The Cyber Effect

by Mary Aiken

  While the popularity of a book like Fifty Shades of Grey normalizes bondage, dominance, and sadism—so it is no longer a taboo or forbidden subject—an online Web community devoted to this practice will socialize these fetishes. In other words, the popularity of the book makes it “okay” for you to show an interest in BDSM and feel comfortable browsing the various websites devoted to the subject. Once you begin interacting with members or join a community, you are brought into a belief system. This means that you might adopt the attitudes, values, beliefs, habits, behavioral patterns, and accumulated knowledge of the society you’ve joined. In social psychology this is called one’s “reference group.”

  This norming process can encourage further explorations and adventures too, which are more likely to happen given the powerful force of anonymity online. Sharing your stories in a community like this can be competitive and may lead you to behavior that is even riskier, almost as if you were dared.

  But let’s apply curiosity and experimentation to paraphilia, some of which can become quite compulsive. Say you’re curious and searching online—and come across communities and practices that are new and interesting. Over time, as you are cyber-socialized in this community, you can adopt the belief system of the group. What may be initially troubling, or make you uncomfortable, can seem normal over time.

  The common theme in the BDSM scenario is pain and discomfort. A person with a masochistic disorder is sexually aroused by the act—real or simulated—of being beaten, humiliated, abused, or tortured. Sometimes this is just verbal humiliation, but for some it means self-inflicted cuts, burns, and piercings. Masochistic sexual activity can involve simulated punishments, like spanking, or rape. The problem with these behaviors is that they can become escalated—more and more extreme versions and scenarios are required to cause the desired result. There are aspects of BDSM that are compulsive, even addictive and destructive, and some people may be more susceptible to the cultlike trap of escalating behavior. I can’t help but wonder if this could happen more quickly online, due to the combined cyber effects of socialization, syndication, escalation, and online disinhibition.

  And what about individuals who are suffering from sadistic behavior disorder? Does the mainstream popularization of BDSM encourage and normalize more extreme behavior? Does it mean a greater pool of willing experimental partners? It doesn’t surprise me that the U.K., which has taken a progressive role in online governance, has amended its regulations for paid-for video-on-demand films and now bans images that depict abusive, violent, and sadistic behavior—such as caning, aggressive whipping, spanking, and face-sitting, as well as life-threatening acts such as strangulation. I believe if there were more such consideration of ethics in cyberspace, greater governance, better education, and, if necessary, appropriate regulation, it could spare many vulnerable individuals from harm and pain and prevent susceptible people from going deeper into behaviors that may ultimately be destructive. Great societies are judged not just by how they serve the strongest but by how they protect the weakest and most vulnerable. We need to collectively focus on creating the best possible cyber society. Pursuit of the greater good should never go out of fashion.

  Cyber-Exhibitionism

  The Internet is like a catalog of desire begging people to flip through it. Think of the laboratory experiment in which the men watched an erotic slideshow and wound up with a fetish for boots. Now think of the erotic slideshow that is the Internet, and what sorts of new desires, and new behaviors, are being created.

  It’s hard to forget Anthony Weiner, the skinny, superambitious American politician who posted photos of his genitals to a selection of different women online while engaged (and later married) to Huma Abedin, a talented and attractive woman with a highly visible political job. What is wrong with this picture? Weiner, an otherwise accomplished individual—serving the 9th District of New York for thirteen years—was forced to give up his congressional seat following a sexting scandal that consumed the United States for weeks in 2011 (the same year that Fifty Shades of Grey was published, interestingly enough).

  Exhibitionistic disorder is a mental health condition, a paraphilia that centers on a need to expose one’s genitals to others, typically strangers caught off guard, in order to gain sexual satisfaction. Men make up the vast majority of people who participate in exhibitionism. And nearly all targets of exhibitionism are women, underage girls, or underage boys. Usually the behavior begins during the first decade of adulthood, although some individuals do start later in life. Roughly one-third of all men arrested for sexual offenses in the United States are exhibitionists.

  Flashers are a subject of lots of jokes and humor, cartoons and comic sketches. But exhibitionism is a real disorder, and it would be compassionate to remember that people may not choose this way of life. Some psychologists believe it is driven by profound feelings of personal inadequacy. The exhibitionist may be afraid to reach out to another person out of fear of rejection and is led to exhibitionism as a way to somehow involve others, however briefly, in an intimate moment. Logically, if contact is limited to just the opening of a raincoat before dashing off, or the quick snapshot of one’s private parts sent to the in-box of an unsuspecting woman, the possibility and pain of overt rejection are minimized.

  Some men expose themselves looking for affirmation of their masculinity. Others may simply seek attention they crave. Anger and hostility toward people, particularly women, may drive some exhibitionists. In this case, they expose themselves to cause shock and frighten.

  Like many paraphilias, exhibitionism is difficult behavior to give up because it’s typically a source of great excitement and pleasure. Most people are motivated to continue, which is why treatment for exhibitionism, as well as many other paraphilias, is a complex process, and several methods are usually tried without success. Exhibitionists have the highest rate of rearrests of any sexual offender.

  As far as we know, Weiner was not an open-raincoat type—a guy who flashed women on the street in order to shock them. Rather, he befriended female strangers online and quickly transformed informal chitchat about politics and policy into a sexually explicit exchange—unprovoked and unwanted sexts.

  The practice of sexting, or exchanging intimate text and images online, is increasingly popular behavior, almost normalized, but nonetheless it’s an awfully high-risk practice for a public figure like Weiner. In his case, the behavior was so reckless, it defies logic. I can’t help but wonder what other factors were at play—and what he hoped to gain that was so important to him in the moment. Was it a need for power or to shock women? Or both?

  A recent study at Ohio State University demonstrated that men who post a lot of selfies—particularly if they were edited or Photoshopped beforehand—scored higher on measures of narcissism and psychopathy than men who didn’t. Narcissism is the belief that you’re smarter, more attractive, and better than others. Psychopathy is characterized by egocentric and antisocial activity. Follow-up work suggests that the same findings apply to women. Both the narcissist and the exhibitionist are hungry for feedback or some reaction to their behavior. There is a self-reinforcing cycle: When a selfie is posted, it leads to feedback, which encourages the posting of more selfies. “We are all concerned with our self-presentation online,” said Dr. Jesse Fox, the lead author of the Ohio State study, “but how we do that may reveal something about our personality.”

  Weiner revealed a lot more than personality. There are still a few of his explicit selfies available online—the staying power of images online is another reason why this kind of behavior is so risky for public figures—and an interesting study could be made of them, in terms of what’s called “content analysis,” or the forensic analysis of the content of an image, typically the subject, pose, environment, identifying objects, and other details that can provide a lot of information.

  I have conducted extensive research in image-content analysis, and I’m now in the process of developing a software tool that will help po
lice to extrapolate more data and information from an image. For this tool, I have organized content analysis into five categories, ranging from demographic detail (age, gender, and ethnicity) to situational (identifying objects, environment, and setting). I have developed a grid system to apply to each image that breaks it into segments to be analyzed individually. Each segment can be zoomed into and methodically investigated, much like a systematic room-to-room search done by police.

  I used my systematic approach to analyze one of Weiner’s sexts that was cropped to make it fit for publication in the New York Daily News, and it’s fascinating how many identifying details there are. In a classic “power shot,” he shows off his bare torso and flexed pecs, and behind him, on a narrow table over his right shoulder, is an array of framed personal and professional photographs. Was this unintended? A person taking a selfie can be either disinhibited—lost in the moment and oblivious of surroundings—or quite conscious and therefore carefully staging the image, and designing it to impress. In forensics, “staging” means deliberately falsifying a crime scene (when the offender alters the evidence), but in this case, I am using the common definition of staging—setting a scene in order to make a certain impression.

  Once again, the key word used to distinguish between a behavior and a true disorder is distress. Clearly Weiner’s behavior was persistent enough, and distressful enough, to destroy a political career that he had been diligently polishing and honing for decades. What would drive a man to such risky behavior and cause him to become an object of such incredible ridicule? Unfortunately for him, his name still elicits laughter.

  I call this cyber-exhibitionism. It appears to be a mutation of real-world behavior and part of a new generation of paraphilia in cyberspace, where there is better reach, a wider audience, more victims, compromised judgment, more risk-taking, heightened distress, and, most important, permanent digital records. For an individual with the sorts of apparent needs and vulnerabilities that Weiner demonstrates, the forces of online disinhibition, escalation, and impulsivity are enormously powerful. And enormously destructive. One of the earliest forms of cyber-exhibitionism, “JenniCam,” came out of a university art project. A young woman broadcast from her dorm room 24/7, which eventually escalated to her allowing viewers to watch her nude, then to allowing viewers to watch her having sex.

  The nature of the relationship between voyeur and exhibitionist is symbiotic, almost parasitic, and explains the phenomenon of reality TV. In a later chapter on teenagers and technology, I will discuss sexting or nude selfies as part of the courtship ritual among young people, and also a mild form of cyber-exhibitionism.

  A bizarre case in the U.K. recently showed how criminal and deviant behavior, facilitated by technology, is continually evolving. In 2015, Lorraine Crighton-Smith was traveling on a train in South London when her iPhone was suddenly bombarded with explicit photos of a man’s genitals. The thirty-four-year-old woman, shocked by the first image, instantly declined it. As soon as she did, another image appeared. Then she realized that she had switched on “Airdrop” on her phone to share photos with a friend who was also an iPhone user. By mistake, her privacy setting for Airdrop was put on “everyone” instead of “contacts only.” This allowed her phone to be accessed by someone sitting nearby on the train, which takes the new term cyber-exhibitionism to a new place.

  Two years after his sexting scandal, Weiner announced his candidacy for New York City mayor, hoping that the electorate had moved on—or forgotten. But the Internet is unforgiving. More sexts surfaced. To stifle more controversy, he quickly acknowledged that he had continued to cyber-flash and send explicit images online to at least three women in 2012. Hoping to stay in the race, he and his wife appeared at a press conference together, where he apologized: “I want to again say that I am very sorry to anyone who was on the receiving end of these messages and the disruption this has caused.”

  Refusing to drop out, he hung on—and forty-eight hours before the primary, he mused, “Maybe if the Internet didn’t exist…if I was running in 1955…I’d probably get elected mayor.” Instead, he lost the mayoral primary with less than 5 percent of the vote.

  On his disastrous election day, when reporters asked Weiner what he planned to do next, he whipped out his middle finger and flipped the bird. Perhaps the next best thing to the open raincoat.

  Webcams + Cyber-Voyeurism

  Another paraphilia that has migrated and morphed significantly online is voyeurism, also known as scopophilia—or the recurrent preoccupation with fantasies and acts that involve observing persons who are naked or engaged in grooming or sexual activity. What once was simply the classic “peeping Tom” has been impacted by technology in the past century by the invention of the camera.

  A case of this in the real world involved a prominent rabbi in Washington, D.C., who hid a small camera inside the ritual bath of the National Capital Mikvah, next to the Kesher Israel Congregation in Georgetown. When female congregants came to the basement bath and shed their clothes to practice the ancient sacred purification rite of dunking in the water and reciting a blessing, a small digital camera hidden inside a clock radio took their pictures.

  In 2014, Rabbi Barry Freundel, renowned as an authority on Jewish law and ethics and an “intellectual giant,” according to the Washington Post, was charged with six counts of voyeurism and faced up to six years in prison. Eventually, he pleaded guilty to fifty-two counts of voyeurism. Prosecutors identified a further one hundred recordings of women, but these fell outside the statute of limitations. In May 2015, Freundel was sentenced to six and a half years in prison.

  Over the past few decades, there have been cases of this kind of privacy violation—cameras hidden behind hotel-room mirrors, cameras hidden in women’s bathrooms. The lawmakers hoping to protect individuals from privacy violations have always raced to keep up with technological changes. Imagine if a voyeur with a persistent disorder like Rabbi Freundel’s found ways to access the webcams of a young woman’s computer? What if he were able to access dozens of these webcams at once?

  This brings me to our last story of the chapter.

  Five months before Cassidy Wolf, of Temecula, California, was crowned Miss Teen USA in 2013, the poised and picture-perfect nineteen-year-old received an anonymous email from a man who had hacked into her computer and gained control of its webcam. With it, he had spied on Wolf in her bedroom. How?

  The voyeur had surreptitiously installed malicious software on Wolf’s computer, using some form of Remote Access Trojan, or RAT, that can be bought online for as little as forty dollars. He told Wolf that he would release images that he’d gotten from her webcam unless she complied with one of his three demands: send nude photos, send a nude video, or log on to Skype and do whatever the hacker asked for five minutes.

  No dummy, Wolf contacted authorities immediately, and an FBI investigation was launched. Three months later, Jared James Abrahams, a nineteen-year-old man who had gone to high school with Wolf, was arrested. He had gained control of twelve different women’s webcams and had hacked into an estimated 100 to 150 other computers, and was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

  Raising awareness of cybercrime became Wolf’s mission during her year as Miss Teen USA. “I wasn’t aware that somebody was watching me,” she told an interviewer. The light on her webcam hadn’t even gone on. While traveling the country, she offered tips for cyber-security: change passwords frequently, delete browsing history regularly, and—most important—put a sticker over the computer’s webcam lens when you’re not using it.

  The webcam may be technology’s greatest gift to the voyeur. Considering that more than 70 million computers were purchased in the United States in 2015 alone, not to mention the preexisting devices—the smartphones, tablets, and desktops with cameras that connect to the Internet—it’s daunting to imagine the spying capabilities of voyeurs.

  Previously Unimaginable

  A new sexual freedom has been spawned by the Internet—
encouraged by the effects of anonymity, cyber-socialization, online syndication, disinhibition, and escalation—and even given rise to new or formerly unknown fetishes like cranking. The cyberpsychological reality: One can easily stumble upon a behavior online and immerse oneself in new worlds and new communities, and become cyber-socialized to accept activities that would have been unacceptable just a decade ago. The previously unimaginable is now at your fingertips—just waiting to be searched.

  Technology isn’t the problem. It’s that we don’t yet know the full effects of the cyber environment or where it is taking us. Like the beginning of many kinds of life adventures, sexual exploration on the Internet can be exciting at first. You may tell yourself you are just dipping your toe in the water. But what if that water feels great—just wonderful. And what if, soon afterward, all you can think about is getting your toe back in that water again. Before long, you may be bouncing on the diving board and jumping in. How can you resist?

  And when is it time to stop?

  CHAPTER 2

  Designed to Addict

  Soon after Alexandra Tobias, a twenty-two-year-old mother in Florida, called 911 to report that her three-month-old son, Dylan, had stopped breathing and needed resuscitation, she told investigators that the baby was pushed off the sofa by the family dog and hit his head on the floor. Later, full of regret and sorrow, she confessed to police that she was playing FarmVille on her computer and had lost her temper when little Dylan’s crying distracted her from the Facebook game. She picked up her baby and began shaking him violently, and his head had hit her computer. At the hospital, he was pronounced dead from head injuries and a broken leg.

  At the time of the 2010 incident, FarmVille, a wildly popular online game where players become virtual farmers who raise crops and livestock, had 60 million active users. Described in glowing terms as “highly addictive” by its fans, there was eventually a need for FAA (FarmVille Addicts Anonymous) support groups, and even an FAA page on Facebook itself. Can we say that Alexandra Tobias was addicted? Is the explanation that simple? Her virtual cattle were doing fine, but her real life was in ruins.