Everyone has cheated at something in their lives, right? It is an urge that, in specific situations, many of us have not been able to resist, a shortcut to success for those who have no qualms about violating codes of honor or fair play.
Even though multiple polls suggest that around 90% of people are generally honest, most of the time, there is a non-negligible chunk of the population that is no stranger to bending the rules to get their way. Particularly concerning academic pursuits, where the dishonesty rate jumps up 25%. Self-esteem ranks as a powerful psychological motivation for attaining unearned accomplishments, but the fear of losing something seems to be the prime motivator for people to cheat.
Research from the University of Queensland shows that there may be a genetic component to cheating. Their study shows that people with specific vasopressin and oxytocin receptor genes function differently in social situations than most. That is so on account of these hormones regulating anxiety and fear.
Since we now live in an age where most people cannot do without technology, modern innovations are continuously seeping into virtually every aspect of life, cheating included. Below, we break down how people use tech to attain an edge in four areas.
On Academic Tests
For over a decade, students have utilized the combo of a wireless earpiece and mic to cheat on tests. That has been an unfortunate byproduct of Bluetooth technology. However, in the 2010s, dishonest young adults have moved to more advanced tech such as loading programmable calculators and smartwatches with exam responses. Nowadays, it is also not uncommon for academic cheaters to place spy cameras in their glasses which feed a stream to a remote accomplice that provides answers through a super small earbud or a smartwatch. In China, some students have even gone so far as to hire individuals to take their tests for them, supplying them with fake fingerprints so they can pass themselves off as their employers upon mandatory identification scans.
Moreover, people enrolled in university education are not only cheating on physical knowledge examinations. They also have discovered ways to beat plagiarism checkers by implementing software that automatically rephrases paragraphs, so plagiarism inspecting AI cannot track down their source. Naturally, they have to finesse their essays before submission manually.
When Gambling
As long as games of chance have existed, people have attempted to cheat when playing them. Casino products offer player versus dealer action. That means a gambler is testing his luck against an establishment, making it easier for most to justify resorting to nefarious tactics. One of the most popular ways gamblers use tech to cheat at casino floors is with roulette computers. These are systems composed of multiple elements. The first is a camera that supplies a live video of a roulette wheel’s spin. The provided video feed gets run through software that factors in the speed and deceleration of the ball and rotation to approximate in what wheel sector it is most likely to land.
A similar system was used by a team of cheaters in 2011, who figured out how to predict a slot machine’s random number generator. Field operatives would send a gameplay video feed through a smartphone to remote accomplices who analyze the received video, run it through a proprietary software built for that specific game, and provide gameplay insights.
Many people cheat when playing online poker by incorporating bot software within virtual card games.
In Video Games
On the topic of gambling, it is worth noting that as video game streaming has blown up in the past decade, so have multiple gambling channels on Twitch. But, what most of their viewers do not know is that few of these casino streamers are playing for real money. Or with their funds. So, in a sense, they are cheating their audiences by providing them with a false narrative.
Gambling aside, there have been multiple Twitch scandals revolving around popular streamers using hacks to show off superior gaming skills that they do not possess. An example of this is Call of Duty: Warzone streamer MrGolds, who lost his channel for utilizing aim-bot applications. MissQGemini also got caught and banned from Twitch for using a similar cheat.
Competitive Sports
Of course, when cheating in sports comes up, the first thing that comes to mind is performance-enhancing drugs, even though technology doping does exist. The World Anti-Doping Agency officially recognized this term in 2006.
Given that most sports require some equipment, it is somewhat hard to determine what qualifies as technology doping. A few historical examples include the LZR Racer swimsuit by Speedo that increased oxygen flow to muscles and IonX shirts that contained a negatively charged electromagnetic field that performed the same function.
Also Read: How To Judge If Your Partner Cheating On You
