A Griefer/Troll in your inbox? How I personally dealt with one.

TL;DR - Don't rise to the troll or griefer in your inbox. You can either block and report if using unsavoury language, or engage and make them feel useful like I did, thus taking away their power in the situation.

Of course names won't be mentioned.

I was minding my own business in a game last night, completing little personal goals I set myself in free roam, when I heard a player kicking up a storm near by, killing all players and NPCs in their way, me included. Naturally I thought "Game On!" and pursued
the aggressor in what I perceived as a friendly challenge, to which I was downed a few more times, frustrating yet understandable, until I was able to down the aggressor once. Fair play, I got a kill on this person, they still had another 3 on me. I was happy
to call it quits and head off to go back to my own thing and started to do so.

"Bink", a message notification came on my screen from this person. I opened it to read the message and, as I expected, this person was trying to bait me into raging at them over messages. It was a clean simple message so I had no case if I reported.

I admit I was a little annoyed by this, but I recalled seeing a video about bullying*, why the bully is doing what they are and how to overcome it. Griefers and trolls are no different. They want a reaction from you, to waste your time, to make you feel
miserable whilst they laugh and grin from ear to ear behind their screens.

So rather than reply in a blind state of rage, I instead complimented them on their gameplay, and the fact that during the exchange they helped me out with something within the game. I made this person feel useful. This is not what these type of people want,
which was evident in the next and last message they sent. They didn't know how to react. The power they tried to have was gone and the whole situation diffused without any serious issues created.

Trolls and griefers, like bullies out in the real world, get enjoyment out of making other players miserable and causing a reaction, the noisier the reaction or the more emotional the happier it makes these people. Don't give them this power, it's hard I
know, I've been there, you just want to give them a good old cussing out which, to be fair, never really makes you feel better. Instead take a slow deep breath, step away from the console if you need to calm down, since that message isn't going anywhere, then
either:

- Reply calmly, keeping the language clean, in a similar manner to what I talked about

or

- Block and report if the language used is vulgar, racist, threatening or any other variant against the TOS.

Hope you all have a pleasurable gaming experience, and remember, you're never alone, Ambassadors are around every corner should you need or want us

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* should you wish to see the video, here is the link: [mod removed]

:)