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Photo by Manja Vitolic on Unsplash
People doing a video shoot with their pet pals are fun to do, and also fun to watch. Since the inception of video sharing, animals became a category of entertainment on its own. It is arguably a better form of entertainment that makes us genuinely happy and lights up our hearts. Unfortunately, in the past, there has been instances of hurting animals behind the scenes for views. YouTube made rules, and people rightfully became more aware of this.
And then came the short form video content market, and came more cat videos and dog videos with even funnier things happening in them, hooking adults and kids on a non-stop stream of cuteness. But, as time goes, old problems became new. The kind of people who used to make long form video by torturing pets behind the scene, started popping up on TikTok and other short form video platforms as well.
What I mean by behind the scene cruelty
There are several ways content creators exploits pet for views. Some do by joining trends, like “Do this to your pets to see their reaction”, and most of the time, the premise itself is harmless. Like bark at your dog, or kiss your cat, etc. But cats and dogs, they are not humans, and you can’t make scripted videos with them and extract reaction every time. So to solve it, some content creators intentionally hurt or upset their pets to extract reactions. This is extremely unethical and is harmful to the pets involved.
As I said, pets are not humans, so they are easily confused when you do things to the that you should not do. They understand the world differently, and see the relation between you and them as exclusive. When you try to involve internet fandom, views economy and clout into the mix, it’s the pets that absorbs the most damage from this inhumane relation. There are instances of over grooming, unnecessary bathing, overfeeding, stress and anxiety induction in pets, all in the names of short videos. 1
Intentionally harmful contents on various platforms
There are proven and unproven records of intentionally harming animals in various social media and video sharing platforms. Some of the harms are done in the name of alleged “rescue” where content creators fake events of animals getting stuck in pipes, or stuck under sewer and other uncomfortable places. Most of those videos are indeed staged and the creators themselves put the animal in danger to generate views and income. 2
The reason why it is more difficult now
Moderating large amount of contents every second is hard, and judging individual contents that rarely shows what’s happening behind the scene is hard. To make the matters worse, kids get involved, and they don’t know if a video is staged, or it hurts the animals. And many kids are influenced by this, and tries to handle pets in stressful manners.
On top, social medias and short video platforms like TikTok are rarely doing something about it because #1) It’s hard to implement such algorithm, #2) they simply don’t care because it generates tons of profit for the platform. Trends are a significant part of creator economy and dumb challenges are one of the reason more people joins in. Which in turn makes more profit for the platform.
By law, you are not allowed to torture pets, but what is torture, is not much defined in many jurisdictions. It is legal to make videos with pets, even if it is harmful for the pets in many countries. Thus, there is no pressure from the overseers.
There is no end to it
Unfortunately, just like everything wrong in this world, few minorities protesting cannot change anything. Only good governance with strict laws can change things. But that’s too far away. Politicians have their own interests, and a large group of lobbyists is always active with all the resources they need to lax the laws.
The only solution now is to be knowledgeable, and not participating directly or indirectly.
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