Internet Psychopaths - Part 1: The Obsessive

The dangers of being too online and the reality of internet clout.

The internet is a beautiful place for self-expression. When it’s used correctly, it’s a blank canvas to express your most raw thoughts, frustrations, passions, shitposts, and the depths of your insanity. If you use it anonymously, you’re able to express yourself freely even more-so.

The internet isn’t going anywhere, but it’s become pretty cooked lately. The “world wide web” is irrelevant and often unusable. News sites have lost all legitimacy and social media has become a slop-fest. With the birth of AI and the renewed freedom of speech on X, the internet is going through a transition. Either the social aspect of the internet will become worse and people will spend less time online, or it will get better. But for now, it’s pretty cooked. We’ll see where it goes.

Many see the internet as a net-negative on society because of how it affect’s people’s personalities and how it harms socialization. And while that’s true, I see it as a good thing. Not everyone is chronically online. Not everyone is addicted to porn. Those with the ambition to lead a fulfilling life in the real world will find a way to balance being online and “touching grass.” Those who got pulled into the void and became internet creatures weren’t going to make it in the first place. Nature has an efficient way of unraveling things for what they truly are.

Internet Psychopaths

There’s too much I can say on this topic and I want to do so without talking about myself too much. As the most hated man on the sometimes funny, sometimes intelligent, but often very gay corner of X known as “Right Wing Twitter”, I have more Internet Psychopaths in my notifications within one hour than most will see in their entire lives.

It’s hard to say who is and isn’t a psychopath by internet standards. Some people are just losers with nothing to do. They’ve got nothing going on. They’re bored, and they’re angry that they’re bored, but they’re not necessarily psychopaths. There are of course true psychopaths online, but they’re pretty rare. Most people on social media are lurkers. On the internet, psychopathy tends to manifest itself in groups. Collective psychosis. You see this most often when everyone is ganging up on someone else or endlessly talking about the same thing.

The DSM-IV’s rough definition of a psychopath is someone with a pervasive disregard for and violation of the rights of others, and nowhere else is that easier to do than on the internet. Most people are cowards in real life and avoid confrontation at all costs. Online, however, they can let their dark side reveal itself with little to no consequences. In this post I’m going to talk about what causes internet psychopathy, how to spot an internet psychopath, and how to avoid becoming one.