/b/ strikes again; another animal abuser attacked

[Zuul]

On Monday afternoon, this video was posted to a thread on /b/ with the words, "Find this dumb little bitch and throw her into a river."

This is a much worse situation than the lady tossing the cat in the garbage can for a couple of reasons. The abuse in question is a girl throwing very young puppies one by one into a river where they presumably die. It could be argued that they don't suffer much and it's no different from euthanasia, though. I don't know. I'm no expert on puppy drowning.

But the other reason this is worse? Nobody has come forward. Nobody confessed. There's no hard evidence of who did this and that hasn't stopped a group of /b/tards from tracking down the people they think are involved on Facebook and harassing them and their friends and family members.

Here's a screencap of the 4chan thread where it's all being discussed and the Gawker article I found it from.

The clever thing about /b/tards turning to Internet vigilantism is that they can get a lot more people worked up. Moral outrage is a fantastic tool for getting people to do questionable things, such as harassing some random girl on Facebook who may have no idea what's going on at all.

Never fear, though. A number of them have no interest in being "justicefags."

[ivan astikov]

While I am totally against some of the more extreme methods of vigilantiism mentioned regarding this incident, I'm kinda glad that amateurs are able to assist in fucking up the lives of these pieces of shit who like to film themselves killing animals. Hopefully, their success rate wont deter other corrupt-minded fuckers from leaving big clues to their identity on the web.

If children and teens eventually stop posting their sick videos on the internet out of fear of being traced, then we'll just have to rely on their parents or teachers to be paying enough attention to notice little Timmy or Thomasina's odd quirks.

ps. latest update: http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Twi...ies_into_river

[Zuul]

Eh...see, I don't know. Like I said, it could be taken as a rather brute do-it-yourself euthanasia. It's clearly in a rural area and that's how a lot of country folks get rid of unwanted litters around here. It's probably more humane than some of the other methods I've heard of. Making a video of it makes me think they're pretty warped, but it was probably less sadism and more country practicality.

FWIW, the girl they've identified as the puppy thrower doesn't look like the same person to me.

[RabbitMage]

I'm no expert on puppy drowning.

I'd hope not. :-(

But answering this before I read the rest of the thread, as far as I know drowning is not considered a humane method of euthanasia for vertebrates.

[What Exit?]

Puppy Drowning is awful, sorry no excuse. Posting videos of doing it is sick and deviant behavior and the person doing so is probably a serial killer in the making. At least that is my gut reaction.

[OtakuLoki]

Vigilantism scares the shit out of me. Maybe it's just because I'd had people tell me, to my face, that I look like a child predator. But these bastards don't care about truth, they just want an excuse to attack someone. Goddammit, what the fuck is hard about, "Harassment is bad, m'kay?" It's not rocket science.

But answering this before I read the rest of the thread, as far as I know drowning is not considered a humane method of euthanasia for vertebrates.

What methods do you suggest for vertebrates? I'm asking because locally homeowners are encouraged by animal control to drown vermin such as chipmunks and squirrels if they're caught in humane traps. (It's illegal in my state for homeowners to trap, transport, and release the same critters.)

I've heard that chloroform is effective - but it's been my experience that it's hard to get, and in this post 9/11 world, I'm not particularly eager to get onto a list for having purchased that.

I think that on a cultural level, there's a huge disconnect between what's considered humane for treatment of pet animals, and what's considered humane for vermin. For that matter, if you're not a licensed exterminator, I believe that most jurisdictions would be inclined to indict someone seen using a long stick to fatally thwack vermin. Yet, on the show Verminators it was shown as an effective and legal technique.

[ivan astikov]

There are two offenders against common decency in this incident. The young woman who made a game of disposing of some unwanted pups, and the person who thought it was that good a game that they wanted to film it. Whatever part of the world they live in, when they upload this sort of footage into the public domain, they are making it the business of everybody who sees it.

They didn't upload this video to inform or educate, they did it to gloat over their small-mindedness, and to upset those who they knew would care about the fate of those animals.

So I say, fuck 'em, with big sticks.

[Cluricaun]

Like Zuul said, drowning isn't an uncommon method of disposing of unwanted litters of cats and dogs in rural areas. Ever hear the expression "letting the cat out of the bag"? That's where it stems from, people used to throw weighted bags of kittens and puppies into lakes and rivers as a means of getting rid of them. Yeah, I know, you have pets. Barn cats and mongrel dogs aren't the same thing. When I was out west I saw many a rancher see an injured dog that lived on the ranch and do nothing more than shoot it and let the carrion birds and coyotes do the rest. It's shocking to someone who grew up with animals as companions, not so much for people who grew up with animals as livestock. You're not going to call the vet on a nameless animal that runs around your property killing vermin. You just help it along.

[fachverwirrt]

A few points.

One, we have no evidence that this person lives on a farm. For all we know she lives in the suburbs and really is drowning puppies for fun. On the other hand, we have no evidence that she doesn't live on a farm, so discussing whether this is a normal farm-related puppy drowning seems unproductive.

That being said, let's assume that that's what this is. There is a considerable difference between weighing a bag of puppies or kittens down and dropping them in the river, or holding each one individually under the water until its dead, and throwing puppies into a river. The former is relatively quick and certain, while the latter is a prolonged process that is sure to traumatize the animal considerably and unnecessarily. Further, taking obvious delight in the process, not to mention filming it and uploading it to the internet, doesn't speak particularly well of her.

[Zuul]

Further, taking obvious delight in the process, not to mention filming it and uploading it to the internet, doesn't speak particularly well of her.

Obviously. I don't think the puppy-drowner or camera-man are nice people by a long shot. But the Internet equivalent of a lynching without further evidence (like, uh, being sure who they are) is appalling.

If they were a bunch of country kids drowning some puppies and making a video of it, I would be disgusted by them and think they're assholes. I'd also find it difficult to get too worked up about it. Animal cruelty from someone who's been raised to treat animals as objects and has probably seen their parents kill more than a few unwanted litters isn't that spectacular.

Animal cruelty within a culture that promotes animal cruelty = gross and sad, but expected.
Animal cruelty within a culture that condemns animal cruelty = disturbing and a potential warning sign of something worse.

[fachverwirrt]

Obviously. I don't think the puppy-drowner or camera-man are nice people by a long shot. But the Internet equivalent of a lynching without further evidence (like, uh, being sure who they are) is appalling.

Absolutely. It's rather profoundly disturbing that /b/ and Encyclopedia Dramatica already misidentified her (with address and phone number) at least once. I note that ED blamed that identification on Anonymous, rather than taking responsibility for posting the wrong information themselves. Good show, guys.

[ivan astikov]

Like Zuul said, drowning isn't an uncommon method of disposing of unwanted litters of cats and dogs in rural areas.

I wouldn't give a shit if it came back as the biggest fad since skateboards; it's still wrong.

The trick is in not letting the animals you own have unwanted litters, in this case.

[ivan astikov]

Absolutely. It's rather profoundly disturbing that /b/ and Encyclopedia Dramatica already misidentified her (with address and phone number) at least once. I note that ED blamed that identification on Anonymous, rather than taking responsibility for posting the wrong information themselves. Good show, guys.

It shouldn't need web detectives and bored hackers to have the actions of these people brought to the attention of the appropriate authorities. If people are going to upload content that is deliberately offensive and possibly criminal - especially concerning animal cruelty - every effort should be made to find the creators of the content, whenever possible. I can't believe that the kind of people who get their kicks by torturing animals and filming it to upload onto the web, are all computer geniuses who know how to cover their tracks, so there is no excuse for not doing something about it.

Which makes me wonder why law enforcement agencies haven't set up gore websites in order to try and track these fucking nutjobs.

[RabbitMage]

What methods do you suggest for vertebrates? I'm asking because locally homeowners are encouraged by animal control to drown vermin such as chipmunks and squirrels if they're caught in humane traps. (It's illegal in my state for homeowners to trap, transport, and release the same critters.)

IMO, Gunshot to the head, cervical dislocation, and blunt head trauma. Legality may vary based on area and ideally you have someone show you how to do it first. Cervical dislocation on a wild, pissed off animal probably isn't a good idea and depending on where you live/how good a shot you are, shooting might not work either. So find a large heavy thing and hit away.

(If it were me, I'd risk it and take the offending trapped vermin to the nearest wildlife area.)

And all this stuff about 'but in rural areas this is how it is etc' is bullshit, plain and simple. Living in a rural area does not give you the right to force an animal into a prolonged, painful, frightening death. There are other, better, more humane options. Drowning an animal you don't want at best shows a disturbing and complete lack of empathy for a living thing.

Oh, the AVMA has a whole PDF on this topic: http://www.avma.org/issues/animal_we...euthanasia.pdf

Their take on drowning: "Drowning is not a means of euthanasia and is inhumane." The end.

[Zuul]

And all this stuff about 'but in rural areas this is how it is etc' is bullshit, plain and simple. Living in a rural area does not give you the right to force an animal into a prolonged, painful, frightening death. There are other, better, more humane options. Drowning an animal you don't want at best shows a disturbing and complete lack of empathy for a living thing.

Since I was the one who brought it up, I assume this is directed toward me. I don't think it's right, but I also live in a very rural area. If I considered every person who drowns animals to be a sociopath, I couldn't walk out my front door because I'm betting around 50% of them have done so. I've taken a lot of farm kittens and made efforts to find them homes over this (and I'm betting the cat I have now, having shown up soaked to the bone and ill, was a survivor of somebody trying to get rid of a farm kitten), but if I worked myself into hysteria over it I'd be nonfunctional. It is how it works out here in the country. It's wrong and sad and gross, but when it's that common the social mores are going to be different and the people doing it will not grasp that what they're doing is wrong.

I'm not excusing their actions. I'm just saying it's neither shocking nor unusual. It being wrong doesn't make it rare.

[redtail]

Evidently, none of y'all but Zuul have spent much time in the country. Drowning is the traditional method of dispatching unwanted puppies & kittens. I'm not saying it's the best method, but there is a long, long, long history of use. So someone brought up in a rural area is not going to see drowning critters as some horrible act, they're going to see it as just how things are done. Not particularly pleasant, but nothing unusual. In the second place, from the bits I read of the discussions, the girl is speaking Serbian or Croatian or something from that region. So again, you're not talking about a place where the concept of "animal cruelty" is common. This country has had a 150-year continual campaign to convince y'all that this sort of thing is inhumane and wrong. Without that background, you wouldn't be having the strong reactions that you obviously are. I'm not saying that it's perfectly OK to film yourself giggling while you hurl puppies into a river. But I am saying that you have to take the situation in context before you carry on like it's the most unimaginable act ever. It's kind of like throwing fits over Koreans eating dogs, because that's just wrong and EVIL, but blinking uncomprehendingly when someone suggests that perhaps Westerners should stop eating cows since they're sacred to Hindus. It's just silly to insist that everyone in the world should behave exactly the way you think they should.

[redtail]

P.S. Sorry about the lack of paragraphs. For some reason I'm losing all the spacing and punctuation with this new board software. I'm sure it's a setting somewhere, if I can just find it!

[Marsilia]

Can I chime in here? First generation "city kid," and I clearly remember my mom and her sisters sitting on their hands while my grandparents' dog waddled around with a tumor the size of its head because "Daddy's not going to spend money on a vet for that dog." So, I get the country mentality. I don't like it, and I would have scraped my pennies together to save the dog if I'd thought for half a second that I had enough for veterinary surgery, but I get it.

If this girl and her friend had dumped a bucket of puppies into the river, it would have made me sad and a little sick, but I could have mustered up a "cultural differences" argument to make myself not dwell. Hell, it probably happens every day, and we're not conscious of it unless we're involved. What sets this girl and her friend apart, IMHO, is that she giggled and provided sound effects as she hurled them--one by one--into that river, and her friend filmed it. Then, they posted it on the internet. That, in my mind, makes it seem like they really enjoyed killing puppies, and I can't muster up a "cultural differences" argument that makes that okay with me.

[Zuul]

That, in my mind, makes it seem like they really enjoyed killing puppies, and I can't muster up a "cultural differences" argument that makes that okay with me.

I don't think anyone has actually said it's okay, though. These kids were obviously being sadistic assholes. They were also (potentially) taking a culture of indifference to animal suffering to its logical extreme.

[RabbitMage]

I've spent plenty of time in rural areas.

Regardless of if it's common or traditional or anything else, it is inhumane. There are few places in this country where a low cost and easy alternative is not available, and where there is not there are much more humane methods of killing animals. If someone has access to a phone, a library, or a video camera and the Internet, they are no more than three steps away from finding out the right way to handle these things.

I find the action itself inexcusable, and the filming and uploading of the video being indicative of a deeper problem in the participants.

[Zuul]

There are few places in this country where a low cost and easy alternative is not available, and where there is not there are much more humane methods of killing animals.

But the kids in the video were most likely not in this country. They were allegedly speaking Croatian with Bosnian accents.

I find the action itself inexcusable, and the filming and uploading of the video being indicative of a deeper problem in the participants.

I don't think it's excusable and I'm not advocating chucking puppies into rivers and making videos of it. I'm simply saying I don't find it as shocking and sociopathic as it's been suggested to be. It's sad and disgusting, but it's not even remotely unusual. Particularly not coming from a region of the world that is responsible for the English language media coining the term "ethnic cleansing." Human beings are simply not always going to be as empathetic as you want them to be, but that doesn't mean there's something fundamentally wrong with them. Normal people do awful things all the time.

[Exy]

Yeah, I'm pretty much with Zuul. It's not nice, and the circumstances of the video (from what people have described -- I'm sure not gonna watch it) make it particularly disturbing, but drowning has been a way of dealing with kittens and puppies for a very, very long time. It sucks, but it's hard for me to get that worked up over it.

[ivan astikov]

But the kids in the video were most likely not in this country. They were allegedly speaking Croatian with Bosnian accents.

Do they not have tv's over there? Unless you are living out in the middle of nowhere, with no communication or information technology whatsoever, there is no excuse for being unaware of basic humane behaviour, ie. avoiding animal cruelty, specifically.

I don't think it's excusable and I'm not advocating chucking puppies into rivers and making videos of it. I'm simply saying I don't find it as shocking and sociopathic as it's been suggested to be. It's sad and disgusting, but it's not even remotely unusual. Particularly not coming from a region of the world that is responsible for the English language media coining the term "ethnic cleansing." Human beings are simply not always going to be as empathetic as you want them to be, but that doesn't mean there's something fundamentally wrong with them. Normal people do awful things all the time.

As has been mentioned a couple of times, this isn't about the mind that drowned 7 unwanted pups in a river; it's about the joint decision to make a game of disposing of these animals, to film it, and then to upload it onto the internet. That is the behaviour that is most questionable of all in this matter.

[Marsilia]

As has been mentioned a couple of times, this isn't about the mind that drowned 7 unwanted pups in a river; it's about the joint decision to make a game of disposing of these animals, to film it, and then to upload it onto the internet. That is the behaviour that is most questionable of all in this matter.

This is pretty much it in a nut shell. If I were watching a PSA on what happens to unwanted puppies and kittens at the local Humane Society, I'd be upset enough to get my pets spayed and/or neutered. Hell, I burst into tears when I had to pick up my own dog from the pound because they had a "We are not a no-kill shelter" notice up that showed a break down of exactly how many animals they can get into homes and how many they have to "dispose of."

Watching the puppies die was upsetting, but the part that makes me want to take that girl back to that river and hold her head under for a while was that she looked like she was having tons of fun killing them. She was gleefully chucking their wriggly bodies into the water, and even let out with a "Whee!" at one point. She was making a game of it, and was proud enough of her puppy killing game to invite her friend over to film the fun, then they were both impressed enough with their work that they posted it to YouTube.

People have been drowning puppies for years? Okay. I'm not passing judgment if you decide that tying them up in a bag and throwing them in the river is better than watching them starve to death. I'm passing judgment if you have a blast doing it.

[redtail]

They were also (potentially) taking a culture of indifference to animal suffering to its logical extreme.

This. In a culture where animals are seen as things that are here for human convenience and use, the actions reported in the film (I haven't watched it either, FTR) just wouldn't be seen as terrifically shocking or horrible.

A few decades ago, veterinarians didn't worry about animal's pain, unless it actively interfered with treatment. (They didn't sedate dogs for the dog's comfort, they sedated dogs to keep them still.) A century ago, whether or not animals even feel pain was a debated topic. (It still is, for some values of 'animal'.)

Do they not have tv's over there? Unless you are living out in the middle of nowhere, with no communication or information technology whatsoever, there is no excuse for being unaware of basic humane behaviour, ie. avoiding animal cruelty, specifically.

Yes, that's right, because your personal values are, in fact, universal. Every human every where must behave the way you want them to, because you are the sole arbiter of 'right' and 'wrong'.

[ivan astikov]

Yes, that's right, because your personal values are, in fact, universal. Every human every where must behave the way you want them to, because you are the sole arbiter of 'right' and 'wrong'.

Now you are just making shit up. Unless I'm misreading this completely, the number of people who thought her actions were wrong - not just the puppy drowning; the recording and publicising of it - is nigh-on universal. Even those who'd eat them are pissed off at her wasting food.