So, a woman named Rebecca Francis shot and killed a giraffe. She then posed for a picture beside the body. This picture somehow found its way to full-time comedian and part-time judgemental dickhead Ricky Gervais who retweeted it with the caption: “What must have happened to you in your life to make you want to kill a beautiful animal and then lie next to it smiling?” You can read more about it here:
You can also read Ms. Francis’ completely reasonable response wherein she explains that the giraffe was both at the end of its life anyway and was subsequently used to feed local people, here:
Ms Francis is now having the shit doxxed out of her, and, because our society is awful, is also having to deal with the nowadays obligatory torrent of death threats.
Now, there are so many things I hate about this that I’m genuinely not sure where to start. Let’s start with Twitter. I fucking hate Twitter. Twitter is the shittiest communications medium ever devised by man. It’s fine for certain things, like sharing baby pictures, or cat pictures, or plotting the overthrow the Egyptian government. But, because Twitter is internet-based, and the internet is full of deadbrained fucknuts, more and more it’s being used to debate real shit. Get it straight: If you have a thought, any thought, about any complex social or political issue that can be concisely summarised in 140 characters or fewer including spaces then it’s probably not a thought worth sharing. Keep that shit to yourself. You know what arguing on Twitter is? Arguing on Twitter is two guys on trampolines yelling at each other over a fence. Shut the fuck up.
I also hate the whole phenomenon of online shaming. I hate it for two reasons. Reason 1: Often, the punishment is grossly disproportionate to the “crime”. By now, we’ve all probably heard the story of Justine Sacco, the PR woman who flew to South Africa having tweeted an admittedly racially insensitive joke before take-off, only to land eleven hours later to find that she was internet enemy number 1. and that she’d been fired. The joke itself, in my humble opinion, wasn’t even that controversial. It was the kind of joke Sarah Silverman makes all the time. Sacco’s mistake was assuming that people would get that she was being tongue-in-cheek. Unfortunately, they didn’t get it. Some of them, I’m sure, deliberately didn’t get it. And when her tweet was blasted all over the world by Gawker editor and professional cunt Sam Biddle, the number of self-righteous pricks eager to drop trou and take a giant dump on this woman over absolutely fuck all increased exponentially. End result: Fired, death threats, you know the drill. It’s the same shit Rebecca Francis is dealing with right now, although thankfully she hasn’t been fired…yet.
(Interesting sidebar: Biddle actually met with Sacco a few years later and learned that, while she was back to work, it had taken her a good couple of years for her to put her life back together again. Sacco, remarkably, doesn’t seem to hold a grudge, and Biddle apologised. Well done, Justine. Fuck you, Sam.)
This brings me to the second reason I hate online shaming. Most of the people who do it only do it because they’re nasty, sanctimonious dicks. They want the thrill of hurting a stranger without the threat of repercussions (that’s the nasty bit) while advertising to the world just how bloody sensitive they are (that’s the sanctimony). Does that sound like a bit of a paradox? Well, it is. But these fucking keyboard Gestapo don’t care. They’re caught in the moment, like schoolyard bullies playing ‘keep away’ with a weedy kid’s pencil case.
Getting back to the point, this particular feeding frenzy is one of the vilest I’ve ever seen. To appreciate just why this is, here’s a few facts: [ul]
[li] Giraffes are not an endangered species.[/li][li] People do actually eat giraffes. [/li][li] The particular giraffe in question was, after being killed, butchered for its meat. It wasn’t wasted, in other words.[/ul][/li]
Now, why are these facts important? Well, the first fact is important because people are stupid. They assume that if an animal is rare where they live, it must be rare full-stop. If you don’t believe that there are people out there who think this, just read the comments on any one of the hundreds of articles about this non-story currently clogging up the internet. Giraffes are not rare animals.
The second two facts are important because they really get to the nub of why this bullshit has gotten so deeply under my skin. I can understand if a vegetarian or a vegan was upset by this story. I may not agree, but I can understand. By the standards that they live by, they have a legitimate beef (Ho-ho!). Obviously, this doesn’t excuse any vegans or vegetarians who may have made death threats. Those people are scum. But I can understand why they might be upset. I can’t understand why they’d be more upset by the death of this giraffe than by, say, the death of a Texas Longhorn, but still, I get why they might be upset.
Ricky Gervais is not a vegetarian. He eats meat. I know he eats meat because I’ve listened to his podcasts and he’s said so. He’s also a fat bastard, which means he’s probably packed away a few McDonalds in his time. McDonalds, of course, are renowned for not giving a fuck about the animals they kill. Also, while I can’t point to any one specific person on this contemptible bandwagon and say “He eats meat” or “She’s a vegetarian”, the law of averages alone dictates that a fair number of these happy-go-lucky shamers are also happy-go-lucky carnivores as well.
If you eat meat, shut the fuck up! You have no right to complain about this. The fate the animals on your table endure is a thousand times crueller than that which befell this giraffe. Take chickens, for example. This is a picture of a battery chicken farm:
Before being caged, the chickens are typically put through a painful process called ‘debeaking’. This means that their beaks are shortened. Then they’re shoved in tiny cages where they don’t have room to spread their wings. They develop osteoporosis, their feathers fall out from stress, and they’re pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones so that the farmers can salvage every last scrap of meat from their desiccated bones. In the mean time, they amuse themselves by going mad and literally eating each other. If you eat non-freerange chicken (hint: if you eat KFC you’re eating non-freerange chicken) then you are subsidising this. If you’re also champing at the bit to shame Ms Francis then you’re a preposterous hypocrite and you should shut your fucking hole.
Here’s a picture of an intensive pig farm:
Similar fucking story. Suffering animals with no room to move marking time in the seventh circle of pig-hell until they’re slaughtered, butchered, and packed off to Walmart.
I could go on, but I trust the point is made. Most meat eaters inflict far, far more cruelty on animals than Rebecca Francis could do if she lived to be a thousand*. Ricky Gervais is one of those people.
Shut the fuck up, Ricky Gervais.
[sub]*A small caveat. If you buy your meat free-range and/or hunt your own meat then that’s different. Those options are considerably more humane, particularly hunting. Also, for the record, I’m not a hunter or a vegetarian. I’m also not delving into this latest shame-a-palooza to ruin a woman’s life and put her in fear for her safety over fuck all.[/sub]