The Psychopath Test

by Jon Ronson

‘By that stage,’ Rachel said, ‘I’d met people who had lost loved ones on that bus. To call the people on the bus who died actors and stuntmen was, I thought, abhorrent. So I read all this stuff, and then I came up for air, and I thought, “They don’t realize. As soon as they actually talk to a real person, someone who’s been there, they’ll realize it’s a load of old nonsense and they’ll give up.” He was inviting comments on his website. So I left a very angry one: “How dare you misquote me in this way. Power surges do not tear people’s legs off.” And he responded by saying, “You didn’t even know the bomb was in your carriage! You keep changing your story!” ’ Rachel was furious. She felt it was her duty to make them understand they were wrong. ‘But I had no idea, then, what these people were like,’ she said. ‘What comes through again and again is this complete lack of empathy. They would, for example, cut and paste the most harrowing descriptions by emergency services officers of going into carriages and seeing buckled walls that were streaming with blood and pieces of human flesh and stepping over body parts and stepping over the hole where the bomb had torn a crater in the floor. They’d post this and you couldn’t read it without wanting to weep, and then they would say, “Ah! See? The hole appears to be on the right-hand side.” And that would be their comment.’