—From CB—

A friend pointed out the obvious: the rage factor on the Web is a pandemic. I hesitate to launch a scientific study, fearing the consequences, so this is only in the nature of a thought experiment. Imagine that some poor soul ventures a Facebook post with a single word:

DOG

Besides 42 Likes, 16 Loves, 6 Laughs, 5 Griefs, a variety of perplexing emoji’s, and a number of photos of dogs, there are these:

• Why not just go ahead and use the n-word? You casually skim over 5,000 years of canine enslavement that goes unrecognized by neo-Liberalism.
  
• YO TRUMP!
• Who are you calling a dog, asshole? Stand up and own it!
• What about cats? I’ve never read a more homophobic, cis-gendered, heteronormative, ableist, white male supremacist statement. Yes, the cosy middle-class sit-com picture: this old smelly animal curled at Daddy’s feet, with all that that implies.
• FUCK BIDEN!
• FUCK TRUMP!
• “Dog” is a dehumanizing term. They are feeling creatures. Just take a minute out of your self-centered day and look in their eyes.
• Dog is making God into an anagram.
• It’s not an anagram, it’s a palindrome.
• Is.
• Is not.
• Just because he humps Aunt Ethel’s leg is no reason to mutilate his nature.
• Who says he’s male? Are dogs always male? He might be a bitch.
• Thanks for this enlightened hate speech.
• It’s a semordnilap.
• ???
• God and dog.
• This brings up the horrible moment in Sunday School when they said that dogs didn’t have souls so they couldn’t go to Heaven. That finished Sunday School for me. Religion is crap.
  
• I hope you never feel the pain of having to put Ragsie down. Your thoughtless note ripped open a wound that’s been there for twenty years.
• You sound pretty fucked-up.
• You sound pretty stupid.
• YO AOC!
• I can’t stand her.
• White fragility, anyone?
  
• What about the 2nd Amendment?
• “Dog” implies there’s one kind of dog. What do an Alaskan malamute and a chihuahua have in common? They’re two different races. Trying to wipe out “difference” is just a subtle form of racism.
• Racist is racist.
• ???
• Racism is not relevant in the world of dogs. They’re all equally oppressed.
• I wouldn’t mind being as oppressed as Buddy. Free food, lays on the carpet all day, gets up to poop.
• Like the current POTUS.
• Libtard!
• Redneck!
• Socialist!
• Bassoonist!
• What I hate about bicycles, they’re fine if they had their own roads, but you get behind one, they don’t move over, they just poke along and you never know what to expect.
• I’m outta here.

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After some consideration, I don’t think I want to try this.

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