Professor by day, griefer by night

[UnSub]

The "people don't suffer real anguish as a result of online interactions" has long been a weak argument. You can either look at probably the penultimate summary of such an event - "A Rape In Cyberspace" - or consider that griefers are generally stomped on by CM because it is well recognised that they drive people from the game.

Ultimately what will probably happen 10 years from now, barring someone writing an official refutation of Myers' account, is that his view will be seen as what happened, just like Fansy is taken as being what happened during his time. My issue is that Myers' might be whitewashing his account to some degree to make himself look better than reality; I have more of an issue with the newspaper article than the paper.

[Amarr HM]

Kail noone mentioned psychiatrists stop godwinning and Unsub it's not an argument created to imply griefing is ok, it's an argument to say that it would have passed a review board because his actions wouldn't fall under the header " causing real mental anguish or distress". Noone is saying being griefed is not a horrible experience or annoying, but you can't compare it to anything that happens in the real world.

Hooray, I get to use this again!

[amiable]

It's an argument to say that it would have passed a review board because his actions wouldn't fall under the header " causing real mental anguish or distress".

No, it's not.  If a review board discovered a researcher was carrying out trials without informed consent on human beings that researcher would be f-ed.  I don't care if he was giving them a glass of water and saying pleasant, supportive things to study the "effect of pleasant conversation on water consumption."  If you are conducting non-observational "research" you need IRB approval first.  Whether or not you passed review is immaterial, you are violating your ethics obligations simply by conducting the research without review.

[rk47]

  how did this simple grief practice get so escalated this much. Holy shit. Someone pulled my Chosen to Warhammer Scenario faction guards everytime but no one said a damn thing at WAR boards. Just because some asshole wrote a paper based on it doesn't change anything. It's a cheesy pvp tactic, lots of ppl think it's wrong to use it, but the devs didn't remove it. I don't for one moment think the analogies you give like 'spitting in chess matches' 'dunking 100 points vs handicaps' as even valid, but it sure is damn funny to read.

[Lantyssa]

Because we're not talking about PvP and whether or not teleporting people into drones is a clever?

Also no point in getting worked up about some academic schmuck he ain't worth it and if he was a true griefer that's what he'd really want.

I work in academia.  This smuck's professional conduct has implications on the public's perceptions of research.

[Amarr HM]

No, it's not.  If a review board discovered a researcher was carrying out trials without informed consent on human beings that researcher would be f-ed.  I don't care if he was giving them a glass of water and saying pleasant, supportive things to study the "effect of pleasant conversation on water consumption."  If you are conducting non-observational "research" you need IRB approval first.  Whether or not you passed review is immaterial, you are violating your ethics obligations simply by conducting the research without review.

Stop trolling, he wasn't carrying out trials on human beings he was fucking with their virtual avatars. Also noone here except you and Lantyssa because of her own vested interest seems to give a shit about what a review board thinks of his work, this is a gaming community go whine about it on some academic forum somewhere.

[amiable]

Stop trolling, he wasn't carrying out trials on human beings he was fucking with their virtual avatars. Also noone here except you and Lantyssa because of her own vested interest seems to give a shit about what a review board thinks of his work, this is a gaming community go whine about it on some academic forum somewhere.

It becomes an issue when he starts trying to publish academic papers about it.  Which he did in this case.   Which is the point of this discussion.

You know what this discussion is like?  It is like trying to talk about a point in the Koran and every third post having some idiot chime in "Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Saviour!  Muslims are wrong!  You should all be Christians!!!!!"   That's very nice, but let's assume for a second that there A.  is a Koran and B.  Some people believe in it.  So hey can we have a conversation about it without listening to your proselytizing?

We get it, you are in the Church of "Everything goes in PvP!!!"  Hey some of us our members, but that's not we are talking about here.  Since the scope of knowledge of some folks in this thread appears to be Church of PvP (may all noobs be pwned, blessed be he who is 1337) that seems to be the response.  I'm sorry if I don't take you seriously Amarr, but when you cite your working knowledge of "Big Brother" as justification on your views about informed consent....  Well, let's just say even with this I am holding my tongue. 

[Lum]

Stop trolling, he wasn't carrying out trials on human beings he was fucking with their virtual avatars.

Hey, look, the disconnect in one sentence.

[Sjofn]

Kail noone mentioned psychiatrists stop godwinning and Unsub it's not an argument created to imply griefing is ok, it's an argument to say that it would have passed a review board because his actions wouldn't fall under the header " causing real mental anguish or distress". Noone is saying being griefed is not a horrible experience or annoying, but you can't compare it to anything that happens in the real world.

Yes people usually go to see their psychologist because their football team just lost or some insane maniac went wild on their carefully constructed sandcastles.

 

[Xanthippe]

How many threads do we get to have that devolve into threads we've had before?

[Amarr HM]

Kail noone mentioned psychiatrists stop godwinning and Unsub it's not an argument created to imply griefing is ok, it's an argument to say that it would have passed a review board because his actions wouldn't fall under the header " causing real mental anguish or distress". Noone is saying being griefed is not a horrible experience or annoying, but you can't compare it to anything that happens in the real world.

Yes people usually go to see their psychologist because their football team just lost or some insane maniac went wild on their carefully constructed sandcastles.

 

Read that again idiot  

Or maybe learn to read.

[Amarr HM]

It becomes an issue when he starts trying to publish academic papers about it.  Which he did in this case.   Which is the point of this discussion.

You know what this discussion is like?  It is like trying to talk about a point in the Koran and every third post having some idiot chime in "Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Saviour!  Muslims are wrong!  You should all be Christians!!!!!"   That's very nice, but let's assume for a second that there A.  is a Koran and B.  Some people believe in it.  So hey can we have a conversation about it without listening to your proselytizing?

We get it, you are in the Church of "Everything goes in PvP!!!"  Hey some of us our members, but that's not we are talking about here.  Since the scope of knowledge of some folks in this thread appears to be Church of PvP (may all noobs be pwned, blessed be he who is 1337) that seems to be the response.  I'm sorry if I don't take you seriously Amarr, but when you cite your working knowledge of "Big Brother" as justification on your views about informed consent....  Well, let's just say even with this I am holding my tongue.  

Look who's Godwin now.

[amiable]

It becomes an issue when he starts trying to publish academic papers about it.  Which he did in this case.   Which is the point of this discussion.

You know what this discussion is like?  It is like trying to talk about a point in the Koran and every third post having some idiot chime in "Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Saviour!  Muslims are wrong!  You should all be Christians!!!!!"   That's very nice, but let's assume for a second that there A.  is a Koran and B.  Some people believe in it.  So hey can we have a conversation about it without listening to your proselytizing?

We get it, you are in the Church of "Everything goes in PvP!!!"  Hey some of us our members, but that's not we are talking about here.  Since the scope of knowledge of some folks in this thread appears to be Church of PvP (may all noobs be pwned, blessed be he who is 1337) that seems to be the response.  I'm sorry if I don't take you seriously Amarr, but when you cite your working knowledge of "Big Brother" as justification on your views about informed consent....  Well, let's just say even with this I am holding my tongue.  

Look who's Godwin now.

/Inigo Montoya on
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
/Inigo Montoya off

Hint:  Cite the number of times I used the word "Hitler" in the above paragraph.

[Amarr HM]

Hint:  Cite the number of times I used the word "Hitler" in the above paragraph.

People who turn gaming threads into religious conversations are just a newer form of Godwin in my book.

[Prospero]

Stop trolling, he wasn't carrying out trials on human beings he was fucking with their virtual avatars.

Hey, look, the disconnect in one sentence.

Yeah, shouldn't that pretty much kill the thread at this point? If you don't get that behind the virtual avatars are people with real feelings and troubles, well then 

[kildorn]

Amarr is just admitting he only plays MMO via bot software. There aren't any people playing those character, they're all just complex macros!

[Amarr HM]

That hurts I've got real feelings and troubles ya know.

[Prospero]

I'm not entirely sure that's true.

[Soln]

is this an example of Politics forum leaking into Games?

[Amarr HM]

I'm not entirely sure that's true.

Well if I did, how would you feel attacking my personality like this? It's ok to be a dick to someone on a forum but not in a game? Hypocritical much?

I'm just pointing out the irony I'm not really hurt.

[WindupAtheist]

"A Rape In Cyberspace"

Am I the only one who always found this story sorta pathetic, and who thinks the sane reaction would have been "lol hax" instead of "omg CYBER RAEP!" or whatever?

[Kail]

Hint:  Cite the number of times I used the word "Hitler" in the above paragraph.

People who turn gaming threads into religious conversations are just a newer form of Godwin in my book.

Okay, I'm pretty sure I didn't mention Jesus or anything though.  Unless your religion is Scientology, I don't see how conflating psychiatry with psychology has anything to do with Godwin.  Nor am I really sure how it kills my argument, but if you want, just change it back:

There's a pretty wide gulf between "I feel some anguish over X" and "X has caused me to become such a demented psychotic that I now require psychological counseling."  Plenty of people are a bit pissed off when their football team loses or they die in HALO or whatever, but still not in gibbering maniac territory.

Happy?  I assumed you were getting stuck in a false dichotomy, or something, rather than just saying that it doesn't count "because they're pussies!"  My mistake, I guess.

[Velorath]

"A Rape In Cyberspace"

Am I the only one who always found this story sorta pathetic, and who thinks the sane reaction would have been "lol hax" instead of "omg CYBER RAEP!" or whatever?

I had never really heard about it before, so when Unsub referred to it as the "penultimate summary of such an event", I was expecting something that had bigger repercussions than just making someone cry.  I'd have to imagine that victims of actual rape would be a little pissed to see the word attached to something like this.

[Xanthippe]

"A Rape In Cyberspace"

Am I the only one who always found this story sorta pathetic, and who thinks the sane reaction would have been "lol hax" instead of "omg CYBER RAEP!" or whatever?

I found this story completely pathetic, not just sorta pathetic. 

[Amarr HM]

"A Rape In Cyberspace"

Am I the only one who always found this story sorta pathetic, and who thinks the sane reaction would have been "lol hax" instead of "omg CYBER RAEP!" or whatever?

I had a field day reading that, the moral of the story was the cyberrapist became a cultural icon on the site and the unnamed person who cried noone really gave a shit about.

Also...
"Over a decade later, these events remain the primary advertisement for LambdaMOO."

[Amarr HM]

Okay, I'm pretty sure I didn't mention Jesus or anything though.  Unless your religion is Scientology, I don't see how conflating psychiatry with psychology has anything to do with Godwin.  Nor am I really sure how it kills my argument, but if you want, just change it back:

Yes I take it back you weren't really godwinning but you definitely fell into my sarchasm

[amiable]

Edit: Oh nevermind this is getting absurd.

[Nebu]

Edit: Oh nevermind this is getting absurd.

The only winning move is not to play.

[Prospero]

I'm not entirely sure that's true.

Well if I did, how would you feel attacking my personality like this? It's ok to be a dick to someone on a forum but not in a game? Hypocritical much?

I'm just pointing out the irony I'm not really hurt.

If you had feelings and I personally attacked you I'd feel bad about myself. Conveniently I'm only conversing with your virtual avatar, so I'm in the clear! 

Now if I tried to write a paper and dubbed it research about my dickish trolling, then I'd be a hypocrite. Clearly I didn't make my point clear earlier. He can be as big a raging douche online as he wants. That's his prerogative. When he tries to call it research and get it published in some form, then I take exception.

[UnSub]

"A Rape In Cyberspace"

Am I the only one who always found this story sorta pathetic, and who thinks the sane reaction would have been "lol hax" instead of "omg CYBER RAEP!" or whatever?

I had never really heard about it before, so when Unsub referred to it as the "penultimate summary of such an event", I was expecting something that had bigger repercussions than just making someone cry.  I'd have to imagine that victims of actual rape would be a little pissed to see the word attached to something like this.

Of course real rape ~= virtual rape.

Hopefully you checked out the full story, not just the wiki.

Here's the point though: if it makes you cry, makes you not want to go back into the world, makes the community reshape / reform and causes the rules of the game to be re-written, it has an impact. It's obvious in hindsight that someone would come in and break the social rules (especially if you could control another persons character) that made the community work because they could, but 16 years ago things were thought of differently. And the main impact on the MOO became "this is the place the rape happened", which tarnished its reputation (admittedly while keeping it alive).

There's a ton of lessons in the story for any MMO developer about griefing and community interaction, but also most of all the griefer will see it as "just a game" while his victims will think of the event very differently.

[Musashi]

You know...  I've accidentally walked into few nasty fart clouds that had an impact on my feelings too.

[Ratman_tf]

You know...  I've accidentally walked into few nasty fart clouds that had an impact on my feelings too.

Sorry about that. 

[Khaldun]

It's not real research if it's retarded.  This 'study' only targets (as we understand them on this board) a niche demographic of internet nerds that aren't really representative of the world at large - or even the mmo playing world.  Part of doing research is having a large sample and a control.  There's also no control.  Therefore, this 'study' is just a journalistic anecdote which, in no way can be considered scientific.  The fact that he presents it as such is douche-a-rific.

This guy's just pwning noobs and then publishing something - anything - for his resume.

Look, again, not all scholarship is scientific in its aims. If an academic wants to write a memoir, or an interpretation of a literary work, or a philosophical argument, it doesn't have to conform to science. Even ethnography as a method can be quite rigorous without being "scientific".  In fact, some social science is kind of a parody of natural science at times, striving for a degree of certainty that a good deal of natural science doesn't aspire to. There are branches of natural science that don't involve experimentation, even branches which are largely theoretical or abstract; many experimental studies in natural science rest on probablistic or approximate evidence.

You can study one person and write an interesting account of their life or experience. Historians call that biography  . Of course even a biographer needs an intelligent, knowledgeable understanding of how typical or representative the person they're writing about might be. But anything can be interesting or important if the right person is thinking about it, even "griefers in City of Heroes". If you were going to define "good research" as "the most typical, widespread or representative social phenomena", then all social science would be about norms: you wouldn't want to study drug addiction (it's not typical); you wouldn't want to study minority populations (they're not typical); etc. You wouldn't want to study experiences or practices that aren't densely documented (you can't have a good 'scientific' sample size), and so on.

There's plenty to dislike about Myers' work without holding him accountable to a potted and unrealistic standard for "good social science".

What the fuck are you talking about.

Fake science isn't science.  I don't think any of the things you describe are science.  The fact that some academic fuckwit gets away with publishing it because he's 'from a university' means dick.

Be honest.  You just felt like contradicting someone on the internet.

Not all academics are scientists. Rather a lot of them aren't, in fact. All of the disciplines in the humanities are strongly non-scientific. Some social analysis doesn't claim to be scientific. Some natural scientists will tell you that even the "hard" social sciences like economics are not really scientific.

But it's true that Myers is trying to pass off his work as empirical social science rather than as humanistic commentary.

[HaemishM]

this thread needs good ole fashioned Haemish

Fuck that. I've said my peace on this idiocy. My tolerance for retreading the semantic definition of griefing dickplay vs. honest academic research is right around threshhold of watching spider monkeys pick peanuts out of their dung.

[Musashi]

They do that?