Evil

This is a theme in this book. We often label things as evil or bad if they are abnormal, yet we often fail to adequately define what normal actually means.

Finally, some people are aroused by annoying someone. Four per cent of men and 5 per cent of women are sexually aroused by the idea of making obscene sexual phone calls – called scatalogia (yes, that’s the correct term, we’ll get to scatophillia in a minute).

A paraphilic interest really just means being sexually aroused by something that other people are not. Paraphilia stands in contrast to ‘normophilic’ sexual interests, a slightly ridiculous way of saying that someone is into normal sex. According to one of the main books used to diagnose mental-health concerns, the DSM-5,2 normophilic interests involve ‘genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners’. According to this, someone is only sexually normal if they like touching the private parts of someone who looks normal, is a grown-up, and is giving consent. Does this suggest that being attracted to someone who looks different, due to choice or genetic lottery, is pathological?

Is cyberbullying evil? Online bullying is often seen as worse than bullying in real life, albeit less likely to involve physical violence, partly because it can be more public and the perpetrator unknown.26 Another problem is that, unlike physical bullies, cyberbullies can easily follow us everywhere online. It makes it difficult, even impossible, to get away from them. Cyberbullying can be a major factor in suicide, mental-health problems and major lifestyle changes such as leaving a school or job

It seems that, much as in real life, we are far more likely to be assholes online when we are grumpy and when others are being assholes

The first is social contagion, which refers to the decades’ worth of research which shows that humans often act the way those around them act, with emotions, behaviour and attitudes being passed from one person to another. Linked with this is the idea of normalisation – when many of us are doing something we feel as though this is the normal, perhaps even appropriate, thing to do or write. Normalisation also means that we feel as though there will be no negative consequences to following along with what other people do. We also often fear acting against the norm, as we don’t want to become targets of harassment ourselves.

Ehrenfeld continues, ‘The widespread attack affected endless sectors – energy, transportation, shipping, telecommunications, and of course healthcare. Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) reported that computers, MRI scanners, blood-storage refrigerators and operating room equipment may have all been impacted. Patient care was reportedly hindered and at the height of the attack, the NHS was unable to care for non-critical emergencies and resorted to diversion of care from impacted facilities.’ People were turned away from hospitals because of the attack. People might well have died because of WannaCry.

word evil. Rather, it was described as exploitative and devastating, and the fault seemed to be placed randomly on Microsoft, the victimised businesses, or the hackers who built it. I even found an article specifically saying that WannaCry was not created by evil geniuses, but was the result of people not updating their computers often enough. It’s the same kind of victim-blaming that communicates to victims of revenge porn that they shouldn’t have sent naked pictures, or the victims of identity theft that they should have more sophisticated passwords. Captain Hindsight seems to have a lot to say.

To be online is to experience a disembodiment of ideas. The internet frees us from our physical selves, for better and worse. And this leads to a flat experience, leaving behind the normal multisensory interaction we have with people in real life that reminds us that they are fleshy, vulnerable and sensitive

We can also do more damage, and do it faster, than ever before. According to computer scientists Pranshu Gupta and Ramon Mata-Toledo, cybercrimes are not just abstract, they are psychologically violent. ‘Cybercrimes can cause more psychological harm and deprivation than any other crime committed against a person.’18 From an email scam getting us to transfer money to a prince in Nigeria, to having our private images leaked as part of a revenge porn attack, to a hacker accessing and sharing our sexual health information with the world unless we pay up, the toll of cybercrime on our lives can be enormous. And with the increasing use of gadgets that are connected to the internet, our heating, cars and front doors are now also hackable. And that’s just on a personal scale.