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.
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