Kindle
A bunch of griefers in Second Life staged a members-only metaverse assault on "virtual real estate tycoon" Anshe Chung yesterday, during a staged SL event with CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman. A torrent of pixelated male genitals rained upon the victim, whose offline name is Ailin Graef.
Steve Hutcheon of the Sydney Morning Herald filed a comprehensive report of the incident here and tells BoingBoing, "If you can't visualize it, see this YouTube clip: Link Google Video Link." Snip from Steve's report:
"She is very popular, and some people don't like her," said CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman, whose Second Life avatar (online persona), GreeterDan Godel, was interviewing Anshe at the time of the attack.Daniel Terdiman's transcript is here: Link"She's made a lot of money, and is one of the most prominent of all Second Life residents. So to some people, some griefers, that makes her a target."
Griefers are so-called because they create grief. Their antics are designed to interrupt proceedings in virtual worlds and games usually for no other reason than because they can.
Attacks like the one launched against Anshe are triggered by a program code that generates self-replicating objects.
Much like email spam, these "griefspawn" attacks can chew up system resources and slowing down performance. They can sometimes even trigger network crashes.