Griefers Can Make Good Storytellers

2-Jan-2023

Griefers Can Make Good Storytellers

Classy griefing is the subject of today's lesson. The majority of Minecraft gamers do not like griefing. It's hard to argue against someone who dislikes griefing. Who wants their hours of hard labor to be blown up by TNT? But is all griefing 'bad'? Some people, in their narrow minded war on griefing, do not place any difference between one type of grief to another.

The Minecraft wiki has done a good job of categorizing all of the types of griefing. Some types of griefing include treeing, player jailing, snow golem griefing, massacre, flattening, tree bombing, piston traps, and “classy” griefing.

Classy griefing is the argument that some forms of griefing are morally acceptable. This class of griefers do not crudely destroy the things they pass; they act as antagonists for the story of the world that people create. Imagine that you grew a tree with some lava on top of it and somehow it didn't catch on fire. Now imagine that you are so proud of this creation that you wall off the entire perimeter in glass and litter it with signs that say “do not touch”. A player who stumbles upon this tree then throws a double chest full of eggs into the gated area and places a sign inside that says “chickens can't read”. Is the story of this scene not amplified by this “grief”?

Sometimes griefing is just playing around. Imagine that you are playing with a group of friends, just like in real life. Would you ban one from your house if they pulled a little practical joke on you?