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Tuesday 28th July 2015

4625/17284

Social media today was full of people filled with anger and disgust at the Minnesota dentist who murdered a lion. It’d pretty much redundant to bother expressing your opinion on this one as it’s so clearly wrong. It might just have been quicker and easier for Twitter to put out a message to everyone saying, “If you think the lion murder was a good thing, please tweet now". Even the bloke who did it wouldn’t say yes now. Having discovered his heroic action of murdering a lion had not been greeted with the acclaim and respect that he had anticipated he was forced to issue a statement saying how much he regretted that fact that his hobby of murdering and beheading lions had somehow led to the death of a lion. 

It’s nice for everyone else to be united in their anger and disbelief and in this case, perhaps a Twitter storm has some justification, as the tiny minority of people who haven’t realised that shooting wild animals in order to get something to put on your wall is weird and not brave nor socially acceptable. Though I still feel uncomfortable about the “hunter” (not sure that name is really applicable if you have lured your prey out of the safety of a park by dragging an animal carcass on the back of a jeep and then just shoot it) becoming the hunted. Increasingly we see someone doing something perceived as wrong (whether it’s making a stupid joke or pretending to be a different colour than you are or in this case, pointless animal murder) and then the whole world gangs up and descends on an individual and berates them. Having experienced this on a very minor level and being in the weird position of being mildly inured to this due to the nature of my job, I am not sure how people are expected to cope with the spotlight being on them so intensely. I am amazed it hasn’t led to many, many suicides. Whilst I am not defending the lion murder (because who would? I am firmly in the camp that babies should not be drowned at birth, but don’t feel the need to tweet about it, due to the fact that it is obviously the right view to have on that subject) surely our recourse to change things is not to destroy the life of one of the individuals doing this, but to convince all the animal murderers that what they’re doing is inhuman and convince the governments involved that they should make it illegal (and in this case ensure that the people involved are prosecuted as it seems likely they have broken several of the laws in existence- though those laws do justify animal murder in some circumstances).

Sure, a lot of the people complaining happily eat murdered animals on a daily basis, but I don’t think that means they can’t complain about this situation. It’s different. But also might provide the first step to the self-realisation that cruelty takes many forms.

I’d like to see this guy punished for what he did. But you know if he ends up lynched by others or himself then aren’t we the same as him? 

The first job, which I suppose Twitter is doing quite well, is to let the people who do this know that they are fucking idiots and in no way brave trophy hunters. Using their own stupid smug photos against them does seem like justice of some kind. Ultimately if it’s embarrassing or dangerous to show someone the trophy of what you’ve done, then what’s the point in doing it?

But if they still want the thrill of the chase and to really convince us that they are courageous and hard as nails then surely these people should go on safari and try and get a picture of them bumming a lion. No one could fail to be impressed by that kind of bravery. Or if you’re truly brave -and feel queasy about the implications of forcing yourself on an animal, then maybe the new form of safari is to go out and get bummed by a lion. You have to go out there, find a lion, seduce it and then persuade it to bum you, something that a lion would be unlikely to attempt of its own volition, due to it preferring to have sex with other lions and probably not even being aware of an anal option. If that dentist could post a picture of a lion up to its apricots in his anal passage and live to tell the tale of how he got a lion to bum him then I think he would have gone some way to regaining our respect and atoning for what he’d done. 

Most cruel sports would be improved by this basic idea. Instead of fighting bulls, matadors should use tiny red flags to guide them into their Marbers, posh people could dress up in red coats and little black hats and then encourage packs of foxes to catch them and cover them in fox jism, instead of having turkey for Christmas dinner, we should invite living turkeys to rub this cloacas on our bums. 

Ideally we will one day live in a world where there is no animal hunting and no sport where animals bum humans, but until that day I think the animals bumming humans is a more humane alternative. There will always be thrill seekers out there and perhaps we have to allow them an outlet. Let them be bummed by lions for now. And perhaps in time they will learn that the world is a better place if we just leave the lions alone.



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