Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

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Why People Attack

Each Other Online

Your reputation is constantly at risk from malicious attack by

people you know—and even from complete strangers. Every day,

thousands of innocent victims find that they have been smeared, slan-

dered, and dragged through the mud online by one or more attack-

ers. The motives for these attacks vary widely, ranging from petty

jealousy to sociopathy. But these attacks have one thing in common:

they often leave an indelible mark on the victim’s search results.

Most people are subject to few malicious online attacks, but you

still need to be on guard against them. It is necessary to take pre-

cautions now because malicious reputation attacks create some of

the most severe, pernicious, and persistent forms of reputation dam-

age. Even if you have not yet been a victim of a malicious attack, it

is important to understand the motivations of online attackers so

that you know how to prepare yourself in case of the worst. By anal-

CHAPTER

101Why People Attack Each Other Online

ogy, prudent drivers wear their seatbelts every time they get in the

car, even though they hope to avoid accidents. And, as described in

Chapter 11, starting your preparation now can help prevent and

minimize the damage caused by an online attack; if you have care-

fully bolstered your online profile and carefully monitor your online

reputation for changes, an attacker will find it very difficult to cause

major damage.

This chapter provides insight into the types of people that

might launch an online reputation attack against you. If you are the

victim of an anonymous online attack, this chapter may help identify

who is behind it and how the person can be convinced to stop or re-

tract the attack.

There Have Always Been Attacks on Reputation

Malicious gossip, rumor, and slander are as old as human society.

Ancient texts are filled with stories of whispered conversations and

false allegations. To take just one example, in the Christian Bible,

Paul the Apostle uses people who spread gossip and lies as an exam-

ple of the evil that can infect humankind: “They are gossips, slan-

derers, God-haters, haughty, arrogant, boastful, . . . faithless,

heartless, ruthless.”

1

The apostle Timothy similarly condemns “gos-

sips and busybodies” who “[say] things they ought not to.”

2

Recorded

examples of gossip go back even further in history; the ancient Greek

leader Pericles, who ruled Athens from 461 B.C. to 421 B.C., was not

immune from public whispering. A popular rumor of the time alleged

that he was always depicted wearing a helmet in order to hide his de-

formed skull.

3

If gossip and slander are common in the offline world, then it

should come as no surprise that they are also common online.

Turning on a computer, sadly, does not replace negative emotions

with positive ones. Nor do people instantly magically become angelic

when they go online. If anything, many people who are polite face-to-

102 Wild West 2.0

face become more aggressive and harsh online. See Chapter 5 for an

explanation of how anonymity can empower ill will.

There can be no complete list of motives for online attacks. Any

attempt to list every possible reason why humans maliciously attack

each other would necessarily be incomplete; every day, people find

new reasons to do horrible things. But there are some common cat-

egories that explain the vast majority of malicious Internet reputa-

tion damage. Among them are jealousy, envy, revenge, bullying,

vigilante enforcement of social norms, politics, business and greed,

extortion, social gossip, and sociopathy.

The Usual Suspects: Jealousy,

Envy, and Revenge

Three of the most common negative human emotions are the cause

of many online reputation attacks. There are no reliable statistics

about the motivations behind online attackers—nor is there likely to

ever be a comprehensive study—but it is a safe bet that more than

half of online smear campaigns against private individuals start with

one of the “big three” motivations: jealousy, envy, and revenge.

Jealousy

Beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed

monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

—IAGO IN SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO

Jealousy is the feeling of insecurity that comes with a fear of losing

something. It is most strongly associated with the feelings of insecure

lovers, who constantly worry that their loved one will leave them for

another. Jealousy of this form is closely related to (but still distinct

from) envy, which is the emotion felt by someone who desires what

somebody else has.