I completely abhore back-stabbers. You know who you are, but you're not easy to spot to the untrained eye. You go to work everyday and smile, chat, befriend all of the usuals; but secretly you compare yourself to every one of your acquaintances and hate them because of your own insecurities.
So how do you handle that? You become an online identity. The internet is a great place to be someone else. It appears so one-sided when you're sitting in your chair in front of that glowing empty canvas in front of you. You feel invincible, you can do/become/portray any face that you want and it's all harmless. Right?
There's an endless plethora of web pages to vent your malfeasance. There are even places where you can venture into so much as to have an online "look" so you can actually become someone else. That dark identity inside you that you mask can have a face. But what's the fun in not building some suspicion, or better yet taunt the people that you're so desperately jealous of without them knowing that it's you? So you go where those people go, and after a while you realize that they don't know you're there. A part of you wants them to recognize you, wants them to be surprised that you're really so seeped in intrepidation. So you tempt a subtle reveal that you're aware of who they are. It scares you a little but you can't help but smirk to yourself of the courage you've displayed.
You HAVE to act on it. It becomes the subject that you escape to in the dark recesses of your mind when things are quiet. You pass them in the hall and you smile brighter but tread lightly all the while engaging them in longer than normal conversations just so you can trace their face for some minor sign that they're affected by what that "mean person on the net" did to them.
How does this happen and why hasn't the Law caught up with some consequences for these actions? For the same reason that the Patriot Act is such a bane of contention for so many across the country. The technology laws were written in 1972. A lot has happened in the tech field since 1972 and the law is slow to catch up. There are laws that do some minor justice to internet harassment but they're hard to enforce and hard to prove Probable Cause. Judicial officials equate it to miscommunications and domestic arguments for the most part so most cases that don't result in some sort of physical altercation or death are largely wiped out with some sort of "settlement". It's just not taken seriously yet. And I stress ....yet.
It will be a grand day when the law catches up with technology. It will be satisfying to know that if someone causes damage in someone else's life via the internet will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. This very cool tool that we have to "play" on has become a way for so many creepy crawlers to affect the lives of others that it's high time there is some rectification. If you help someone become more aware of being alone in public, help someone lose their job, or cause hardship to another by cowarding behind a blinking cursor and some silly login name you deserve to be punished.
