Is the Internet really one big psychopathy simulator?  While the Internet may not truly be anonymous, the relative anonymity and asynchronous nature of communication leads many to act poorly while in cyberspace.  Threats, deceit, misrepresentation, and doxxing are common among a non-trivial proportion of users of the Internet.  Why would people act so poorly when presumably they do not act as such in “real” life?  There is a reality of lessened accountability on the web and I surmise that in their natural state – their unhindered state – people are less social than they’d like to admit.  Anonymity leads people to believe that they hold power as there is a relative lack of retribution that could be had by an offended party.  We’ve seen time and time again what some neurotypicals do with power; they use it to exploit others.

So is the Internet a grand experiment in the sharing of information or merely another implementation of the darkest desires of man?  It’s a bit of both, but we should not ignore either.

This is a new type of post, presented without a jump, that will be common in between larger posts in the coming weeks.  Intended for quick reading and discussion, these posts will often be less “meaty” than traditional posts.