FACT CHECK: Are People Adopting Pit Bull Terriers for the Sole Purpose of Euthanizing Them?
The #PitbullDropOff hashtag and related claims of mass dog killing stem from a sophomoric troll attempt with origins in 4chan.
CLAIM:
People are adopting pit bulls with the express goal of euthanizing them,
and then bragging about it on the Internet with the hashtag
#PitbullDropOff.
RATING:
ORIGIN:
In mid-May 2018, the hashtag #PitbullDropOff began to gain traction on
social media. A typical post involves a picture of cute pit bull
terrier-type puppies, and a message that the person who took the picture
adopted them for the express purpose of euthanizing them to get them
off the streets. This post from “muffs-o-matic” is representative of most:
These posts are fabricated; they are part of a juvenile attempt to
provoke anger and outrage on the internet, and are specifically directed
at “naive pitmommies and various other low IQ individuals.” They have
their origins not in reality, but in the callow minds of the festering
racist, misogynistic, and nihilistic world that is 4chan — an anonymous
message board that unites trolls, “incels,” and neo-Nazis together in
their shared contempt for human decency.
A 13 May 2018 anonymous post
found in that website’s most infamous board (/pol/) presents an update
on their campaign, and also how you — assuming, of course, that you are a
troll — can get involved in the game:
Indeed, as many have pointed out on Reddit,
most of the photos shared on Twitter and Facebook with the
#PitBullDropOff hashtag include images that can easily be found on
reverse image search as having nothing to do with #PitbullDropOff, and
which predate the hashtag by years. The image that appears in the post
by “muffs-o-matic,” for example, can be found in a February 2017 list of
cute puppies on The Chive.
This tweet, from a burner account clearly created solely for the #PitbullDropOff troll, contains a picture of a sad dog that is at least as old as December 2011:
Outside the smug satisfaction of feeling smarter than the people they
have trolled, the underlying motivations for the hashtag fall clearly
into the political ideology
of the /pol/ message board, which has coagulated over time into a
simple philosophy: Women, liberals, and minorities are destroying
America. Here’s a sampling of some of the comments in the thread:
The anonymous trolls also suggest that pit bull-type dogs are almost
always owned by ethnic minorities, and are thus aggressive and
unfriendly — a racial stereotype that has long motivated anti-pit bull movements:
While we cannot speak to the broader claim that some terrible human
beings have adopted dogs for the purpose of putting them down, we can
say with confidence that the current viral #PitbullDropOff trend on
social media is a hoax orchestrated by anonymous hoaxsters using
unrelated photographs, fake context, and a characteristic reliance on
racism and misogyny. Don’t feed the trolls.
~Be a Flamingo in a flock of Pigeons…and you’ll fit right in!~
I disliked the expression ‘be a flamingo in a flock of pigeons’ as a means to encourage people to be ‘unique’ and stand out. Personally I think it’s quite insulting to pigeons, and shows that the average person hasn’t had a proper look at a pigeon, or don’t know that fancy and exotic pigeon/dove breeds exist. Species like the Bleeding Heart, the Victoria Crown and Jambu Fruit dove are all gorgeous and flamboyant examples of the Columbidae species, and easy challengers to the flamingo.
So I wanted to do a quick little drawing just showing off some of these lovely birds…and a smug flamingo 😉
what the fuck is with men and how they write women taking showers honestly. like all of that back-arching mouth-half-open luxoriously-running-fingers-through-hair shit. straight dudes thinkin girls are like damn-near climax from just being naked, whats w/ that
from now on the only female shower scenes ill accept involve either; a).
sitting in a ball on the shower floor or b). standing completely still while staring into the abyss absentmindedly and scratching your ass. anything else gets a 0 and a “see me after class”
Men who do this refuse to conceptualise female nudity as anything other than a sexualised performance designed to titillate them. They feel so entitled to our private lives that they create this horrible, voyeuristic fantasy whereby everything we do (even when completely alone) is about being sexy for them. This in turn informs fantasies whereby they seek to violate our private lives through surveilling us, whereby they see our desire for privacy as nothing but a conscious, coquettish refusal to titillate them.
In writing us this way, they deny us our humanity by denying that we ever exist and think and feel externally to them.
In Russia in 1997, a poacher shot and wounded a tiger and stole part of its recent kill. The tiger later found the poacher’s cabin, waited at least 12 hours for him come home, then killed and ate him.
When I was a child I was afraid of the moon. I used to think that the sky was a giant raven and the moon changing phases was its slowly blinking eye, watching me.
Draw the giant space raven.
This one gave me a lot of inspiration.
SKY RAVEN!! HECK YEAH!! Favorite bird and an awesome concept? Heck yeah. Awesome art? Double heck yeah!! Thank you so much for sharing this with the rest of us! I love it so much!
@absoluteradman If this is not an idea for a short story, I don’t know what is
Corvids collect treasures. Shiny things, pretty things, precious things. And what could be more precious than life?
Life which learns.
Life which grows.
Life which builds.
Life needs to be coddled at first, of course. Giant space birds don’t just pop out of the vacuum, ready to take wing on the stellar winds and soar through the universe. Life needs time, and air, and a shield from solar radiation- life needs a planet. And a planet doesn’t produce a race of giant vacuum defying corvids in a millennium.
So the Raven settled in to wait. And wait a long time, it did. It didn’t mind. The Raven had always been a patient bird, a watchful bird. It stared down upon the planet, slowly blinking, always watching.
The Raven watched as the planet was settled by its ken. They moved from treetop to treetop, forest to forest, spanning all across the world. The Raven watched as the corvids learned cognizance, understanding, and communication. The Raven watched as the other animals settled into their usual roles.
But then The Raven saw something strange.
The direwolves and the direbears were not hunting their prey, the humans, as well as they should have been. And the humans were changing- they began to make their nests in places they normally wouldn’t. They began to construct farms, and villages, and towns, and cities! And the corvids, intelligent as they were, watched the humans develop and build and create- and settled into a role as scavengers!
The Raven was perplexed! The strangest chain of events unfolded as the humans began to dominate the world. They spread and spread, growing and growing, conquering and settling the world as if they were the corvids, and the corvids were left in the dust!
The Raven was confused, and concerned. Perhaps it should do something to right this scenario. Perhaps it should reach down and correct this mistake. But then, perhaps not? Mayhap the direwolves and direbears would rise up and strike down the humans after a while. Mayhap the corvids would rise up in the humans wake and take their place at the top of the food chain.
And yet, as The Raven watched, this seemed less and less likely. And then in the blink of an eye, the predators were gone. The direwolves were hunted to extinction, the direbears driven to the poles, and the lesser wolves domesticated! Domesticated by the humans, of all things!
The Raven felt outrage, disgust, and disappointment. With a sigh and a caw, it spread its wings to catch the wind and float away, in search of some new treasure, some new planet.
And then it saw.
The Raven blinked. It paused, midflight, to be certain. And there it was. A point, no smaller than a pin-prick, of light.
Real, genuine light. Not from the stars, but from the planet itself. From the humans.
They had discovered electricity.
The Raven watched, perplexed and amazed, as the planet spun. When a part of the planet drifted from the light to the dark, the lights would come on. And when that part faced the sun again, the lights would go back out.
The Raven folded its wings. It let the flow of gravity take it, spinning around the planet, always watching, slowly blinking. And as it spun, the world began to glow. The planet, when darkened, would shine. The humans made it shine.
The Raven let out a joyous cry! What greater treasure could there be than life which was shiny? And with contentment, The Raven still floats, watching us. And though we are not corvids, we are still precious.
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