Anatomy of a Grief Attack
I experienced my worse grief attack, so far. Incase you've only heard the term 'Grief Attack', I thought I'd let you in on the details. See, there are stupid, bored people (probably kids, because seriously wouldn't adults have something better to do?) who write scripts and create objects solely for the purpose of annoying residents of Second Life. They flood a sim with flying images, sounds, chat spamming and sometimes scripts to create havoc for your avatar. That is a grief attack.
Some attacks are small and meant to make a point. The first one I ever experienced was at a store and it only involved giant dollars bills floating through the air. It wasn't that bad. It was only annoying, and I guess the culprit doesn't like people making money, though I wonder how they pay their bills?
The second grief attack I saw was against a camping sim and it had Ninja Turtle heads and a moaning sound. I'm sure the attacker thought they were hilarious, but stupid, stoned kids find anything funny.
On this occassion, I was checking out a parcel of land. It's the perfect size, the perfect sim name and I love it; I'm not sure I can afford it though.
I walked off the land and saw a Ninja Turtle head in the distance, getting closer by the second. I'm new and naturally curious, so I didn't teleport immediately. This is what happened:
- Turtle heads filled the screen
- The chat started spamming garbage about the Lindens and saying it was coming from me
- Hundreds of requests to 'animate' my avatar popped up on the top-right of my screen
- My avatar was unable to move
My first response was to report it, so I pulled up the abuse report menu - nothing would click. I couldn't write anything into the form or use any of the pull-down menus. What to do?
I took a screen shot, not with the Second Life interface, but with the 'print screen' key on my keyboard. That way all the images would show, even the turtle heads. Then, I teleported home, except... the attack was there as well. The parcel of land I was looking at was on the same sim!
My inventory window would work - though the map wouldn't - so I teleported to Welcome Center, Dore. I didn't think the attack could follow me, and I was guessing the Linden's protect their own area better than other sims - otherwise, there would be attacks on all the Help/Welcome center to scare off new users, right?
At Dore, everything was calm, except the animation requests had stacked up on my hud and I couldn't move because they were clogging my connections. I actually clicked each one away! The more I clicked, suddenly I could talk again... clicked more, I could move. It took me over an hour, but I was determined not to have to log off on account of some stupid kid being bored because he doesn't have any friends.
