In the world of multiplayer gaming, to be a griefer means that you're aiming for different end goals than the other people playing the game.

Often this is the consequence of the mechanics of the game itself,

and there are people who go into the game looking for alternative ways to win from the outset,

goals that are meaningful to them, but not meaningful to the other players,

who are themselves usually adhering to the goals as outlined by the game itself.

In practice, this might mean that the majority of players in an online game are trying to defeat the other team,

or trying to work together to solve a puzzle or slay a dragon.

A griefer, though, might decide that it would be more fun, more interesting, more challenging,

to keep their team from ever solving that puzzle by surreptitiously

stealing one of the keys that they require to do so. They may decide that it would be more fun to try

to continuously kill the members of their own team from behind without their team realizing it,

or while convincing their team that it's an accident, that they're just a new player who is simply

so bad at the game that they keep shooting their own team by mistake.

They might decide that it would be funnier to keep their team from ever reaching the dragon in the first place, by standing in the doorway that leads to the dragon's cave, preventing anyone else from ever entering.

Griefing is not harmless, it's not consequence-free,

because it puts the griefer in direct opposition to everyone else in the game. It would be like

playing monopoly with someone who has decided that they're not going to try to win by the normal

rules, and instead that they will try to steal their opponents fake money whenever they get

up to use the restroom. And the goal is not to get caught.

They are adhering to different rules and metrics of success.

And that can then impact the fun that everyone else has playing the game,

and very often negatively so.

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