Internet Attacks? Why?

[Lithium]

These are a wide variety of things, from hacking e-mails, websites, taking over facebook threads, to ddos attacks and swatting.

We hear about it happening (especially the swatting and ddos attacks) when it ends up in bloodshed, violence, or affects thousands of people at a time but, we don't hear about it happening as much anymore.

The cynic in me is thinking that's because it's not 'news' anymore, it's not 'worthy' of being written/spoken about unless it ends in violence or happens to a sufficiently popular person (read: Celebrity) that people actually care about.

I don't think these attacks come from a desire to 'win' I think it comes from something more primal, anger, shame, and lack of ability.

People want to win, they don't /like/ to lose, it's hardwired into us to try our best but we only validate the winners. It's rare the individual who can step back and actually /enjoy/ a game they just /lost/. It does happen, sure, like if I am playing Warhammer 40K, or BattleTech, or even D&D I can enjoy even when I lose. If I am playing with friends, I can even enjoy losing on a game like Overwatch.

However internet culture is amazingly toxic due to anonymity and audience, and that makes winning even /more/ important, and turns up emotional responses to twelve.

But... does that really apply to MU*'s? Our anger and such tends to take a lot longer to build up to the point of ostracism. We are a lot more tolerant than most online gamers (see league of legends and dota for extreme examples) probably due to the media in which we use, text is slow, it's patient, it gives us time to think and respond.

Curious as to people's thoughts.

[Arkandel]

@lithium said in Internet Attacks? Why?:

But... does that really apply to MU*'s? Our anger and such tends to take a lot longer to build up to the point of ostracism.

It applies to MU* very well. I've encountered many people who were genuinely angry when they lost or even when they were getting close to losing, and treated the opposition - players, not characters - as exactly that.

I don't know any instances (or none comes to mind) of these things escalating all the way to real lift conflicts but I've seen players trying to get the other parties banned from games, who used friendly connections - even second degree ones - with staff to get the upper hand, and all of it in order to win a literally unwinnable game - which all MU* are.

All I can say is that it's easy to demonize people we don't know and assume the very worst for them.

[SG]

@arkandel said in Internet Attacks? Why?:

I've encountered many people who were genuinely angry when they lost or even when they were getting close to losing, and treated the opposition - players, not characters - as exactly that.

I have a feeling that when there's a sunk cost involved with dying/losing imaginary toys, people get very upset. If I have to write an indepth app, jump through three layers of sheet review, justify every xp spend with an essay, you best believe I'll be pissed if some asshat takes my character out over something I think is insignificant.

But, you let me get through CG in ten minutes, hop on the grid and start RPing, I can get hit by a misfired Kar98 from three rooms away and will laugh and have fun with it.

In my experience, the number of hoops you have to jump through to get nice things (on the grid, shiny items) is like the exponent on how many gaskets people will blow when something goes bad.

[Thenomain]

This is never going to stop being true:

I personally think that removed from the social interaction and social ostracism of a group of people you know, or want to know, that there is a far lesser reason to take care of what you say or do. Our culture as a whole is just now understanding the deeper consequences of the online community, even though we started to get the hang of it the year the first kids who grew up not knowing a world without Facebook went to college or started applying for jobs outside of it. They discovered how what they do matters.

We also live in an age where personal responsibility has been hand-waved by people in authority, and I don't mean that to start a political rant about cops or the president, but a lot of you grew up with parents who screamed at teachers and schools for not properly raising their own kids. Hell, I think the (erroneous, IMO) viewpoint of hipsters being lazy and having no sense of the future was taught to them, an act of supreme irony from the 'Me Generation'.

It is hard, in a hobby of games, to find people who believe that holding someone else accountable goes anywhere past banning them from their game. This has always been a valid response; we are nobody's parents but our own children. It would be nice if we held each other more accountable in a 'punish in a way to teach' manner, but I can't fault anyone who doesn't want to.

[TiredEwok]

I think this happens more with gamers than it does with mu*ers because of, put simply, jealousy. Many gamers who get swatted or doxxed are very successful at what they do and their success is very visible. You can go onto Twitch or YouTube and see how well someone is doing simply based on numbers - viewers, subscribers, followers, etc. While most people can be happy for them, or maybe indifferent, even, there are some who are driven to irrationality. These are the people who swat. These are people who DDOS and doxx amd whatever else they can think of to cause harm. I will say that I do think the swatters don't (usually?) mean for anyone to be hurt or killed, but they do want them to be ruined in other ways, mainly their reputation.

[Ortallus]

@apu I think usually when someone is swatted, their viewership goes up. =P

You definitely don't swat someone because you don't mean them harm though. I mean, at the VERY least police are going to show up at their house and point guns at them.

[mietze]

It’s been a long time since I was personally invested enough to be around hardcore people. But I do know of the following occupancies that have happened in the last 10 years:

3 people who have had CPS called on them, necessitating a visit (Which is always stressful regardless of whether or not it’s founded).

2 people who had their SOs contacted via social media.

1 person who had their place of employment targeted.

Numbers being given out for nuisance texts and the like.

So it can be a concern. This is crossover outsidevthe community. There have been many instances within the community of people attempting to ruin player reputations (arguably the most valuable thing you as a player have), posting of RL info and pictures without permission, etc.

It’s truly awful and nerve wracking to feel stalked, even if that person is a stranger and probably will never physically harm you. I’m lucky to live in a state that takes it seriously and to have friends with many contacts to help me wade through the difficulty of getting protection when someone’s primary way of stalking you is through online means. It’s unbelievably stressful. And this is just some dude that I met once as a teenager. So there is no sense of having been vulnerable(as many of us are on games/exploring rp) like their would be for someone who has this happen with a musher contact.

I think mushers are nicer than the average online community, but the bad ones are truly vile and can do a lot of damage.

I wish people would not discount how horrible it can be, when you are a target.

[TiredEwok]

@ortallus

What I meant was that, unless someone is a particularly nasty shit bird, they're not going to want anyone to get shot. Their intention is to embarrass and inconvenience, not get people killed.

[Lithium]

@mietze I am not trying to discount how horrible it is, I am curious as to where it crosses over with /this/ community, with the MU*'ing community in general.

[Ortallus]

@apu Not wanting to get someone killed doesn't excuse putting someone in a situation where it's possible they will be killed. It's just stupidity.

If you don't want to get someone killed -you don't swat them-.

[TiredEwok]

@ortallus

Did I say the action was excused by intent? No. It is fucking shitty no matter what.

[Ortallus]

@apu Yeah I dunno. If you don't want someone to get shot, you don't point a gun at them. Swatting is pointing guns at someone by proxy. Just my opinion on the subject.

[surreality]

I'm working on a novel of a response, but feel it relevant to interject here: a lot of the people who SWAT are kids who have no real comprehension of consequences. (And, horrifically, rarely do they face any.) They expect it to be non-lethal, and think that because they expect it will be non-lethal, the idea that it may end in physical injury or death isn't a consequence they even let into their heads.

This? Is fucking terrifying.

[Ashen-Shugar]

@surreality said in Internet Attacks? Why?:

This? Is fucking terrifying.

Agreed, but I blame a lot of how we treat children today and basic hand-wave responsibility away.

Kids are raised believing they are entitled to whatever they want, and what they can't get, others shouldn't be able to have either.

Obviously this is just a rough generalization, and there's exceptions and both horrible and good examples people can pull from.

However, with the internet and all the online access, plus how people today seem to take online personalities so seriously over just an in-person, and the fact online meet-ups seem to be the standard norm and not the exception, is, itself, scary.

This is why people can trick people out of money without meeting them.
This is why people can have boyfriends and girlfriends with people they have never met in person.
This is why people feel entitled to things that they have never earned and likely won't ever earn.

The only ones to blame for this level of scariness is our own society. The sad thing is, I honestly don't have a solution.

[Ortallus]

@surreality said in Internet Attacks? Why?:

I'm working on a novel of a response, but feel it relevant to interject here: a lot of the people who SWAT are kids who have no real comprehension of consequences. (And, horrifically, rarely do they face any.) They expect it to be non-lethal, and think that because they expect it will be non-lethal, the idea that it may end in physical injury or death isn't a consequence they even let into their heads.

This? Is fucking terrifying.

Maybe? But usually to SWAT someone you have to spoof the 911 system into recognizing your cell phone as local to the person who you're trying to SWAT, elsewise it just goes to your local 911 system and doesn't work.

I find it challenging to believe anyone capable of doing that doesn't have the mental capacity to realize that if something goes wrong, that someone will be shot, such as what happened recently in KY (Which is even more of a tragedy, for it not being the person the swat caller was angry with).

And AFTER that incident, anyone who says they don't believe it could turn fatal must be living under a rock.

[surreality]

@ortallus I completely agree that this should be a wakeup call for these idiots.

I hope it is.

I don't think that hope will be realized, but I hope anyway.

[Apos]

@lithium said in Internet Attacks? Why?:

But... does that really apply to MU*'s? Our anger and such tends to take a lot longer to build up to the point of ostracism. We are a lot more tolerant than most online gamers (see league of legends and dota for extreme examples) probably due to the media in which we use, text is slow, it's patient, it gives us time to think and respond.

Curious as to people's thoughts.

I don't think people are all that different, but MUs need a vastly different level of investment than someone playing LoL or Dota. I mean someone gets into a LoL game, they play with 4 strangers for maybe 20 minutes, they never see them again. For us, someone gets onto a new game, they could be interacting with some of those people for literally years, and even though it's anonymous, anonymity means a hell of a lot less when the reputation attached to a character basically effects how you can play for thousands of hours invested. So we have a lot of mini society pushback, where people though they are anonymous from a RL perspective for one another, care a whole lot about their 'anonymous' personas on here enough to practice a lot better behavior generally.

I know there's a temptation to be like, 'kids these days' about that but I just don't really think that's the case. I think it's just people generally know that even if it's a fake internet name of a character or board handle, they are attached to that, and their investment heavily helps reduce the really egregious examples we see in games with zero investment.

[Thenomain]

@surreality said in Internet Attacks? Why?:

@ortallus I completely agree that this should be a wakeup call for these idiots.

I hope it is.

The person who did a recent swatting says he didn't do anything wrong because it's not his fault that the police shot first.

So no, no it is not. People will live in the bubble they want to live within.

[mietze]

Also, Internet romances and hookups and scamming have been going on for a long time, ever since the internet became more publicly accessible. Before that pen pal romances and hookups were a thing (including serial killers using that as a way to scam people out of money. Even in the 1800s!

I don’t think this is a kids these days problem. And most teens these days are a little more savvy (albeit teenagers) than people my age (40s) are/we’re even if generationally we look down on them as entitled.

It’s a comfort thing to think kids these days are just dumbasses but I can guarantee you the people who get scammed and ripped of the most are not the teens and twenty somethings.

[mietze]

@thenomain

I agree. I also think the level of horribleness that you have to be at to SWAT someone in the first place is extreme. Normal people don’t do that, not even spoiled brats.

Just like normal people don’t go around shooting people of the gender they’re attracted to because they can’t get a date and feel like they’re owed one.

Normal people however pissed off they may be, don’t call in a false CPS report.

Normal people don’t try to hire hitmen to bump off a mom of a child who made the team their kid wanted to be on, so that the other child will drop out out of grief and their own kid might have another shot at getting that spot.

Normal people however financially in dire straights don’t kill all of their children and then themselves, or subject their child to horrific pain and suffering claiming they’re sick just to get money out of people.

And yet some people do this, have always tried to do this—and I believe the people suceptible to lying/violence/abusive behaviors will probably find a way to do it.

It’s not that we don’t have these people in our community—we do. But the vast majority here just like in real life and pretty normal.