On Griefing for Goodness

[paulhope]

secretspice posted this really good article a while ago. Among other things, it presents a sympathetic view of Something Awful's griefer community (guys that will, for example, disrupt Second Life interviews and entrepreneurship with flocks of flying penises

Comments

[paulhope]

What's the difference? In what way is your preference for Fair Trade coffee and un-preference for virtual real estate 'real value' whereas the contrary attitudes are 'not real value, just subjective preference'?

Good question.

These days, my answer is that we discover what is really valuable and what is merely subjective preference through inquiry, discourse, etc. So, for example, I would say that when people's subjective preferences are shaped and refined by rational argument, they will converge on a devalue of virtual real estate, and a valuing of Fair Trade coffee.

I should mention here that I'm not hugely confident that Fair Trade coffee is hot shit, but considering who is likely to be reading this, it seems like it's a convenient grounds (no pun intended) to draw upon as an illustration of a rationally motivated consumer choice.

What's the difference between 'the internet' and 'not-the internet' such that the former is "not serious business" and moreover that we are justified in "punishing" those who think otherwise?

I'll admit to being a bit hasty here. Sure, lots that happens on the internet can be very serious. I actually take the internet very seriously myself--I chose my current career largely because of that seriousness, because of the "hope for technology to improve things in the future" that I mentioned.

That said, there's a lot of things that people put a lot of stake in which I would argue don't really matter to themselves or to humanity--their valuations are incorrect (we would discern this the way would would discern other truths and falsehoods--through discourse, etc.) And there is an awful lot of these false totems on the internet, and I think that's what I was referring to (admittedly clumsily) by "the internet."

So, for example, we might start to argue in this way: success in an MMORPG is not something worth striving for because it is gained merely by the repetitive application of an uncomplex, ungeneralizable skill. Ultimately, it produces nothing, because anything achieved has already been created by the game developers, but artificially withheld by them purely for the purpose of amusing you to such an extent that you will pay them money. There are other sources of amusement that are both cheaper and more personally edifying. And so on.

The irony of the internet is that while in principle it is a a tool that allows for communication on a scale previously impossible, in practice it provides many with a place to exercise their unreflective actions in a way that is sheltered from criticism. Either by obscurity or through direct enforcement, communities can develop that are effectively closed to challenges to their underlying assumptions, which are seen (correctly) as disruptive.

"Punishment" may have been too strong a word, but I think that the disruption in many cases can be a powerful if indirect symbolic action, expressing much-needed criticism through performance and direct alteration of the environment.