Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t

A quote from Julian Dibble’s “A Rape In Cyberspace”:

‘I engaged in a bit of a psychological device that is called thought-polarization, the fact that this is not RL simply added to heighten the affect of the device. It was purely a sequence of events with no consequence on my RL existence.’ 

They might have known. Stilted though its diction was, the gist of the answer was simple, and something many in the room had probably already surmised: Mr. Bungle was a psycho. Not, perhaps, in real life — but then in real life it’s possible for reasonable people to assume, as Bungle clearly did, that what transpires between word-costumed characters within the boundaries of a make-believe world is, if not mere play, then at most some kind of emotional laboratory experiment. Inside the MOO, however, such thinking marked a person as one of two basically subcompetent types. The first was the newbie, in which case the confusion was understandable, since there were few MOOers who had not, upon their first visits as anonymous “guest” characters, mistaken the place for a vast playpen in which they might act out their wildest fantasies without fear of censure. Only with time and the acquisition of a fixed character do players tend to make the critical passage from anonymity to pseudonymity, developing the concern for their character’s reputation that marks the attainment of virtual adulthood. But while Mr. Bungle hadn’t been around as long as most MOOers, he’d been around long enough to leave his newbie status behind, and his delusional statement therefore placed him among the second type: the sociopath.

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This is what I’ve been so confused about for so many years: how a person can appear to be adequately functioning in real life, but be a psychopath online. 

I’ve thought for over 30 years that psycopathy is something that lies—dormant, shall we say—in all humans. Otherwise how could ostensibly harmless people produce works of fiction about evil? This is what has always fascinated me about Joyce Carol Oates, and made me so certain that I can never hope to attain her level of literary brilliance.

I’ve always thought that it isn’t necessary to have psycopathy in one’s personal approach to life to write, or act, from it. I’ve believed that it was enough to have witnessed, firsthand, the actions of psycopaths, that the more intimate the effect of psycopathy on one’s life, the greater the ability to transfer the reality of it into one’s works of fiction. 

By works of fiction I mean the presentation to the world of things which do not depict one’s own inner life, but present a simulation of the workings of the inner life of another being. In other words, writing or playing a role, by my definition, are works of fiction.

With about ten years of online experience under my belt, my understanding of what is required to depict psycopathic behavior, as a work of fiction, has undergone a gradual and subtle change. 

My own experience, just my experience, I’ve done no research, now causes me to question whether it is possible to project the appearance of psycopathic behavior, convincingly, without it being an integral part of one’s personality. 

Is it possible that the long-term projection of one’s online identity as a psycopath could, eventually, cause an actual change in the personality of the writer/actor, in all areas of life? I’m comparing the effects of long-term role-playing of psycopathic behavior to the long-term use of pornography causing a change in one’s sexual orientation. 

There’s a great deal of research results online supporting the idea of pornography addiction leading to changes in the porn user’s sexual orientation leading away from healthy and realistic sexual relationships. Do your own research. 

Is there such a thing as psycopathy addiction? Could it be that affecting a persona of psycopathy might lead to actual changes in personality? 

Recent research shows that 85% of those imprisoned for possession of child pornography have (by personal report) molested children. This is a much higher percentage than that shown by previous research. 

Does the practice of conscious, “virtual” unconscionable actions lead to unconscionable actions in real life? 

For years I’ve been reading that people online don’t govern their behavior, with the same rigor they practice offline, because they assume they’re anonymous online. I question that. Who, in 2008, really believes that his/her online activities are anonymous?

If you’re combative, aggressive, violent, abusive, displaying no compassion or empathy online, is it because you’re trying on a persona to see what it feels like; is it just an experiment to you? Or, is that who you really are, but you haven’t found your offline associates to be so tolerant of “the real you?” 

Are you really just a psycopath using the internet as a way to test and refine your sociopathic actions, before you unveil them in the offline world? How much of your online behavior is not “just” exploration and role-playing? How much of it is actual honing of the skills necessary to hide your psycopathy so that you can function more anonymously offline? 

As always, I don’t have the answers. I’m not even sure I know what the questions are. 

A Rape In Cyberspace by Julian dibble