There Is No Such Thing as "Just A Game"

I was recently talking with a friend of mine on Facebook chat, and knowing that we both played Minecraft he suggested that we should go grief a random server. In case you are unfamiliar with the term, to grief on the internet means to annoy or aggravate others for no reason besides one's personal pleasure. Think of this as internet terrorism, causing as much mayhem as possible. For Minecraft, this often means to go to a server and destroy as many creations made by other players as possible, thus eliminating all the hard work they put into the building. As you might expect, I have more than a few problems with griefing. But what was especially surprising was that this good Christian friend of mine had no problems with it whatsoever. In fact, he found it funny. Now to be precise, to the best of my knowledge he hasn't actually griefed anyone. Although if I had agreed to do so with him, then he would have surely had went ahead and griefed without hesitation. (Dear Friend, if you ever happen to read this, which is unlikely. No hard feelings for mentioning you in my blog? At least I didn't say your name...)

Now what sort of excuse did my friend offer to why he saw no problems with griefing on Minecraft? That it was only a game. Now this is what I have my main problem with, and what I will direct the attention of this post to. Imagine that a young child built a sandcastle on a beach. He had spent the entire duration of his stay at the beach working on the castle, and the hours of hard work resulted in a magnificent castle. But then I came along and kicked it down just because I felt like it. There would be a public outrage all among the beach, and I would have been thought of as a completely despicable person. How can you get lower than that? Now imagine that the same child signed in on a Minecraft server and again spent quite a few hours building a detailed castle. Then I come along and destroy it. Now some people on the server would get mad at me, any admins would for sure ban me. But some people would find it funny. Now I ask you, what difference is there between these two examples? Absolutely none.

To those of you who kind of dozed off the second I mentioned "Minecraft" (*cough*Abby*cough*), don't worry, this stuff affects you too. Think about the internet, truly a wonderful and fantastic place (I should know, I live here). The thing is, it is almost entirely devoid of responsibility or real consequences. But as I showed in my last example (is it okay if I keep mention the sandcastle example? I'm sort of proud of it), the virtual world isn't all that different from this supposed "real one". It is never "just a game" or "just the internet". It's true, you can get away with a lot of things on the internet. But just because there isn't always immediate consequences doesn't mean that it isn't wrong. Being on the internet doesn't give anyone an excuse to swear, spam, or generally be immature. Many people would disagree with me on this point, though.

I did a bit of research on this topic just for fun, and I noticed something. The griefer movement does in fact exist, and it isn't entirely made up of 12 year olds being immature just for the sake of being immature. Look at this, a youtube channel devoted to making Minecraft griefing videos. They have over 118,000 subscribers, and their videos have only slight margin more dislikes than you would expect of a popular youtube channel, which was quite depressing. Right on their channel page they wrote this: "We like to make people angry in games. It's hilarious, trust me". Why in the world is it that we the internet, as a community, are showing support to a channel such as this?

To go back to my main point, it is never "just a game". Who we are on the internet or in any online game is a reflection of who were are in "real life". A bully on the internet is a bully in real life, period. We shouldn't adjust our character or moral values just depending on what sort of situation we are in.