or any grids, it will allow people to stay connected while they are on different grids, while they are hypergridding, during a crash, and even when they’re offline. Furthermore, it helps finding friends from different grids, and getting help with problems that may arise. It is highly recommended.
• Diaspora. This is a new social networking software, which enables everyone to run a facebook-like service on their own servers (or even home-PCs); it is very similar to OpenSim in that approach. Users from different Diaspora “pods” (installations) can connect and exchange messages and share pictures. Diaspora allows for the sorting of contacts in “aspects”, so that certain messages can be shared with only a certain group of people. On top of that, Diaspora allows you to download all your data at any time. So we decided to run our own Diaspora pod, which you are free to join, or use any of the other existing Diaspora pods.
• Status.net/Twitter. Personally, I prefer status.net over twitter, as it allows us to keep our data on our own servers. Sadly, I have yet to get it to run, but we are already on Twitter and Plurk, where you can find other OpenSim users as well.
• Inworld meetings. These are great to meet other users “in person” and talk about projects, exchange items, share experiences or just hang out and have some fun. Pathfinder started an awesome community with the Hypergrid Adventurer’s Club, and it’s wholeheartedly recommended to attend one of its meetings. We offer our own hypergrid meeting place with The Grey Inn Between, which is accessible from both HG 1.0 and HG 1.5 i6 regions.

Besides this, we started a wiki for TGIB, which is planned to hold tutorials and project maps, another one for the Daltilon project is planned.

THE INTERNET

(Dramatic Orchestra Theme, like this¹ )

The Internet is vast and infinite, and we are mere grains of dust in its endless wastes…

…

Sorry, I got a bit carried away there. The point is that many people assume, the internet and the World Wide Web are the same thing, which is incorrect. The internet is a network that can, and does, provide several different services, out of which the WWW – which is the network of websites and pages – is only one. Another of these services, which everyone is familiar with, is Email, which runs completely independent from the WWW, even though some solutions allow access to Email from the web. And, just like Email, IRC also runs independently of the WWW.²

So how do we access IRC? Well, we need three things for this:

1. an IRC client
2. an IRC server to connect to
3. an IRC channel

IRC Clients

Just like we need a browser to access the WWW, we also need a client software to access IRC. Luckily there are a multitude of clients available for any system, and I’d like to point out just a few solutions here: mIRC seems to be the most popular one for Windows, and Colloquy is one I would recommend for Mac. IRC can also be accessed through an applet from several websites (just like some Email services can be accessed on a website), the main one for OpenSim would be the OSGrid chat applet. A very smart solution I would wholeheartedly recommend is the Opera Browser, which (among many many many other neat things) also has an IRC client built in, which opens IRC channels inside the browser tabs. And finally, the Phoenix Viewer has a built-in IRC client that can be accessed from in-world.

IRC Servers

There are many IRC servers to choose from, and most of them are open and free. However, logging into one restricts you to chat with people who are logged into the same server, or network of servers, as you are. It is a little confusing to get an overview of all the different networks and servers and their purposes, but luckily for us, OpenSim related channels are all using the Freenode network.³ To join it, use irc.freenode.net for an IRC server in your client settings, and choose a nickname. IRC servers have different policies regarding nicknames. Basically, they allow you to choose any name, unless it is already used by another user. Since nicks are only “active” when the user is logged in (and for some time after they logged out), they can be taken over by another user when the previous one didn’t log in for a  while. To prevent someone else from using your chosen nickname, you can register it with the service, but this is optional, so by default, you will lose your nickname again when you disconnect.

IRC Channels

IRC is an old internet technology, heeding from a time when the internet was text-only (and there were no graphical user interfaces to speak of anywhere). Thus, the main mode to interact with is is via text commands. IRC usually has a large area displaying the contents of the chat and a small text bar where you can enter your own text (plus a sidebar displaying the users in a room). Depending on your client, some of the IRC functions might be accessed via the graphical interface, but all of them always will work via the text input bar. To join an IRC chatroom, type /join #nameofchatroom. IRC commands are always preceded with a slash, showing the irc service that it’s a command, and not text chat, which is being entered; IRC channels are preceded with a # followed by the channel name (no space in between). To see an overview on what commands there are and how to use them you might try typing the /help command, giving you some explanations on what you can do. Any command has usually its own help, accessed by typing /help and then the name of the command you need help with.

So how do we find people to chat with? Well, first we need to join a channel. Channels are the “chatrooms” of IRC; it’s the places where people meet, and usually, every channel has its dedicated topic. Every IRC user can create own channels via the /join command too. If the channel specified after /join doesn’t exist, the user creates it and at the same time becomes its first visitor. It is useful to register channels to your nickname if you want to use them regularly, in order to keep control of the channel and be able to keep unwanted users out of it.

Finding channels by simply guessing is more hit than miss though, so many IRC clients have some kind of search function or channel overview built into them, which will either display all channels available at the time on the specified server, or show those that are related to your search term. Still, the most reliable way to find your community in IRC is to look at their websites if there’s an IRC channel specified there somewhere. In the case of OpenSim, there are several channels related to it, all on irc.freenode.net:

• #opensim : This is the official channel for opensim related questions and chat. If you have a question regarding the technology, this is the way you will most likely find an answer.
• #opensim-dev : This is the developers channel of opensim. The talk in here is usually about programming and fixing bugses.
• #osgrid : The official channel for OSGrid, like the #opensim channel used for Q&A, and grid chatter. Related to it are
• #lbsa – the channel for regulars of the lbsa plaza on OSGrid (useful when the region or grid is down) and
• #hg15 – which was once created to discuss setting up and using Hypergrid 1.5
• #hypergrid is the channel of the Hypergates Network; it’s usually pretty quiet here, but it’s useful for help with the hypergates
• #hgac is the channel of the Hypergrid Adventurers Club
• #aurora-dev is the channel of the Aurora Sim project
• #imprudence is the channel of the Imprudence/Kokua Viewer,
• #phoenixviewer is the channel of the Phoenix Viewer and
• #tgib finally is the channel of this our very own website.

Channels are not always busy, even when there are many people in them. Usually, users stay connected to IRC continuously, even if they’re not paying attention to it, so don’t get upset when nobody talks to you right away; it is not out of rudeness, but probably due to all attendees being afk when there’s no answer. Just stay around for a while, and someone might eventually notice your question.

IRC can be useful for several things; it can serve as “group chat” on the hypergrid, since groups don’t work reliably on OpenSim, it can be a useful resource for help and support when you’re running into a technical problem, and it can even serve as a bridge between OpenSim versions, since opensim enables you to connect inworld chat to IRC as well. Admittedly, the most useful implementation of IRC is with the Phoenix Viewer, which allows you to use it just like inworld group chat; sadly Phoenix isn’t too streamlined for OpenSim, and shows (to me at least) some annoying behaviour in a lot of other areas, so the best bet to get IRC to your own viewer of choice would be to ask the developers for it.

1. Come Back To You by Silece Is Sexy, licensed under Creative Commons
2. Other examples for independent internetservices would be filesharing networks, audio streams, or, of course, OpenSim.
3. On a sidenote, most IRC clients allow the connection to several networks at once, enabling you to join any channels on any servers at the same time.

There are several reasons for this: First, it’s plain cheaper. I had rented a region for over a year now by Dreamland Metaverse, which I still can recommend wholeheartedly. It’s a great solution for people who don’t want to manage their regions by themselves and still want a place to call their own. Yet, I’m running three instances of OpenSim with a total of 23 regions on the new server and it’s all going swimmingly; it would’ve cost a fortune to rent all those regions. On the downside, I have to manage all these instances myself.

Second, I wanted to experiment with some other services which I couldn’t run on the webspace I had rented before. More on that in the near future. Third, I wanted to combine everything tgib-related under one single url. Thus, our regions, the website, and future projects are all available at tgib.co.uk.

First off, let me stress that having a dedicated server requires you – yes, you! – to manage it, and all of it. Most likely, it requires you to learn how to operate a Linux OS from terminal, something I had never done before. I learned a lot about Linux, ssh, mailservers, apache, and all the little utility applications you can get to run on your server, and it’s neccessary to be ready to learn about all that, so if you can’t afford the time or energy to dig into these issues, I would recommend looking for a hosted solution instead.

I’m renting the server from 1and1, which had the best offer I could find. I read online a lot about how their customer service sucks, but quite honestly, I figured customer service wouldn’t be able to help me anyway. They won’t install OpenSim for me (most likely they never even heard of it) and so I was prepared to be on my own anyway, so all I needed was a good server at a reasonable price.

Their servers come with CentOS preinstalled, and it took me 2 days wrestling with it to finally give up and resign. I never could get mono to work on it properly, which is a neccessary dependent for OpenSim, so finally I just changed the system to ubuntu. I have no knowledge of Linux distros, and I don’t know if that was a wise choice, it just sounded good at the time. In hindsight, I would like to try out debian, just because it has such a nice logo, and I like their “free software only” aproach, but now I got everything working under ubuntu and I guess it’s better to leave it at that.

Installing OpenSim on ubuntu was quite straightforward; not much different from how it was installed on my Mac. Again, you need to get a version of mono that works with OpenSim (I found mono 2.4.3 to be a good choice) and you need to figure out how ubuntu installs files. Optionally, you need some kind of ftp – or better, sftp – application, and some kind of mysql database browser that can log into remote databases.¹ But I don’t want to go into much detail here about technical stuff. Rather, I would like to talk a little bit about The Grey Inn Between.

On this new server, I have two separate versions of OpenSim running, both are differentt versions of the Diva Distro. One is running OpenSim 0.6.9, providing access via Hypergrid 1.0; the other is running OpenSim 0.7.0, which uses Hypergrid 1.5 i6. Before installing it on the server, I experimented a little with how the different hypergrid versions can be connected. The results were quite interesting, but also a little disappointing. Let’s first talk about how you can use both hypergrid versions from your private standalone at home.

I started out with running OpenSim 0.6.9, with 2 users registered to that standalone. After upgrading to 0.7, OpenSim moved some data in the database to different tables, but left the old tables intact! This means I could have OpenSim 0.6.9 in one folder, and OpenSim 0.7 in a different folder and they both can use the same database, though not at the same time. Changes I made to the regions would still be there when I quit the one version and started the other, as well as changes made to the inventory, so it was quite easy to work in both versions, and the changes would be persistent across the versions. For example, I could start OS 0.6.9 and use it to hypergrid to HG 1.0 regions and get some things there, then go back home, quit OS 0.6.9, start up OS 0.7 and they would still be in my inventory, and vice versa. The same goes for Objects that are rezzed in a region. What was NOT persistent, though, was the avatar appearance, since OS 0.7 uses a different table for the users than OS 0.6.9 did, so if you changed your outfit in one version, the other version would still show you the way you were before. It takes some getting used to, just remember what version you are dressing for.

So, for all your private needs at home, this solution worked very nicely for me. On the new server, however, I wanted to have a meeting place that was accessible from both HG 1.0 and HG 1.5 i6 at the same time, and, hopefully, would allow communication between the versions. So for a test, I made a clean install of OS 0.6.9 and OS 0.7 and set them to use the same database, set up a region .ini in the regions subfolder that used the same data (including UUID) for both versions, then started them both simultaneously. After that, I logged into both OpenSim instances (they used different ports) with the same user. The results were a bit mixed.

First off: It worked. I was on the same region in each version with the same user account. I just couldn’t see the other one, not talk to it. Then, I started rezzing objects in one version, and they couldn’t be seen in the other version, and likewise the other way around. So: While it is possible to have OpenSim share the same database with different versions, even at the same time, it’s not possible to communicate between the versions. And it seems the region only stores the information of the version that is the last to connect to it. So this proved not useful for what I had in mind.

As a result, I now have two OpenSim versions running that each use their own database. Both hold just one region, which are identical copies of each other (I transferred them using an .oar), so people can visit the Inn both via Hypergrid 1.0 and 1.5 i6². But what about the communication? For that, I linked both regions to the same IRC channel, so all public chat will be postet to irc, and from there, to the other OS version. That means, users in the 0.6.9 version can chat among themselves in local, and their chat can also be seen in the IRC channel³, where IRC users again can talk to those inworld, and users in the 0.7 version can see all of that too, and answer likewise. It sounds complicated, but works nicely. Just keep in mind that your local chat can be seen by people in IRC and the Inn running the other OpenSim version, as well.

That is about as far as I could bridge the gap, for now. More on Sunday’s TGIB anniversary. There’s nice things to come.

1. I’m using cyberduck for ftp, and SequelPro for mysql
2. The adresses are tgib.co.uk:9069 for HG 1.0 and tgib.co.uk:9070 for HG 1.5
3. the IRC channel is #TGIB on irc.freenode.net; the OpenSim versions are displayed by TGIB069 and TGIB070

Take Griefers. Griefing is at best a sub-genre of Trolling, or simply the same phenomenon on a different platform. I always thought anyone with more than 2 months of internet experience would be familiar with it (trolling, I mean) and would, after another 2 months, have found out about the only viable way to deal with it. Therefor, I was astonished to learn that people, who have been around for a while, in fact never heard the term ‘Troll’ at all, and that griefers could cause an uproar with very simple and childish means, that would actually be a minor annoyance, if dealt with correctly.

The incident was to hang around in the OSGrid IRC channel when one day reports came in of a ‘griefing’ at LBSA plaza, which actually was ‘making’ all agents present ‘point’ at a specific target and a following crash of the sim.¹ Regardless if it was a griefer attack or not, I was surprised how people freaked out about it. If everyone would’ve remained calm, restarting LBSA and relogging would have been the only disruption (which happens without griefing attacks regularly anyway) and 5 minutes later nobody would remember it anymore. But with the outcry people started, it turned into an hour-long discussion, and gave the griefer (if it was a griefer attack at all) exactly what they wanted in the first place: Attention.

At this point, I would’ve liked to point to a wonderful interview between an OSGrid user and her uncle, who is a psychiatrist, about the topic of griefing. The whole interview can be found at the OSGrid forum and, as it is published under a CC 3.0 attribution license, is reprinted below. In short, it states that griefers are, just like any other troll, craving attention, and the best solution for an average user was to ignore them (big surprise there). For a service provider, however, it is quite important to take action against trolls, as Paul Graham pointed out in one of his brilliant essays. Not only, because griefers can do damage through DoS attacks, but also because they can degrade the general usefulness and niveau of your service by driving away the intelligent people.

This is no small feat in SL, however, as  griefing is a passing phenomenon that leaves little trace – which is both a blessing and a curse, as it makes it easier to ignore, and also harder to identify. It would require to have moderators and staff online at all times and in all places (something LL will never be able to cover), or give parcel/estate owners the powers to deal with all these issues themselves without having to submit tickets and abuse reports.

However, fast forward to driving away the intelligent people. After the openspace fiasko, after closing down the mentor program, after taking the fun out of making freebies for Xstreet, LL achieved yet another great kick in the balls of the community by their recent third party viewer policy. Even after having been revised, as the first version had significant flaws, it still caused several viewer developers to abandon their projects or drop support of the second life platform.

Enter reggae mice. I have been (and still am) performing on the Burning Life Spring Fling festival, which features two stages, one for live performers (such as myself) and one for DJs. Now, I read too many profiles, and today I found this one profile of a DJ who states DJs are ‘artists’ and that only those who are able to match beats of tracks and don’t talk over them are real DJs, whereas the others are <quote>’Train Wrecks’<unquote>. Now this takes me straight to the gist of what I really really dislike about the general population of Second Life.

There are too many people with attitudes there, who do not only show them in their general demeanour, but also carry them around on a sign attached to their foreheads by rambling on and on about it in their profiles. I am sorry people do have miserable lives, and I’m sorry that some people are upset about something, and yes, it’s nobody’s fault but my own if I read these profiles in the first place, but still… is it neccessary to appear termagant at all times by writing irate rants in your public profile? Maybe I’m peculiar, but the first impression I get from that is that the person in question will give me trouble. It doesn’t really help if most people finish with a disclaimer, stating they are ‘not really as hard to get along with as it sounds’ when they didn’t show anything but their exceptional talent for spite.

If I’d carry on about other performers as the particular DJ was carrying on about their fellows, then everyone who doesn’t follow my own shining example of acoustic guitar playing and instead resorts to be, say, a reggae-playing furry mouse is no ‘real’ performer? Not only Wikipedia would disagree. And yes, I do consider myself an occasional DJ, just because I can play a handpicked assortment of tunes with voiceover announcements. But then, I do not aim to make any kind of artform out of this, I’m just having fun.

Repost of “Are griefers mentally ill? What a Psychiatrist has to say!”

Axaes: First of all thank you so much Maximilian for taking your limited time and help me out with my silly little project.

Maximilian: Well, this is not at all silly, antisocial behavior has some serious issues underneath, besides, everyone is scared of psychiatrists so we don’t get to be interviewed that frequently (smiles). I also enjoy that I’m not the only one in our clan who has an interest in human behavior, apparently.

Axaes: When I, as a preparation for this interview explained to you how Virtual Worlds function and so on, you referred to these kids as “attention gamers”. What do you mean by that?

Maximilian: It’s not necessary to refer to them as kids. While many of them are probably around 15, the onset of puberty, others are likely above 18 and hence have the legal status of adults in many countries. Attention gaming because everything they do is aimed to attract attention to themselves, negative attention.

Axaes: Before we talk about negative attention, I want to know what the importance of attention is in general.

Maximilian: As social animals humans rely on paying attention to be able to communicate and to function as a group. Without attention it wouldn’t make any sense for you to have this interview with me, because we’d be like trees, not having evolved to be able to communicate. But the willful act of attracting attention for oneself is part of sexuality in a broader sense and spreading your genes.

Axaes: Excuse me?

Maximilian: Yes, by “accumulating” more attention than others of same group normally receives in a competitive environment, the attention requester tries to enhance his own social status above the other and therefore increases his chances to mate. Advertising yourself is an essential part of mating behavior, everyone does it either consciously or instinctively. It’s not only men traditionally who work hard to achieve both respect and money, women too add things to the basic frame so to say in order to enhance what they’ve got. Make up is the Porsche of women for example. Of course these days things shift, women strive to own Porsche, or solar panels as well, and men are an important factor in the cosmetic industry, but at the core of things the behavior stays the same. More attention towards you increases your status. We live in an attention economy. With the complexification of society, this is not only true for spreading your own genes, status itself has become a fetish, people want to be powerful and influential just by spreading their ideas and concepts. It’s part of culture. Culture can be referred to as the sex of concepts.

Axaes: Wow. I should interview you more often (grinning). So we are all little attention whores in a way and this is completely normal.

Maximilian: I wouldn’t have used the word whore, as some people may be offended being associated with prostitution, rightfully or wrongfully offended is not part of this interview, but yes. It is perfectly normal.

Axaes: What about negative attention though? People who attract negative attention to themselves?

Maximilian: That’s where the problems begin. Harassment is a violent form of trying to do the same thing that normal people do, which is to increase ones status above the other, but not by the factor appreciation, but the factor fear. Therefore it can never be an elegant or skillful way to adding value to yourself. Putting others down, annoying them or even harming others emotionally or physically is the most primitive attempt to rise above them, no matter what level of technical skill is used to achieve this. It finds only legit expression in sports, boxing for example or wherever there are two willing parties. If one one party isn’t willing, it’s perverse.

Axaes: Why would someone resort seeking to attract negative attention by being a Bully?

Maximilian: Well sometimes, negative attention is only a means to something else. If an affected person, I say affected because Bullies are themselves their own first victim, a victim of their mindset because that mindset seals them off from Real Life of course, appreciation, kindness, warmth and love. It’s funny griefers would accuse users of Virtual Worlds of wasting their Real Life when that mindset is doing exactly that. If such an affected person has a low self-esteem or depression, which is typical for antisocial behavior, he suffers from a chronic stress level. Now, normally, criticizing someone is a positive way to harass someone, so to say, and is directly linked to the reward center of the brain. We’ve evolved to benefit from critique as a group, so criticizing others gives us a little tickle of feeling good. When we criticize someone, we usually think that we’ve done something good because the reward center automatically links this with the vague feeling of good, which releases happy hormones into the blood. I’m oversimplifying here, in keeping with your audience. But if someone generally feels bad, has low self-esteem or is suffering from depression, criticizing others can be perverted into something which the Bully must do to feel better.

Axaes: Griefing is an addiction?

Maximilian: Most certainly, yes. It has all the mechanisms, just that it is directed towards others and not towards oneself. Using drugs like alcohol or heroin is another method “to feel better”, at least temporally, but anything really which is done to reduce the chronic stress level can become a full blown addiction. The reward center is in a very old part of our brain, and few are willing to admit that the old part of the brain reigns supreme _through_ many areas of consciousness. The affected must always do new attacks, because the release and joy from one attack doesn’t last very long of course, the pressure is building up after a while again, and just like a heroin addict a griefer will always look for the next shot. Not only that, the shots have to be given in higher doses and faster frequency. It’s also linked to testosterone, especially males often create or externalize stress as a mechanism to control and dominate a group. And if we have no group to control and dominate, we look for one. It’s pretty much stone age stuff we’re dealing with here, possibly even more primitive.

Axaes: Very interesting. But why would a griefer choose the route of negative attention in the first place? Some of them express artistic skills and it often takes some detailed technical understanding to launch attacks in technical environments.

Maximilian: Most likely a lack of warmth and positive attention as younger children. Children must have positive attention, not too much and not too little, if they don’t get it, that greatly damages them and they do not know positive attention exists, yet they feel they must have some form of attention. Often the only attention they’ve learned about was negative attention, or no attention and this then is repeated in a looping pattern of behavior. To be emotionally neglected as a child is very traumatizing for the child, it can fix behavior in very negative means for a very long time, sometimes for life. But initially the child is very neutral, it tries out different things and of course, crying will most often get an adult to be attentive. Griefing can be seen as a form of crying for attention quite literally, it’s a direct extension of a very basic human survival strategy. As with many pathologies, something got broken in the young years of the person.

Axaes: And when you say the dose has to be increased, can griefers become dangerous?

Maximilian: Posting pictures as extreme as mutilations is a very shrill warning sign that someone is about to derail completely. The images you’ve showed me are so drastic of nature that I would be very concerned if I was living with someone who published this. It has strongly sadistic elements of reasoning, and really anything can be expected from such a person.

Axaes: Stalking, serial killing?

Maximilian: One has to be careful with such assessments, however, serial killing is just on the wide other end of griefing which starts with mild harassment on the light side. It’s wise though for society to keep an eye on a griefer.

Axaes: So would someone who posts pictures of mutilations need therapy? I’ve showed pictures of mutilated animals in demonstrations for animal rights…

Maximilian: Motivation and context matters. Someone who protests against such mutilations showing such images to the people on the street, who are responsible for them follows a healthy motive. Someone who just harasses people to attract negative attention for himself in order to feed an emotional addiction, and all addictions are emotional, is not a very healthy motive. But I would say that actually everyone who griefs needs therapy, not only the most extreme griefers. These “children” need to learn that there are other ways of crying then crying, a knowledge they are lacking.

Axaes: I want to talk to you about the black theme the Patriotic Nigras use, what is behind this, given that very few of them are likely actually African Americans.

Maximilian: Well, first of all it’s a very interesting phenomenon, from my perspective as a psychiatrist, that griefers would form groups and attempt to dress the group with a cultural decoration. It’s a consequence of the internet I think, although protest subcultures are a very normal aspect of growing up and forming your identity.

Griefers know of course that they are behaving ethically wrong, so by appropriating and colonizing the Black fight for civil liberties in the U.S., they want to place themselves into a victim position of oppression and use this as a moral justification for griefing. Ironically this is a projection, as they are actually oppressed, the neglect or abuse they experienced as children or are still experiencing is synonymous with the neglect and and abuse African Americans have and are experiencing with the general population in hostile environments. But imagine how absurd it was if Black Americans tried to justify harassment by the experience of oppression. Civil disobedience is something other from harassing others. That is why Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus, she didn’t start putting broken glass on the seats for Whites and found that funny. Or Rap and HipHop evolved as a cultural protest answer to glorify the lifestyle of young Black men mainly. This enriched human culture, griefing soils human culture.

Axaes: Patriotic Nigras accuse Furries of being fetishists and call them furfags, is that another irony then considering they themselves are putting on a Black dress?

Maximilian: Very well observed! (smiles) Yes, this is a classic projection. The Patriotic Nigras are of course using the Black outfit so to say for their self-stimulation of griefing, this is the essence of paraphilia. In fact, the Patriotic Nigras are much more so actual fetishists than the Furries, because the Furries are engaging in healthy experiments with role play, nothing can be said against that.

Axaes: What about the furry-hatred itself. I’ve made satirical remarks on it in a comic, some people believed I was furry-bashing but then there is no guarantee that people get satire. What is behind people who actually hate Furries?

Maximilian: This is a little awkward for me to address because I’m not involved in Virtual Worlds, I always have to think around the corner so to say. Furries for me initially are images on a computer screen, like the one of an adorable mouse avatar you sent me. However, conceptually, people with low self-esteem and social status often seek out someone who is different from their own group to put them down to enhance their own selves. This is just griefing all over again. Discrimination is griefing, it’s no surprise that a group of griefers would identify a group and employ racist methods of exclusion and outcasting. This is fairly random. If there were no Furries in virtual worlds, then female characters would be derided or any other avatar group. Since people who do harass others have no knowledge of how to positively enhance their view of themselves, they resort to putting others below themselves. They are not building a box to stand on to be taller, they are digging holes for others so they can self-delude that they are higher. The jury is still out whether aggressive flashing of things society deems positive, like wealth is also a form of griefing if the audience of that message is not wealthy, and we’re all audiences these days. But that is another issue.

Axaes: So given all you said, it would not be an insult to call a Patriotic Nigra or any other griefer an obsessive, delusional, fetishistic sadist who is acting out some childhood traumata?

Maximilian: No, not really. The question would be why frame it like that? It would be much more efficient to make sure the griefers read this interview for example, therefore being confronted with a little more reasoning around such symbolistic definitions. They clearly have problems, some of them more so than others, but they deserve a golden shot of truth about their own psychological dynamics, so they can consciously decide what to do about it. Some of them would instantly feel ashamed for recognizing themselves in this text, of course, such “instant healings” are rare, most likely a griefer reading this interview would react with denial or even accusing you of dreaming up this interview, questioning my existence.

Axaes: When the time comes, will you step forward and defend me against such discrediting attempts?

Maximilian: No, because it really is irrelevant, you can safely ignore all attempts to question you and your credibility, giving your history of teasing people both in our family and on the internet you don’t have much credibility to begin with. I’m just kidding. Your person is not the important factor, what’s more important is what is being said and to reach out to both the griefers and their victims. Of course griefers will respond with emotional shock being taken seriously for the first time perhaps, and then to have their motives exposed in such a manner. But, everything we learn changes our neurology forever the moment we learn it. No denial is so strong that the seed of doubt about what you’re doing can be repressed indefinitely. It’s there and it will grow. And for some faster then for others, the fun part of griefing will start fading away because the impulses behind it have been exposed as primitive reflexes. Once the glory is dead, it fails to do its actual job: interrupting the inner misery which leads to griefing.

Axaes: Is there an estimate on the outlook for the general griefer? Who are they anyway.

Maximilian: From what I know I think it’s save to speculate that the average griefer is between 15 and 25 years old, male, white, not very popular if not lonely, of low income household, and no way or knowledge to express the talents that are there, if any. A griefer will lead a very average, unassuming life, withdrawn, will have difficulty establishing healthy relationships both professionally and personally. Some will get a grip, some will get worse, but many will basically drown in their isolation, fatally thinking griefing is doing something, when really it’s just self-sustaining, addictive loop which sucks off energy that could be invested much better.

Axaes: Yes, uncle, us non-academic folks just call that a loser. Until they, well, grow up or get a grip, what should be done?

Maximilian: The internet is not a legal vacuum, it’s not OK to abuse your freedom by abusing others, so in some cases it will be necessary to inform the authorities, collect evidence, some griefers will use the gathered knowledge of concealing their identity to wander off into criminal activities, become phishers and spammers, so this an environment where preventative measures can be taken, even eventually infiltrate their groups by police or computer experts working for police. For operators of Virtual Worlds this is all just very good practice in fine tuning their security skills, the griefers are helping them to increase these skills with each attack. Schools charge a lot of money do teach you that. Users of so called “grids” should be enabled to have an easy back up ability as a standard procedure if they don’t have administrative access to the servers. Otherwise ignore the griefers like a rainy day. You can use a rainy day by either staring outside and hating the weather, or you can grab a nice book and enjoy yourself. If you walk away from a griefer _you_ score, and in terms of vandalism you employ the technical tools you have to prevent it. Without attention, a griefer will shrivel and die, you should only give them attention if you find it amusing to have them around, making them your Clowns.

Axaes: Who wants to have Clowns this boring?

Maximilian: Well griefers don’t know they are boring, they think of themselves as witty stars, it’s the narcissistic rush which comes with the act, that moment of greatness and dominance that is so essential, especially to the young male. Out of kindness, it would be OK to not let them know that they are, as you say boring Clowns.

Axaes: Well, sometimes truth is more important than kindness. My plan was to transfer this interview into writing as it was spoken, and I want to thank you very much for taking the time to explain to us, some of the motives and personalities behind griefing.

Maximilian: Nothing to thank me for, it was very interesting for me as well, I now know what Furries are. (laughs)

Axaes: Just out of curiosity, how much would it have cost to have you evaluate the issue as an expert?

Maximilian: Roughly 2000 to 3500 Euro, depending who contracts (smiles).

Axaes: Nice.

Maximilian: Well, I heard you know some Linux?

Axaes: ohoh
–
This text has following copyleft: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ and was originally posted by OSGrid user Axaes Xandal on http://www.osgrid.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=183&start=0

1. While this exploit is familiar from SL as it’s one of the griefing tools provided by the Neillife Viewer, it is uncertain if it really was a griefing attack or simply a malfunction of server software.

There are several viewers¹ which provide an already built-in solution to access other grids than Second Life. Technically, though, it’s possible to use about any viewer that can access SL for opensim grids as well (except when the grid operators have restricted access to their own viewer or when the grid supports a different rendering technology). According to the login instructions on the OSGrid site, the changes that need to be made are the loginuri, helperuri and loginscreen. (Imho helperuri and loginscreen can be left out, but the loginuri manages which grid to connect to. [UPDATE: helperuri is neccessary for some features, such as parcel transfers and buying, even for 0L$]) These instructions work on the regular SL client as well as on the popular Emerald Viewer. However, being a Mac user, the login instructions for Max OSX are somewhat complicated, because working with the console (or rather terminal) is awkward for anyone not familiar with Unix. Fortunately, there’s an easier way.

[UPDATE: With the release of Emerald 1.23.5 Build 1585, Emerald incorporates the Meerkat grid manager, making the below instructions unneccessary.]

Right-clicking on an application icon enables you to open its package contents, and in the Contents/Resources folder of the Emerald Viewer there’s a small file named ‘arguments.txt’. All you need to do is put the additional informations the viewer needs to connect to other grids into that file (the part starting with ‘-loginuri…’). There are some things to watch out for, though. First off, every argument needs to start with a double minus instead of a single one. (Thus, -loginuri needs to be –loginuri.) And second, the settings_emeraldviewer.xml causes problems that prevent from logging into OSGrid correctly. So there are some steps that need to be taken first. Here’s what worked for me:

1. Download and install the Hippo Viewer.
2. Log into OSGrid using the Hippo Viewer once. This should create a file named ‘settings_osgrid.xml’ in Library/Application Support/Second Life/user_settings/
3. Open arguments.txt in the Emerald contents.
4. Change them to:

--channel "Emerald Viewer"  --settings settings_osgrid.xml --loginuri http://osgrid.org:8002 --loginpage http://osgrid.org/loginscreen.php  --helperuri http://osgrid.org/

Now you should log into OSGrid by default whenever Emerald is started up.

The nice thing about Emerald is the built-in IRC client, which enables you to connect to the OSGrid IRC channel, as well as making your own IRC channels, which come in handy as long as group chats are not working. To log into OSGrid’s IRC, open the communicate window, click on the IRC tab and choose ‘new’. Change the settings to:

• Settings Tag: OSGrid (optional, you can use any other name here)
• Nick: <your nick here> (You can use any nick you like, not neccessarily your account name. This means, that others in IRC could also have different names than their OSGrid / SL account names.)
• Server: chat.freenode.net 6667 (6667 in the separate input field next to the chat server)
• Channel: #osgrid
• Save

Now double-clicking on the OSGrid chat will open the irc chat window, which works mostly just like a regular IM-chat window. If you left ‘connect automatically at login’ checked in the IRC Settings, you’ll be connected to the OSGrid IRC whenver you log into OSGrid. (Or into ANY grid, at that. The nice thing about IRC is that it’s separate from a grid, so you can stay connected to the IRC channels from anywhere.)

1. Hippo, Imprudence and Meerkat