In the beginning, onliners advocated what they called “netiquette.” It was the spirit of preserving cooperation, helpfulness, and trust in all digital realms. Unfortunately, over the years we discovered that if you build it, some people will abuse it. This is a toxic example of the generativity principle, which is how people find ways to use technology unanticipated by its designers (Zittrain, 2009).

The brand of deviance endorsed by a dominance/submission cult will strike some people as abnormal and offensive, while others will simply consider it an alternative sexual lifestyle. As in the real world, aberrant behavior in the digital realm runs the spectrum from mild to severe, depending on who is defining it, whether it hurts anyone, and, if it does hurt people, how much harm it does (see Figure 13.1). Along the way, the cyberpsychological architecture of an environment determines what kinds of deviant behavior are possible.

Since the early days of the Internet, those who lean in the direction of deviance have used cyberspace to surprise, shock, deceive, abuse, or take advantage of other people, often for their own personal gain. In the seminal books about cybercrime (Kirwan & Power, 2013; Sternberg, 2012), researchers described the serious offenses that now proliferate online, including piracy, identity theft, extortion, stalking, hacking, drug dealing, human trafficking, political extremism, illegal and disturbing pornography, vigilantism, and child sex offenses. Hopefully, few of us will find ourselves exposed to these disturbing activities.