The festering undercurrent of sociopathic tendencies that inhabit some human animals is something that has always fascinated and amazed me.
Fortunately, there are only a few whose tendencies manifest themselves in ways that result in physical harm to others. The serial killers, rapists and those that decide to take a gun to work some day and shoot their co-workers, to name a few.
My casual observation of our society ‘ and indeed, the world ‘ leads me to believe that there are a far greater number of individuals whose sickness is hidden below the surface and is not immediately apparent to those around him.
I say ‘him,’ mainly because most sociopaths that go out of their way to inflict pain on others seem to be male. The female serial killer or child molester appears to be a rarity unless I’m missing some large and significant portion of the daily news.
When I talk about individuals who harbor these hidden tendencies, I am thinking about the type of person who would write a computer virus and then release it to cause harm to people the virus writer cannot possibly know and probably never meet. Or the hacker who defaces someone’s web site just for kicks, or to showcase their technical prowess, despite the fact that the web site’s owner never did anything to cause harm to the hacker.
Then there’s the sicko that frequents online chat rooms for the purpose of entering vulgar and obscene messages or simply to stir up trouble in some fashion.
What I am getting at here is that there appears to be a pretty significant population of sick individuals who are able to act on their abnormal impulses only when they have something to hide behind, and feel like they are out of the reach of those they intend to inflict harm upon in one way or another.
These are people who would most likely never approach someone on the street and say to someone’s face the kinds of things they like to say in chat rooms or as comments one someone else’s blog. Probably for fear of getting socked in the face.
However, these sick little cowards can’t seem to stop themselves from causing harm or trying to inflict pain on others when they feel safe behind their keyboards in their homes or wherever they happen to be.
As wonderful as the Internet is, and as much as I love it, it seems to have opened up a whole new way for sick individuals to express themselves. These are the types of weirdoes that would be making obscene phone calls or sending a sick letter in the mail a decade or two ago, before the Internet came along.
This is, in no way, a slam against the Internet. Hardly. That would be ridiculous, and akin to blaming the invention of the telephone for the aforementioned obscene phone calls.
Like anything else, the Internet can be abused by those with nothing more productive to do with their lives.
What brought this subject to mind was a comment one of these sociopaths left via my contact page just a short time ago.
I have no idea why this individual would take the time to leave a comment like this. From what I can tell, this was not left by someone in the local area, so it appears to be someone who cannot even know me. The web records indicate that the comment came from someone in the southwest United States — possibly Arizona.
I can only speculate that this individual happened upon my site and for whatever strange reason it is that motivates these defectives, decided to leave this comment for me.
The thought also occurred to me that he might also be someone who is involved in spamming or perhaps phishing scams, and may not like what I have said about those particular activities.
However, my logs indicate that he did not even view those areas of my site and was only on my site for about 3 minutes. Therefore, my conclusion is that he is just one of these sociopathic sickos out cruising around the Internet looking for ways to cause harm or to simply irritate someone else.
So, I decided to devote a little space in my blog to one of the many sick individuals out there who sit in their bedrooms (or wherever) and use the Internet to reach out and try to cause a little trouble or tick someone off.
For the record, here is the comment he left for me:
From: None of Your Beeswax
E-Mail: johndoe@noneOfyourbusiness.com
Telephone:
Time: never
Regarding: You are a total jerk sh__head (he was kind enough to use the real word)
Contact By: E-Mail
From: 69.92.46.240 46-240.69-92-cpe.cableone.net
Those numbers that make up the last line of the message is the IP Address, or Internet Address of the computer he was using to post the comment on my site. That is a feature of the contact page that give me a little bit of info about where the comment originated. That is what told me he is likely in the southwest U.S.
I don’t suppose I will ever understand what motivates screwballs like this and I doubt that anyone else does either. They’re just a fact of life the rest of us have to deal with occasionally as we make our way in life.
I guess the only good thing about them is that they remind the rest of us that we are not sick like they are, and that’s something to feel good about.
Leave a Reply