Yesterday it was discovered A dentist named Walter Palmer killed Cecil the lion, a beloved lion in Zimbabwe. While the rest of social media dog piled on the troll bandwagon, trashing his company name on every site from yelp reviews , to google images, and of course on twitter where the dentist office's name was hijacked by a jokester with a lot of lion-gifs.
A lot of actors and celebrities had choice words for him, like Sharon Osbourne.
I hope that #WalterPalmer loses his home, his practice & his money. He has already lost his soul...
— Sharon Osbourne (@MrsSOsbourne) July 28, 2015
Others without verified accounts took it one step further by calling for terrorist acts against him. Like this gentleman.
Can someone deliver a lit Molotov cocktail each to the house & Clinic of #WalterPalmer? Despicable inbred psychopath.
— Spitfire (@SickPuppyDawg) July 28, 2015
(1/5): If, as reported, this dentist & guides lured #CecilTheLion out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property...
— PETA (@peta) July 28, 2015
(2/5): Because shooting #CecilTheLion in the park would have been illegal, he needs to be extradited, charged, &, preferably, hanged.
— PETA (@peta) July 28, 2015
I'm not sure whether that's a complete violation of Twitter's terms of service like the one from the above unverified account or not. If Twitter ignores it, it's telling. Regardless such militant tweets calling for the death of someone (if qualifier or not) certainly makes people think of PETA in a different light.
Interesting couple of days. PETA who fights for animals lives wants a human killed. And Planned Parenthood stands for abortion by tweeting a mic drop from a kid's movie, before quietly deleting it. In both cases, not many people noticed. I guess because they were too busy writing one star Yelp reviews of a dentist they've never been to. You have to feel for Yelp in that instance, having to remove all of those reviews that violate its content guidelines.
Is social media becoming more ironic or more sincere? I can't tell any more.