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E-vil.

Something I've always been unclear on is where exactly the line between "evil" and "something I don't like right now" went. For example, I get a lot of people in my reports calling other users bad people, or saying they're evil. Like, literally evil. Because someone flamed them, they are now evil, morally bankrupt, devoid of any redeeming or positive qualities (The funny thing is, a lot of the people crying "evil!" seem to think flaming is a-ok when they're the ones doing it, which brings me to my confusion). That seems excessive to me. I mean, rude, okay. A jerk, yes, sure. Violator of the rules, deserving of a stern talking-to, kind of a nasty person, these all work. But full-on evil? I don't know, maybe it's the nihilist in me, but that smacks of extremism and a turned-off brain. Someone trolling in Site Feedback might be annoying, but to describe them as truly evil requires a level of knowledge likely not obtainable from animated bred bus images. Evil, by general consensus, takes a little more than day-to-day human behavior, it takes concentrated and deliberate malice. Think Ted Bundy, think Stalin, think Hussein. People who know what they're doing is massively, permanently, severely hurtful to other human beings but do it anyway because they don't care. Before anyone tells me trolls know they're doing something wrong and therefore they're evil, stop and consider: some of them think it's a joke, and there is just no way you're ever going to convince me that anything on this site is on par with food, clothing, shelter, life, or freedom. It's pixels.

Of course, it doesn't stop there. Go to the right forum and you'll see people decrying entire nations of people they've never met as evil. I've actually seen people imply that one side in a war really wanted the war to continue, wanted their own people to be killed and their own homes to be blown up. What the hell, guys? Don't hold all of them responsible for a few nutjobs-- that'd be like blasting the entire site because of one GD user. More and more it seems like the tactic of people who grasp at straws, who in some way know they're not inherently 100% right but don't want to lose that certainty. If the other side is evil, though, you win by default. Me, I think it's horseshit. Entire foreign countries aren't evil, religions aren't evil, and the guy you think hacked your sister's friend's cousin's account and stole her angelic scarf isn't evil. Pull out some real reasons and then I'll respect you.