Vocabulary Lesson: Griefer/Griefing

A griefer is a person who deliberately harrasses or annoys someone on the Internet. This is generally used in gaming, but the term, and action, can be used in many cases wherein the Internet is involved. Griefing toes the line into hacking (because just harassing someone online would be trolling) sometimes, but usually just an extreme form of harassment. Griefing can get pretty complex (see both Wired articles below), so I've pulled these examples from Urban Dictionary:

Examples of griefing: 1. Player vs player abuse: Singling out the same person and killing them over and over when they are defensless until hey log off. 2. Kill stealing: Repeatedly trying to steal another persons kills so that their time is wasted. 3. Verbal abuse: Spamming a person with vulgar, hatefull, or offensive messages. 4. Blocking: Getting in anothers way so they cannot move or get out of a particular area. 5. "Training": Triggering many monsters, almost always impossible to fight and survive, with the intention to either run someone out of an area or kill them indirectly if the server is not 'player vs player' enabled.

It seems unlikely that an Old Person would find a need for practicing this. (I don't advise it!) But its good to know what a word means when you dive into an old issue of Wired, ready to relish its articles about vengeance.

Additional Resources:

Why Griefing Is Good, Wired.com Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World, Wired.com Griefer, Urban Dictionary