Killing Cecil

[kairparavel]

Guess I'll weigh in since there is no corner of the internet in which I can escape this story.
 
What the guy did was wrong, full stop.  Not defensible, appalling even.  He should be punished in accordance with any laws that he violated.
 
With that said, I am deeply uncomfortable with the internet being judge, jury, and executioner in a growing number of cases.  I'm not really referring to this board, discussion of the event is fine.  But this story is all over the fucking place and in most corners people aren't exactly taking a measured approach.  This dude lost his business and I'm sure his family is thoroughly freaked out that dad is public enemy #1.  Within 48 hours this guy went from suburban dentist to world famous asshole.  The internet hit this family's life like a tornado, will destroy what it can, and then move on to the next target.  
 
He deserves some shit, sure, but what bugs me about it is - just who in the fuck do people think they are?  Paragons of morality? Staunch defenders of endangered species?  In 99% of cases - I call bullshit on both counts.  Flavor of the day.  People will take their shots from behind a keyboard because it is very easy to do so and then forget all about it in a couple of days, but the repercussions for the life of the family involved will go far beyond that.  Killing the lion is really fucking shitty, but public shaming is also unbecoming.

All of this.

Dude did a shitty thing, but he was essentially doxxed over it. If it's not ok to dox and threaten and harass Briana Wu because you don't like what she did or stands for, you can't allow it for someone else who did something you didn't like or agree with.

If he's subject to prosecution, great. If he's not, get some letters and phone calls off to your rep to get some legislation in place to ban trophy imports.

He's a jerk, but his life doesn't deserve to be ruined because he held the flighty attention span of the internet for a few days.

[Ixodes]

The best way to save an endangered species is to create a financial incentive to breed them.

the incentive exists already and doesn't appear to be effective. probably best to designate the tertiary carnivore husbandry industry a market failure and turn it over to the state, aye?

 

In this situation the financial incentive is too good.  The game fees for securing a lion tag are so lucrative that some outfitters cheat to get paid.  The governmental authority regulating hunting either doesn't have the regulatory tools (poor enforcement) or has officials that are bribed (sadly common in these areas of Africa) to offer dodgy lion tags.

 

Hunting is big business and plays a significant role in habitat conservation.  Sadly, many African governments lack the ability to tightly regulate the trade.  Too much graft or too few resources.  When you look at most species, the financial penalty for overharvest encourages most outfits to play fair.  You can't make enough money in a few seasons selling kudu or wildebeast tags to make it worthwhile to wipe out the population in an area.  But when you can charge stratospheric fees ($55,000 for a lion!!!) you appeal to the worst in people, to where they overhunt, lure lions out of parks, or captive breed for canned hunts.     

[Fragile Bird]

The news has just reminded me that a wealthy (no shit) Texan hunter paid $350,000 in Namibia to kill a rare black rhino.

The trophy hunters have killed 2,500 hundred leopards and 4,000 elephants in the last decade.

And Emirates Airlines has just announced it will not transport any trophy hunting remains on it's planes.

[Ixodes]

The elephant story is so much worse.  The demand in China for ivory is fueling a continent-wide slaughter.  The number of paid trophy hunts for elephants is a drop in the bucket compared to the number that are poached.  4000 elephants legally hunted over a decade?  In 2011 alone, an estimated 40,000 elephants were illegally killed for ivory (source: www.pnas.org/content/111/36/13117.abstract ) 

 

At this unsustainable rate, elephants are gone in our lifetime.  At least with safari hunting there is some regulation/habitat conservation, albeit it needs some serious work for the high value animals.

[Fragile Bird]

The elephant story is so much worse.  The demand in China for ivory is fueling a continent-wide slaughter.  The number of paid trophy hunts for elephants is a drop in the bucket compared to the number that are poached.  4000 elephants legally hunted over a decade?  In 2011 alone, an estimated 40,000 elephants were illegally killed for ivory (source: www.pnas.org/content/111/36/13117.abstract ) 
 
At this unsustainable rate, elephants are gone in our lifetime.  At least with safari hunting there is some regulation/habitat conservation, albeit it needs some serious work for the high value animals.

Did you notice I quoted the number that in one three year period in the last decade 100,000 elephants were killed by poachers?

[Theda Baratheon]

lmao if you people genuinely think this privileged piece of shit is genuinely having his life ruined. People will forget about this in time this disgusting man will just continue with his life with the memory of that one month when the internet hated me.

I REALLY hope this becomes the issue that hammers home how shitty trophy hunting is and helps people find better ways of bringing in money to areas.

[eyenon15]

How do you know everything is going to be ok???
Does he have kids?? Are they going to be fine???
Wife??? No damage done.

I can barely even handle when 3 or 4 people band together on one internet forum in an attempt to humiliate me.
Amplify that to the world stage, I think it's a bit of false justification to claim it's no big deal.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

lmao if you people genuinely think this privileged piece of shit is genuinely having his life ruined. People will forget about this in time this disgusting man will just continue with his life with the memory of that one month when the internet hated me.

I REALLY hope this becomes the issue that hammers home how shitty trophy hunting is and helps people find better ways of bringing in money to areas.

 

Seriously. This is a pretty repulsive thing to say. I love that calling someone "privileged" is supposed to be some kind of an insult. This guy invested a lot of time and money into earning an advanced medical degree so he could become a dentist and make decent money. And now, his business is destroyed and he's in hiding and facing death threats. And possibly even worse, his face and business address are being plastered across the internet and television, 24 hours a day, while people hurl the vilest of comments at him.

 

And you think there are no lasting repercussions for something like that? What really disappointments me is that based on what you've posted about your OWN struggles with depression, and how sometimes it's hard for you to even get out of bed in the morning, you would think that you'd be a little sympathetic for the psychological toll that being publicly shamed to hundreds of millions of people takes on a person. If what happened to this guy happened to most of us on this forum, I doubt most of us would be able to get out of bed in the morning. Put yourself in his shoes for a moment and empathize with someone that you dislike - how would YOU react to this? How fast would you recover? This is public shaming on a scale that most of us can't even imagine. It kind of puts grandma being upset about not getting an invite to graduation into perspective, doesn't it?

 

Jon Ronson, in his recent book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" writes that several of the people he interviewed are essentially experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after having their lives turned upside down. Think about it. 

[TerraPrime]

Re: Nestor

 

The point of Rosa Parks is a response to Commdore et al.'s assertion that there are always some things more worthy of outrage out there. A woman can't sit at the front of the bus? What's that, in comparison to lynchings? Why weren't people outraged over lynchings? 

 

I will also point out that from the mouths of these people who poo-poo those who are upset at one thing that they deem to be unworthy of and who then trot out a list of evils in the world to be more upset about, it is routinely a list of things that they probably don't give a shit about, either. They are just using the existence of greater evils in the world to justify their disagreement over other people's priority. It is just another format of concern trolling.

 

 

 

Re: Kair

 

 

 

He's a jerk, but his life doesn't deserve to be ruined because he held the flighty attention span of the internet for a few days.

 

No, his life should be ruined because he killed for enjoyment, and because of his disrespect to the wildlife that he did, eventually, kill.  

[sologdin]

nestor, you seek to extend a standard of justice to this cat that exists only as a leftwing policy objective and does not apply to any actual person yet, including those persons whose hands are clean but whose meritorious claims have nevertheless been denied. that's laudable, surely, but it may be a bit much for some to accept.

[Relic]

lmao if you people genuinely think this privileged piece of shit is genuinely having his life ruined. People will forget about this in time this disgusting man will just continue with his life with the memory of that one month when the internet hated me.

exactly. the "Internet" has ADHD. fuck anyone who is concerned for this guy right now. most of these people are privileged whites who fear similar shaming for their excess.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

nestor, you seek to extend a standard of justice to this cat that exists only as a leftwing policy objective and does not apply to any actual person yet, including those persons whose hands are clean but whose meritorious claims have nevertheless been denied. that's laudable, surely, but it may be a bit much for some to accept.

 

Solo -

 

I know that I'm too good for this world. 

 

But you see - this symbol on my chest. It stands for hope. 

 

At least that's what the leather daddy who sold it to me told me that it stands for. 

[Fragile Bird]

Solo -
 
I know that I'm too good for this world. 
 
But you see - this symbol on my chest. It stands for hope. 
 
At least that's what the leather daddy who sold it to me told me that it stands for.

:lol:

[eyenon15]

exactly. the "Internet" has ADHD. fuck anyone who is concerned for this guy right now. most of these people are privileged whites who fear similar shaming for their excess.

So you are on record as saying that harassment is okay in certain situations? Mainly, whenever you think they deserve it.

Speaking for myself, I certainly don't give a shit about this guy. I do give a shit about whatever family he may have.

But mostly give a shit because this public shaming bully shit is bad for society and bad for the world. And yes, I do have a slightly irrational fear that I will be victim of this large scale type of hate when the mob gets bored of anything else. I'm not aware of anything I do that would warrant that much hate but I'm sure some self righteous douche could find something to latch onto.

And PLEASE continue to accuse me of being in the white priveledge club, it's a refreshing change from the white trash label that's put on me in real life.

Maybe I am a hypocrite because when it comes to fighting government or people with massive power over society I'm all about Mobbing up.
But this eposodic entertainment based piling up on and humiliating the Freak of the Week shit is awful.

[Hans Gruber]

"Mob Justice really reflects well on everyone"- Mahatma Ghandi

[kairparavel]

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/30/9074865/cecil-lion-palmer-mob-justice

 

 

 

What Palmer did was wrong, and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. But it's easy to forget just how dangerous and unjust "mob justice" is while it's targeting someone you despise. The more this behavior is normalized, the more likely it is to be deployed against targets who might not necessarily deserve to have their lives destroyed — including, perhaps one day, against you.

 

 

 

This campaign against Palmer has been disturbingly successful. His dental practice is closed at the moment, and his harassers are gleeful that they are denying him an income. But this also inflicts harm on people who did not kill Cecil the lion. Palmer's family presumably relies on his income. So do his employees, whose livelihoods are now threatened as well. When a Reddit user pointed this out, over 1,500 users voted in support of the response that "His employees are better off working elsewhere." The mob, naturally, has shown no intention of helping to find new jobs for the innocent dental employees it is seeking to put out of work

 

 

Nestor mentioned John Ronson, and this is an article he wrote about internet mob justice and Justine Sacco.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0

[Kindly Old Man]

"What lion?" Zimbabweans ask.

[Baitac]

Yes he's paying the iron price but in my opinion this too shall pass. That guy looks like a million white men. He won't be recognized in time. He'll get back to his practice and all will be well. People will forget his name. I wish he would make a gesture of good will and donate a hefty amount, maybe a year's worth of hunting fees, head mounting and rug making costs, airplane fare equivalents, what it costs him to "hunt" and donate it to a worthy and accountable wildlife charity. This "hobby" is expensive. This "hobby" is disgusting as per the above list.

Public shaming always been there. Scarlet letter wearers et al. Now it's all super sized. We can all pick issues about which we're OK with public shaming. Bill Cosby? You betcha.

[eyenon15]

Even the Coz didn't get what this guy got.

Scarlett Letters arent something to be proud of btw.
Neither by the wearer or the one who forces it upon others

"We as a society deemed campaigns such as Gamergate unacceptable and rejected their proponents as harassers who crossed the line. But because we all agree that we dislike Palmer, the campaign against him has so far been deemed acceptable, even funny or laudable."

So true.
That's from the Vox article link on the previous page


If this behavior can be washed away just by saying "They deserved it, and they will get over it"
That same defense should be allowed across the board on all cases of mob justice.

[Baitac]

I don't know how to respond to that. I would like to think that he did. Sadly, "The Coz" can't be criminally charged. All we have left is to keep him and this issue in the media. It just happens too damned frequently.