HOW IT WORKS — Is everyone now casually evil?
When I think of evil I instantly go to Hitler, serial killers, genocides, Francis Bacon paintings, and of course I can’t forget Satan and his phone number 666. Evil becomes otherworldly, personified, historical, theatrical. It announces itself with a sinister smile, armies, uniforms, twisted forms, dark colors, and headlines.
But what if evil is rarely extraordinary?
The internet didn’t invent evil. It really made it visible and acccesbile. Evil now comes as conversations, comment sections where people can humiliate someone. It exists in algorithms that quietly reward cruelty because outrage increases engagement. It exists in our willingness to scroll past another human’s pain while searching for something more entertaining.
I read racist comments online everyday. Since Elon Musk purchased twitter and renamed it X, those voices have increased. I don’t know if that reflects a general increase in hate or it’s simply exposure, but cruelty has become background noise.
Insulting someone used to require being in proximity. Gossip was local. It belonged to neighborhoods, schools, families, work places. Humans have been transformed into abstractions through digital platforms. Empathy disappeared and we’ve become content. Cruelty is now effortless and the person in the screen stops being a person. Distance removed consequences.
As the genocide in Gaza and occupation of the West Bank dragged on, more and more online videos of massacres were live streamed by Israeli soldiers. Countless videos documenting death, destruction, and violence are currently circulating online on X. Millions watched, commented, shared, or simply continued scrolling in real time.
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The technology that allowed atrocities to be witnessed also made indifference easier than ever before. Everything shares the same visual space now. Strangers dying on camera competes for our attention alongside entertainment and celebrity scandals.
Casual evil now flourishes ironically because of the absence of attention. Technology pushed anonymity and people can now ignore or dismiss without having to feel responsible for any harm caused online. Attention is also scarce. Endless feeds and constant distraction make it possible to ignore suffering without feeling responsible for it. Seeing has become another form of consumption.
We participate in it everyday.
Not necessarily through direct acts of cruelty, but through habits of indifference. We scroll. We ignore. We laugh. We move on. We become accustomed to suffering because there is always another post waiting beneath it.
None of this means every instagram user is evil or every digital interaction is harmful. The internet also allowed communities to organize, expose injustice, document police violence, raise money, preserve memory, and build solidarity across borders. Technology is not inherently good nor evil.
But technology has changed the conditions under which ordinary cruelty operates.
It lowered the cost of humiliation while increasing its audience.
Most of us imagine evil as something committed only by monsters, billionaires, or killers. Yet ordinary cruelty asks very little of us. It asks only that we remain indifferent.
The more urgent question today is not whether evil exists.
It’s whether we have become comfortable with ordinary cruelty.
