The online world of Second Life can be a tough place sometimes: attract too much attention and you risk attack by hellraisers known as “griefers”. One of the most prominent griefer groups is Patriotic Nigras (PN), who inflict vicious abuse on their targets, while saying they do it for “laughs”. Here, one of the founders of PN, known as Mudkips Acronym, talks about his motivations, while Catherine Fitzpatrick (aka Prokofy Neva) explains what it’s like to be a victim and why Linden Lab, the firm that runs Second Life, is not doing enough to protect its members. They spoke to Jim Giles.
Mudkips Acronym
How did you come to establish the griefer group Patriotic Nigras?
PN started as a thread on an online forum that said something along the lines of “Hey, let’s go invade Second Life”. I decided to give it a try and met up with a couple of people in-game. From there, more joined and I set up a free forum to organise everyone. I didn’t intend to create an organisation.
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Our goals are to a) “do it for the lulz” (that is, get laughs), b) fight the furries (avatars in animal form) and c) fight the Second Life citizens who take their “metaverse” enormously seriously.
How many members do you have?
There are 143 members in the PN user group, of which between 35 and 60 are active. We get a lot of guys that take our test to get in and then never post again. Nonetheless, we have enough members to do what we do.
What kind of relationship do you have with Linden Lab, the owner of Second Life?
Hostile at best. They don’t like our activities. At first, we were able to stay in Second Life and hang out between raids. But soon after the Edwards attack – on the campaign headquarters of presidential hopeful John Edwards – Linden Lab began deleting anything we built. Each of us has been banned dozens if not hundreds of times.
Some of the people you target such as Prokofy Neva accuse you of sending obscene and racist material.
We do anything we can to shock people. To my knowledge, nobody I know in this group is truly racist or bigoted in any way, though I might be wrong (it’s certainly hard to tell with these guys).
“Nobody in this group is truly racist, but it’s certainly hard to tell”
Prokofy was targeted because of who she is. Here’s a 52-year-old woman creating a male avatar and being annoyed when someone calls her a “she”. She writes essays, often thousands of words long, on the most meaningless topics. And she takes Second Life more seriously than anyone we’ve ever encountered.
It seems odd to be so immersed in griefing and also complain about people taking SL too seriously. In that respect aren’t you really the same as the people you’re trying to target?
In the last few weeks I think PN has started taking griefing too seriously. When you become famous inside the game, it begins to affect even those who originally got into the game for fun. I think the only way to counter this is to make your actions as humorous and light as possible while still maintaining the shock factor necessary to make it all worthwhile.
Can you tell me anything about your real life identity?
Other than the fact that I’m a college graduate, I cannot. I would prefer that people we’ve made enemies of in Second Life are not able to find me in real life. A group of “anti-griefers” called the Justice League Unlimited dug up a lot of information on our co-leader N3X15, such as his phone number. They didn’t call him or do anything that could be construed as harassment, but I’m not sure that courtesy would be extended by some of the others we’ve annoyed. In fact, I’ve decided to quit as leader of PN for this very reason.
Catherine Fitzpatrick
What kind of griefing goes on in Second Life?
I think there are three types. You get annoying kids who probably just do it for a day. That can be fixed: I just eject them from my land. Then there are the users who sexually harass female avatars. I picture them as lonely men living in their mum’s basement. They usually just hang around and refuse to leave. Finally there are the organised and entrenched movements, such as the Patriotic Nigras.
What do the Patriotic Nigras do?
They are a long-standing racist griefer movement. I’m usually one of the first people to be targeted when they launch an attack. I’m like an early warning system. They shower me with particles that fill up the whole screen. They also send racist and anti-semitic images. One showed a Jewish man at the Wailing Wall with “AIDS” written above him. They’ve sent other images that associate black people with AIDS. They also use racial stereotypes, such as minstrel-like images.
How does it feel to be the target of an attack like that?
I was used to seeing griefing, but the first time I was personally attacked came as a shock. There is something particularly unsettling about flying around a virtual world, where you feel you have another identity, and then suddenly finding a giant version of your real-life picture staring up at you. The first time I saw this, the griefers cut my picture up into particles and blew them around, which made it doubly unsettling. They also made a giant bust of me based on my real-life picture, defaced it and made racist versions of it. It’s very creepy.
“They made a giant bust based on my real-life picture, then they made racist versions of it”
Why are you targeted?
I draw attacks because I’m not a normal player. In Second Life I’m outspoken and known as a dissident. I own the largest mainland rental business in Second Life. It’s a part-time business for me; I’m a Russian translator in real life.
I also work for some of the virtual newspapers, such as the Second Life Herald. I document what the griefers do and they don’t like sustained attention.
Does griefing impact on your business?
Yes. All of us who do business in Second Life are under siege trying to deal with this. I had two tenants subjected to sexually abusive language and assaults on their avatars by these griefers. To them, it felt like rape. Of course there is no comparison whatsoever to real-life rape, but the dynamics are the same and the feelings of shock and humiliation are real for people.
Why don’t you ask Linden Lab to ban these users?
The Lindens are value-neutral over whether this is crime. They do ban troublemakers when they catch them, but these people just create new accounts. There’s not enough incentive to behave well, only attempts to block bad behaviour.
Would you consider bringing a legal action against the Patriotic Nigras in the real-world courts?
I’ve talked with other Second Life businesspeople about the possibility of bringing a class action suit. But lawsuits are expensive and this area of the law is very poorly developed. I would still consider it though, because we need to compel the Lindens to do more. We’re the people who pay the Lindens’ revenue.
Isn’t that taking things too seriously? Second Life is meant to be a fantasy world.
I don’t view it as a fantasy. To me it’s a business and an interesting social experiment.
Profile
Mudkips Acronym is the name of a Second Life avatar who led a griefer group called the Patriotic Nigras from 2006 until his resignation last month. Of his real-life identify, Acronym says only that he is a college graduate
Profile
Catherine Fitzpatrick is a Russian translator and consultant based in New York City. She has been involved in the virtual world of Second Life for three years, going by the name of Prokofy Neva. She runs a business renting virtual land and homes to thousands of customers.
