Hackers give victims seizures

[Marisa]

Stealing someone's items or glitching up their game is akin to planting a whoopee cushion or putting pepper in someone's ice cream. It's a harmless prank, and I could easily see any of us doing it for laughs. Not because we like seeing people hurt, but because it's really really funny, and we know they're gonna eventually look back on it and laugh. If you think that someone who plants whoopee cushions is automatically the type of jerk who would knowingly induce seizures, then you either don't understand the severity of epilepsy, or take MMORPGs way, way too seriously.
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[HeatShadow]

Except the things I'm referring to aren't minor pranks, they're people who will actually dedicate hours of their time to stalking and harassing other players sheerly for the purpose of seeing them get upset. That is the equivalent of a playground bully going around and stealing all of the sporting equipment, or the kid at the beach who dedicates himself to smashing each and every sand castle the other kids try to build. You think their victims look back and laugh about those?

The reason I'm making the connection between griefers and the seizure-inducers is that there's absolutely no way they had any rational reason for doing this. Did they get any money out of it? Attention, aside from that one little news article? Did they have a personal agenda against the owners of the site? Maybe, but the most likely motivators is quite simply that they "did it for the lulz". For laughs. And this isn't something they decided to do on a whim like with most pranks, they had to have spent atleast some time finding out about the site, figuring out how to hack it, and then setting up the flashing display.

Playing pranks, serious griefing and then serious hacking are all on the same scale of bothering other people, separated by the desire to go the extra mile with your harassment and the lack of a guilty conscience.
Most pranks are on the mild side, because you never really intend to cause more than temporary discomfort, and yes, most people are capable of that. I imagine that, if you do something minor like sneaking sticky peanut butter into someone's food to gum up their mouth, your intention isn't to target someone who's allergic to peanuts.
The serious griefing and serious hacking are both on the more troublesome side. The griefing because the intention is to harass your targets for as long as possible, and cause as much damage as possible just short of physical harm. A good example would be stalking someone's character in WoW and killing them over and over again, for hours on end, maybe even waiting until they're just about finished with something difficult before striking. This hacking, however, crosses that line and tries to inflict as much damage, both physically and mentally, as possible.

Do I think all pranksters can be hackers? No, not really. But I do think all of the serious griefers are just a stone's throw away from hacking a seizure help-line website and setting up a flashing display. And there aren't as many people capable of doing the latter two.
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[Marisa]

There's no rational reason for pulling any kind of prank, though. They did it for the lulz means that they did it because it's funny. And it's funny to gum up your buddy's mouth with peanut butter and watch them struggle with it.

But that's funny because afterward, they're gonna be okay. There's no lasting damage. That's griefing. Even if you still specifically single someone out and mess with them endlessly to watch them flip out, nobody's getting hurt and they'll get over it.

What the seizure hackers did is akin to giving peanut butter to someone deathly allergic to peanuts, specifically because they know the recipient is going to have a violent, possibly fatal reaction. That's the difference.
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[HeatShadow]

[NetOperator Wibby]

[Izumi]

[Izumi]

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