Explaining the Presence of On-Line Harm Groups
The recent phenomenon of adolescents urging their virtual peers to commit acts of self-harm and the harming of others constitutes the very crest of a wave of digital youth violence. Predators come from abusive homes, while their prey come from homes in which they feel isolated and alienated, lacking attention and affection. The majority of the former are male, of the latter, female. They are to be wed within our novel virtual church, with it fullest faux humanity in its digital pews. On-Line ‘communities’ are such in name only; they are quite loosely connected, and often involved in internecine competition and rivalry wherein members seek to enhance their status by the sheer numbers of victims they can claim. They cajole their prey into self-scarification, the results of which are mindful of nothing other than the ‘kill logos’ drawn on fighter planes during the world wars. The more enemy aircraft one had shot down, the greater one’s status as a pilot. Similarly, armor aces and their crews would often record numbers of enemy ‘kills’ on the chasses of their respective tanks. The torsos and limbs of young women are the chasses and fuselages of the predators who populate groups such as ‘764’ and ‘O9A’. There have been a number of suicides associated with these interactions, for the ultimate ask is to have one’s acolyte sacrifice their life, while of course recording it, for the vicarious pleasure of the predator. Exhorting the death of the other is the transcendental demand which validates one’s own continuing existence. It is the evidence necessary to convince a mortal that he is, in his own eyes, divine.
While disturbing in its practice, there is in fact nothing new in its principles. Seen anthropologically, self-sacrifice as a gift to a master, to an embodied deity, or to a political ruler, is an essential, if extreme, aspect of political organization in general. Those who are marginal to the contemporary polis, through the effect of abuse, mental illness, anomie or yet ressentiment, seek to contrive their own society, wherein they are themselves the masters and leaders. They work fervently to discover those from whom they may extract favors; sexual, emotional, psychological, and even mortal. Young women who lack the acknowledgement of others, and who report the affection and adoration they receive during the ‘grooming’ process undertaken by on-line predators makes them feel valued and thus gives them a novel sense of self-worth, are ultimately betrayed by their suitors. Yet it appears to take a great deal of suffering, manipulation, abuse and even torture, to overcome the set-up of adoration and fondness engendered by the predator. Some victims are able to shake themselves out of this tantalus, while others are not, perhaps going to the grave believing that their sacrifice was but the sternest test of authentic love.
It is vexing, to say the least, that the most noble principles which humanity has created for itself – 1. Self-sacrifice on behalf of a community in altruistic suicide; the chief vehicle of warfare amongst social contract cultures based upon mechanical solidarity; 2. Self-sacrifice to rescue and preserve the life of another individual: the duty of parent to child, for instance, or of the adult to the youth in general; 3. Self-sacrifice as the ultimate act of the lovers’ bond; a favorite in literature and opera, with Tristan und Isolde being perhaps its most far-reaching expression – can be debased and given an infernal twist. The ease of which cultural tropes can be represented within the shadows of social life speaks to their ubiquitous presence in our mental template. Of course, we do not here speak of ‘human nature’, for the essence of being human is to adapt to ever be a generalist; there is no singular human nature. But what is being connected in the fetid fake-lore and desperate disingenuities of on-line harm groups is the essential necessity for a human being to feel wanted, loved, and thus to become part of something larger than oneself.
This is the synchronicity of all such forms of deviant assemblies. Street gangs serve as surrogate families, just as do political groups such as those Neo-Nazi, White Supremacist, and the like. Religious cults serve the same needs, as do the more normative churches, gaming communities, and hobbyists. There is a spectrum, likely almost measurable, whereupon two variables chart their respective courses; rate of alienation over against rate of disaffectivity or ressentiment. The cult registers high on both counts, as do on-line harm groups and the like. The virtual thread of Jaguar owners or like hobbyists register correspondingly low on both counts, and one can easily fill in exemplifications of any ratio in between these extremes. The point is, however, that the seeking of community, of whatever sort, is an absolute prerequisite, not for personal improvement of yet the good life, but for personhood and human life itself.
Given this, anthropological history runs into psychopathology. The works of Bataille, within the discourse of the former, and those of Minkowski, in the latter, contain more than enough analysis and explanation to counter any lightheaded accounts of what precisely is ‘going on’ with the seeming advent of on-line harm and hate groups, often connected as they are. In a word, anomie cannot be used as a failsafe against the accursed share; autism will be the result in each attempted case. The hobbyist manifests a generally benign and controlled form of autism. His is a semi-disconnected world within which only others of his marque and specialty reside. The key difference between the philatelist and the child predator is that the former regularly steps out of his bell-jar and rejoins the remainder of his fellowpersons as a self amongst selves. The latter only does so when compelled, sometimes through violence, and in turn learns that violence can be a most effective source of suasion. For sociopathy only hails from three origins:
1. A mental pathology that has created for the patient a separate world; those suffering from schizo-affective disorders or even schizophrenia – it should be noted that autism is itself originally a mere manifest of the schizophrenic condition – are thus highly suggestible to a knowing grooming but at once susceptible to developing for themselves a predatory prowl, seeking to bring others into their projection, which is for them already a form of self-torture.
2. A severely alienated self-consciousness that does not develop an internal rationale but rather accepts an external analytic which is betrayed by its paranoia and talent for making conspiratorial connections which do not exist in fact. One of the basic problems of historical consciousness, in which we are made aware that the past can always and again be rewritten by the present, allows a certain latitude for the conspiracist to reinterpret world events. This kind of personality also manifests as both predator and prey.
3. A sense of mastery and of destiny which can be summed as the messianic complex. Success in politics or in business can germinate a self conception that gives this person a self-promoted aura which in turn explains their dramatic rise to status and power. Lord Acton, in a letter, penned what has become a cliché, if yet a wise one, when he spoke of ‘absolute power corrupting absolutely’. Many of the oligarchs, plutocrats, and other political leaders of our time provide nothing other than role models for the on-line predator, as their mission is no different; the adoration of, and power over, others.
If we combine the subjective alienation of the anomic, the ressentiment felt by the marginalized, and the saturation of our popular sensibilities by the shiny success of the latter-day gods on earth, it is in fact not astonishing in the least to witness the phenomenon of guided self-harm. Though it could be said to lie at the polar opposite of health and wellness on-line guides, such as those of Calm and HeadSpace, the dynamics utilized by on-line harm and hate are not at all so dissimilar to preclude analysis. My own health and wellness company makes virtual self-help and self-improvement guides, and the graduated steps the client follows mimic the processes of any cult initiation, religious conversion, or sexual self-harm grooming, if assuredly none of these contents. The consistency and indeed essence of moving a human being from one frame of mind to another is psychologically old hat, and indeed, it is to ethnography that we must turn in order to understand its deepest language. For the Ursprache of consciousness-altering methods is also the well-spring of both our reason and our imagination. These two most human essences can be turned to the noble or the base, and thus the on-line harm promoter asks of us a challenging question: who of us is capable of distinguishing the dreams of reason from its equally attendant nightmares?
Social philosopher G.V. Loewen is the author of 63 books in ethics, education, aesthetics, health, and social theory, as well as fiction. He was professor of the interdisciplinary human sciences for over two decades.