Before there were blogs there was Usenet and before Usenet there were BBSes. And from the very start, there have always been hyper-aggressive people who take out their own personal frustrations on the world at large.

There aren't many of them, but there doesn't have to be. Just the few that are out there are enough to bring grief to other people. Being on-line as much as I am, using my real name, has made me a target of griefers over the years. When I ran BBSes 15 years ago, I occasionally had to deal with them. Sometimes they'd go after me. Sometimes they'd just sit around like a trap door spider waiting to suck the fun out of the lives of those who were unfortunate enough to encounter them.

My friend Pat, T-man (who is the genius in charge of this site's back end), has had similar experiences. One time, a griefer went too far and T-man went to his house and yanked him out the door and made it clear that there'd be real world consequences for that.

We were a lot younger then and obviously one cannot simply go and find these griefers and punch them in the nose. But boy, it's tempting sometimes. On usenet I've had people accuse me of everything from being gay to being a convicted child molester. Griefers get it down to a science knowing which buttons to push. They always seem to have an inordinate amount of time.

At various net gatherings, I've met these griefers. Of course, they weren't "griefing" me (or they wouldn't have come). But of the dozen or so griefers I've met in real life, it's always the same story: They're cowards. And I mean pathetic cowards.

Griefers aren't just detractors. They are people who intentionally go out of their way to try to upset other people. They actually do things, on purpose, just to make someone else unhappy. It is as if they are trying to absorb the happiness of others through delivering grief like some sort of parasite trying to cure their own miserable lives.

In my experience, griefers fit a very particular psychological profile:

First, they are nearly always male. I don't think I've ever met a female griefer in all my years (there's plenty of female net personalities I've encountered I didn't like but none of them intentionally went out of their way to bring pain to others for seemingly no reason).

Secondly, they're nearly always single. Which I guess isn't very surprising.

Third, they come in two major groups. The first group are the teens/young adults who practice petty evil. The kind of people who would kill a small animal for no particular reason. Petty evil. They are fairly common. An under-developed sense of empathy. They're usually physically weak. It's as if they are trying to get back at the world for all the wedgies they get at school. Momma's boys.

The other group though, at the risk of bieng politically incorrect, tend to be 45 to 55 year old white single men living on disability. Yea, I know, pretty specific. Not always are they on disability. The key ingredient are bitter men with an extensive amount of free time on their hands. They are usually quite sad. Almost Golumnesqe in their pitifulness. I usually encountered this kind at User Group meetings when I'd be demonstrating something. They wouldn't say a word to me. But I'd later see them on-line just making the lives of others miserable.

Whereas younger griefers tend to hang out on forums and in on-line games, the latter tend to show up on Usenet or spend their time terrorizing some hapless technical support person. The younger ones are brief and not subtle at all. The older ones write amazingly lengthy, vile, and kook-like diatribes.

The length and detail are how you can distinguish the young griefers from the older ones. It's all about quantity for the young griefer. Older ones focus on quality. Singling out a target and making it their mission in life to try to bring "someone down a notch or two". Writing book-like diatribes about things that have nothing to do with them. That are about unimportant things. Things that cause onlookers to wonder "I wonder what they might have made of themselves if they put their hateful energy into something constructive?" 

Regardless of the age, griefers are cowards. I mean that in the literal sense. You meet them in person and they are quiet, introverted, passive. Easily bullied and dominated by those around them. But secretly, quietly, they build their resentment of those around them into a little black ball of hate and spew it out onto the Internet. If they're going to be miserable, why shouldn't others? Maybe if they can make someone else miserable, it will make themselves not feel so pathetic in comparison.

Those of us who run net communities come to look for the type and put in safe-guards as early as we can. Since griefers are cowards, they quickly flee if they believe their power base is gone. That is why the older ones tend to live in the sanctuary of Usenet and the younger ones simply move from game to game, from fan site to fan site, from on-line community to on-line community. There are always ample targets for them to take out their pain on.

When you write an article, try to imagine that you are talking to that person there. Since I use my real name and can be "found", I have long made it my policy to imagine myself saying this in a crowded pub. If I'm not willing to say it to someone's face, I won't say it. It's advice that I highly recommend to others.

Still...even if I understand them, it is hard not to be tempted to retaliate against one's cowardly on-line tormenter. Because they would never say the vile things they write in person, in public.