CyberSin

Of course every invention, from television to nuclear power, tends to incarnate the will (conscious or unconscious) of its employer.

Stephen L. Talbott, The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst (Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1995), 33.

The Internet provides easy, (supposedly) anonymous access to a number of vices, including:

For the purposes of discussion, consider one of the vices above: adultery. The Internet has led to illicit romantic affairs due to several characteristics of the technology, examined below.

Communication Filtering
The Internet allows selective filtering of communication. During a chat session, only text messages are exchanged, and thus participants in the session can hide their true identity, physical location, gender, age, occupation, and almost everything else. Credibility, honesty, tension, and other important communication qualifiers are typically available to us during face-to-face communication, but these means are often not present on the Internet. A speaker's reputation affects his or her credibility when speaking, but not for anonymous speakers on the Internet. A speaker's body language also affects credibility, but not when the communication channel is limited to text.

Because the communication channel is so limited, users have strict control over how much personal information they share. This makes it easier to hide faults and to exaggerate attractive points in one's personality. Thus an illicit love affair over the Internet can start as an innocent electronic conversation, and soon two people can become emotionally involved; however, the emotional bond between them may often be based on innocent or deliberate misrepresentation or hiding of certain personality traits.

False Sense of Intimacy
Once one establishes an Internet identity (whether truly representative of one's personality or not), it is easy to then become emotionally intimate on the Internet. Intimacy comes from sharing private feelings and thoughts—easy to do because of the anonymity afforded by hiding one's identity. Even though they would never disclose such information to a stranger on the street, and perhaps not even to casual friends, Internet users often feel no such inhibition electonically. However, such intimacy can be false, because it is built on a foundation of information hiding and selective confession.

Individualistic
The Internet as a communication tool encourages individualism. Because one has such powerful control over what information is shared and what is not, the individual—not the community—decides when, where, and how communication will take place. Communication is often performed alone in a room at a terminal. Unlike one's physical neighbors, whom we do not always choose, but must live with nevertheless, virtual "neighbors" who form a community on the Internet all have joined that community because of a like interest. In fact, any conversation not related to the community topic is often considered in bad taste and discouraged. The individual can select her own communities based on personal interest alone.