Running into a troll while playing a video game online is a nightmare. There is a subsection of gamers who play just to grief others. There even a cottage industry of YouTubers and Twitch streamers who do nothing but log in to popular multiplayer games such as Call of Duty or Counter-Strike, kill their teammates, and scream like children over voice comms.
They call themselves pranksters, but they’re not. They’re just obnoxious trolls who exist to ruin other people’s fun. There’s nothing funny or clever about what they do. DanielFromSL is different. According to his YouTube page, DanielFromSL “[experiments] on people in video games whilst doing low brow comedy.”
Videos by VICE
Pull up any one of DanielFromSL’s videos and the difference between his pranks and the bulk of what the online griefers are doing is clear. His typical scheme involves logging into a game where people roleplay—such as Second Life, DayZ, or some specific Grand Theft Auto V servers—and acting like he doesn’t quite understand what’s going on.
His most recent upload—Gmod Wonderworld—is a masterpiece. Garry’s Mod is a Half-Life 2 modification that allows users to create elaborate sandboxes. Servers run the gamut. Some are an excuse to mess with physics and others are semi-serious role playing experiences.
DanielFromSL used Gary’s Mod to craft a spooky theme park and invited players to join. Those who dared enter found a dark nightmare world of busted roller coasters, haunted hallways, and horrifying NPCs dressed as furries cavorting across the landscape. That’s if they could even get into the park.
The video opens with players navigating a simple maze with lame pop-out skeletons and spooky noises in pitch dark. Those who clear the maze come to a skeleton sitting in front of a desk. This is Mr. Bones, and he wants them to solve his riddle to gain access to the park. In the video, players try in vain to pass Mr. Bones, spouting insane answers to the riddle, begging for entry, and contacting the administrator to tell them the server is broken because Mr. Bones won’t let them through.
During all this, the video displays a running account of how long the player spends sitting in the hallway desperately trying to solve the puzzle. More than one user spent well over 20 minutes fighting frustration while DanielFromSL calmly tried to talk them through their problems using cryptic lies and bad advice.
A ferris wheel looms on the edge of the park and as players approach it to catch a ride, the whole wheel collapses and squashes them flat. “What is this shit, here?” The angry player says.
“I’m sorry. I was on the phone,” Daniel replies. “What happened?”
“Like, it went down on my head.”
“So, how would you rate that attraction?”
“Do you not see this shit?”
“Yeah, I think this cart is broken,” Daniel says while he indicates one of the ferris wheel’s carts.
“Are you blind? The whole thing is broken.”
“Which part is broken in the ferris wheel?
The two go back and forth for a minute as Daniel continues to earnestly ask for help identifying the broken part of the ferris wheel. The user gets angrier and angrier until he breaks down, tells Daniel to kill himself and delete the server. That’s just the start of the fun.
In other videos, DanielFromSL runs an obnoxious presidential campaign on a GTA V roleplaying server, tortures the poor players of Rust with fake NPCs, and drives the population of Second Life mad with his innocent pranks, such as playing dumb during a real estate deal. Check him out.
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