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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29349 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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Controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker allegedly uses a shock collar on his dog on stream.

It is narrative shorthand for a villain - to emphasize his wickedness and complete removal from the family of man - to kick a dog for no reason other than vicious spite. While on air last night, expounding upon his hatred of America and its violence and imperialism, his dog Kaya stands up behind him. A Tibetan mastiff/guardhound mix, the streamer purchased her a long time ago as a puppy. Nowadays, she spends the majority of her waking existence sitting behind him, in camera as a prop during his streams. As soon as he sees that she's moving off the bed, he shouts at her, and reaches for something off-camera. Immediately afterwards, the dog yelps as she tries to lay back down.

It is obviously a shock collar that is being used. No amount of denial or snarky comments can get anyone to believe that their lying eyes can see any differently. And if you think that's an overstatement - I invite you to see the footage for yourself. The fact that the man still has a career after saying "America deserved 9/11" is testament to the country's tolerance for extreme left-wing radicalization, but this might very well be the thing that can take him down. Americans love their dogs: creatures of innocent, adoring love for man. The fact that Hasan uses his dog to sustain his flagging social media presence - in emotes and in donation messages - is a transparent attempt to associate his vile personality with an animal's emotional resonance.

You can tell a lot about a character of a man by his treatment of creatures who depend entirely upon his good will and care for their lives. By this metric, Hasan is a despotic and evil blackguard. One hopes that these clips are shown at tonight's congressional hearing to the Twitch CEO. At the very least, it will be entertaining to see how the man deflects for his pet demagogue. Perhaps, in a peace offering, he can offer to collar the streamer?

he showed the collar on stream and claimed it was only had vibrating functionality (https://old.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/1o1r33t/labased_streamer_shows_off_his_canine_companions/) but now people are accusing him of using electric tape to cover the electric contacts. https://old.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1o1waqw/bro_gave_0_effort_in_putting_on_that_tape/

We use shock collars on the employees at all my firms. They’re there to do a job: they receive food and some coins as the carrot, but there has to be a stick, too. I don’t see why dogs should be any different.

Pictured: Soteriologian at work.

Where do you work?

Edit: I'm a jittery asshole today.

I didn't know we had Mauritanian slavers on this forum. Truly nothing is beyond our reach.

The Motte world domination 2025.

I invite you to see the footage for yourself.

Link?

Link

Thanks.

Yup, that's pretty much as described. "Shouts at" is a bit of a stretch, but that's just a nitpick.

I find Hasan's brand repellent and emblematic of the current era of internet fame; Of course the top political streamer on Twitch is a handsome rich vapid LA socialite

I had the misfortune to be swiping the other week and among the endless "You better also be an anti-capitalist queer ally Free Palestine LGBTQTQBLG! or else" Profiles was one that went a step further by raving about how dreamy Hasan Piker is. This made me put down my phone for a while. In what universe is talking about your favorite e-boy a good look?

Which app were you swiping?

Hinge.

I wish to just confirm: a leftist womans hinge profile actively said she wants someone who looks like Hasan Piker? Setting aside the ick of saying "look like my favorite husbando", couldn't there have been any better fucking "this guy be my schlickbait" dakimakura? even Zoran Mamdani would be a better husbando.

It just mentioned him vaguely positively, but I feel like the implication is there.

I just despair that when given limited space to convey your personality to a potential romantic partner, someone talked about their favorite rich himbo clout-chasing socialist. As I said, it made me put my phone down for a while.

Maybe you’re just in a bad spot. I was pleasantly surprised by the Hinge algorithm. It seemed to figure out what I like pretty quick.

I've never run into a torrent of the like on Hinge either - I have a few deal-breakers, obnoxious politics are one of them, and after hitting X on a number of people the app seemed to figure out that I don't want to see more of them.

I've never used dating apps. It would be pointless; since I'm in the DC area, white women who aren't the type to put those "HATE HAS NO HOME HERE / NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL" signs in their yards are damned few and far between unless you go way beyond the reach of public transit (I have no car).

It never stops showing me queer leftists with BLM ACAB in their "Lets make sure we're on the same page about."

I fucking HATE Hinge prompts and the tone they enforce.

Let me just tell you from learning the hard way: These women are doing you a favor by making it clear this is a dealbreaker up front.

Uh, you think these women care about being a good look?

Obviously they can put whatever they want in their profile and still get infinite engagement.

There is nothing wrong with using a shock collar. View the dog as a working animal, its job is essentially to perform as an actor contributing to his streams. In exchange it receives food, shelter and so forth. It seems like a fair deal for the dog, I see nothing wrong with this.

Pet owners online are some of the most deranged, toxic people I have ever encountered. They seem to view dogs and cats as our masters, that we must deliver them lavish accommodations and expect nothing in return. Suffice it to say I find this unreasonable. If a human is expected to have a job, so too can a dog.

I'm a dog owner, and I'm not deranged, I think I'm pretty pragmatic.

There is nothing wrong with using a shock collar.

Tentative agree if you are a wise owner who understands classical conditioning and basic dog psychology. I don't think most dog owners meet this bar.

I have a friend who lives in a rural area with a dog who loves going for long walks to kill rabbits/see his dog "girlfriend" in the farm 3 kilometers over. They have a shock collar that activates if he leaves the property, which I think is great because it reduces his risk of getting killed by a car, but means he doesn't need to be literally tied to the house (which was the prior solution).

I have an uncle who uses the shock collar as a shortcut to actually training his dog by zapping it when it pisses him off, but he does 0 training to teach it what he actually wants. I dislike this greatly.

to perform as an actor contributing to his streams

Refusing to let it move from a single location for any reason for hours on end is deranged, both as a job period for any living being, but especially a dog. They're restless creatures with a ton of energy.

My dog spends most of his time sleeping these days (he's 5), I tried pretty hard with him to get him to sleep beside me when I work at my desk. Seemed like a win/win, because I could interact with him when I needed a break instead of go on my phone, and he'd get way more attention then if he was on the couch in a different room. But it didn't work because he seems to really love changing his sleeping location every few hours, going for a drink, etc. He sleeps most of the day, but every time I leave my office he's in a different location than when I last left it. Most dogs I've interacted with share this behavior.

If Hassan did a good job at training, he'd create a strong positive association with lying in that bed behind him. But I image even if he did (what I've heard about him and the fact he's using a shock collar makes me doubt this), I bet it would still want to stretch its legs, get water, whatever. It's a fucking dog, they like to move, we like to move too ideally (see: how shit desk jobs are for your physical health) we just have an easier time overriding that impulse, to our detriment.

I'm all for dogs having jobs, many breeds need them (every border collie I see in Toronto is autistically fixated on fetch as a replacement for herding, it's sad). But "sit here for hours and never move from this exact spot" is antithetical to their nature, and the 10,000 years of jobs they've done for us thus far.

But "sit here for hours and never move from this exact spot" is antithetical to their nature, and the 10,000 years of jobs they've done for us thus far.

Agreed. I think another aspect is the hypocrisy of it. Using pain to condition a working dog who has a job like herding is one thing. But this dog's job is literally "be in the video stream and look friend-shaped, so that viewers will continue to watch". It is very much unsurprising that people have an emotional reaction to the dog getting shocked.

every border collie I see in Toronto is autistically fixated on fetch as a replacement for herding, it's sad

This is also my Labrador retriever, but, well, she's literally a retriever so I don't think it's such a bad life for her. For a 7-year old lab, mostly laying around all day, punctuated by sprinting around fetching and indoor games of "find the stuffed animal" seems pretty good.

More broadly, I completely agree with your core point and think the contrary position seems so ridiculous to me that it's hard to see it as anything other than vice signaling. Taking animals that have these deeply engrained personality traits that they're literally bred to perform and forcing them to sit still for the sake of the aesthetic on stream is just obviously the behavior of a cruel moron.

Labs are a lot more chill than collies in my experience (my dog is actually part Lab). I think your dog's life sounds excellent.

This is obviously tempered by bias and the fact I don't know these dogs. But Collies have this seemingly profound need to work. It actually seems like there's a pretty strong correlation between dog intelligence and "desire to work" in general.

When my dog plays fetch, it feels like play. The way he runs, the tail wagging, the fact he'll stop to chew on the ball or roll it around a bit before bringing it back. Whereas every collie I see playing fetch seems to have it optimized down to a science of how to get and return the ball as quickly as possible, and then to grind out as many repetitions as possible as fast as possible.

Maybe they're actually having a ton of fun doing it, but it just feels very serious in a way other dogs playing fetch doesn't.

One Malinois at my dog park (not a Collie, but another smart working dog) has figured out it's actually much more optimal to just attempt to jump and catch the ball immediately once it's thrown (the owner was sitting) which is indeed a lot more efficient but totally defeats the point of the game. Although it was pretty cool to see the problem solving.

Still in complete agreement!

For the sake of completeness though, I think I have undersold just how obsessive our girl is about fetching. This behavior:

Whereas every collie I see playing fetch seems to have it optimized down to a science of how to get and return the ball as quickly as possible, and then to grind out as many repetitions as possible as fast as possible.

Maybe they're actually having a ton of fun doing it, but it just feels very serious in a way other dogs playing fetch doesn't.

That's her when fetching, just completely obsessed with the activity to the extent that she completely ignores other dogs, doesn't want to take even the smallest break, and sprints the ball back as quickly as possible until she's fatigued enough to decide she's had enough. She's an ex-breeder that I think developed some neurotic habits from the confined lifestyle prior to her moving to our home setting, and is also epileptic - there are some neurologic oddities that I think keep her from being entirely normal, so we just kind of roll with that. The finding games at home are a more relaxed, playful activity, but fetching is very serious business.

But yeah, more generally, I know exactly what you mean. I don't understand why people insist on getting these working breeds as city dogs where they're just wildly out of place and obviously have strong drives to do other things. For an old lab, even one that's neurotic about fetching, spending the vast majority of the day laying around is pretty optimal for her, but collies and Aussies and other herding dogs are clearly just losing their minds. I really don't get how their owners look at behavior that is just short of literally chewing on themselves and think it's fine.

I'm happy for your dog :)

At risk of circle jerking also fully agree LOL

I have a strong preference towards intelligent dogs but I couldn't own a Collie, Blue Heeler, or the other mega energy smart ones. It does just feel like you're committing it to a life of under-stimulation and frustration.

View the dog as a working animal, its job is essentially to perform as an actor contributing to his streams. In exchange it receives food, shelter and so forth. It seems like a fair deal for the dog, I see nothing wrong with this.

I'd probably rather be dead than alive as a prop dog like that. Given that the dog was almost certainly artificially bred rather than a stray, I find it repugnant to create and perpetuate a net negative life like that.

I don't see why the fact that he keeps the animal alive means that it's a fair deal.

I would assume based on that cross it was backyard bred and would have been sold to someone to use for protection, which likely entails worse treatment than Hassan is giving.

I wouldn't, personally, use a dog as a living prop. But I don't think it's beyond the pale.

I’m obligated to sit at my computer and code for 8 hours per day when working. Is my life net negative? I see no evidence this dog experiences its life as a net negative.

I’m obligated to sit at my computer and code for 8 hours per day when working.

You, in fact, are not obligated. You can quit and live off welfare. You can live on the streets. You can find another job. You can, as the kids say, keep yourself safe, if no other options are open to you. You, not somebody else, have the ultimate control over your life. Don't make the foolish argument that, since you aren't free to do literally whatever you want, you are forced to do what you currently do.

Is my life net negative?

Since you have the benefit of making yourself understood, i don't need to speculate and you can just tell me. For animals whose lives are placed in our care, we must speculate.

I see no evidence this dog experiences its life as a net negative.

I do. Sitting in Piker's basement for hours in a corner with no autonomy, stimulus, or even, as far as I can tell, daylight is a profoundly unnatural lifestyle for the dog. The dog is not able to engage in any ordinary dog behaviors (such as, uh, walking two feet) without being shocked. I view that as an obvious case of a net negative existence.

You, in fact, are not obligated. You can quit and live off welfare. You can live on the streets. You can find another job. You can, as the kids say, keep yourself safe, if no other options are open to you

All this applies equally to the dog. It can attack Piker and go out in a blaze of glory, mouth red with his blood. We can observe from its behavior it is not unduly burdened by this obligation. If he had to shock it every minute to maintain compliance then that would be evidence this was extremely burdensome for the dog. Your dog mind reading act does not impress me

All this applies equally to the dog.

It doesn't, because the dog has been bred for hundreds of thousands of years for subservience. Not attacking its owner is in its bones. Is that how you view yourself?

Off topic, but estimates of early dog domestication are 15,000 to 40,000 years ago.

When you go back 300,000 years, we're looking at fossil evidence of the first modern humans.

But dogs are one of deadliest animals in the USA, not far behind wasps.

because the dog has been bred for hundreds of thousands of years for subservience.

You are using the fact that the dog’s nature is to find serving humans agreeable, as an argument that the dog’s life serving humans is disagreeable?

The dog has been bred to be docile. It hasn't been bred to find arbitrarily bad living conditions enjoyable. Artificial selection cares little for your quality of life.

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Dogs attacking their owner is not an unusual story. Now, you, motteizean, can find a lower-paid and much easier job working from home. Fake Amazon reviews or something. This dog does not have that option. I'm not crying for it; a personal protection dog(which is probably what that cross was made for) is probably a worse fate than that. But it is just factually untrue that it could have left and found a different gig.

Ok, since many people are raising more or less identical objections I will summarize the basis of my views in response to my own comment so I don’t have to reply with the same to everyone.

I think the following two things are fundamentally reasonable and acceptable.

  1. I believe it is reasonable to demand a dog perform a job for you in exchange for food and shelter. I do not believe dogs are entitled to human servitude by virtue of being cute.

  2. I believe it is reasonable to use physical punishment on a dog even if it is not the most optimal or effective training method.

Obviously these things can be carried to extremes and become abusive. I judge by levels of pain generally accepted for things like spanking a child, which is roughly on par with a common shock collar. When judging a situation like this I look at it and ask, is there any evidence the dog is pervasively unwell? I don’t see it. Is he applying the punishment constantly, excessively or gratuitously? I don’t see it. Is the job asked of the dog fundamentally deranged or evil according to my values (such as sexual services)? No. Okay then, carry on

Demanding a dog stay on a bed too small for it to even turn around for 4+ hours is deranged according to my values.

There is nothing wrong with using a shock collar.

As a training tool, sure. As a means of forcing an animal to sit still for the sake of being a video prop, it is simply animal abuse by a stunted and pathetic man.

Companionship dogs weren’t treated as working dogs in history. Greeks and Romans buried their dogs in elaborate tombs with poignant epitaphs. Neolithic humans buried dogs alongside human graves. There are statues in Europe commemorating dogs, the bronze weathered gold from the petting of passersby. The inordinate love of dogs may have negatively influenced the TFR of Rome, as Caesar / Plutarch criticize it in legend.

Both dogs and horses could be working animals and valued companions. I suspect the Neolithic dogs given honoured burials were hunting dogs, not housepets.

Shock collars can be a useful training tool in extreme cases when normal tools are ineffective. But they have to be used in close temporal proximity to the bad behavior and coupled with other methods of training and positive reinforcement. The goal is always to move away from a shock collar as soon as possible.

What happened in the video was pretty much the opposite of effective use of a shock collar. He administers the shock for a fairly minor and random bit of animal behavior that isn’t putting the dog or person at risk, he administers the shock too late, it is not accompanied by clear warning or commands. From the dog’s perspective, this is just pain being inflicted at random. It is not meaningful cruelty, but meaningless. Piker gets angry and hurts the dog.

So at worst he is guilty of using a less-than-optimal training technique. I view it as identical to spanking children. Perhaps there is a more optimal way of training a child, but people are under no moral obligation to be maximally optimal in everything they do. Obviously physically disciplining a child could be taken to the point of abuse, but a spanking is not in-and-of-itself abusive and does not require being the most optimal method

I think if you're spanking your kids, you are actually obligated to do it in the most effective way possible that you are capable of, and to spank them "lazily" without adherence to optimal learning/ teaching is an abject failure as a parent and leader

I would say it is more akin to slapping a child when you’re short-tempered and they are chewing loudly. Even then, you can explain things to the child later. The dog is just going to be confused by the pain and learn nothing except to fear its owner.

No, he's guilty of pointless cruelty directed at an animal that did nothing wrong. It's flatly evil.

The discipline of children is an excellent comparison. There's nothing wrong with the training tool in and of itself, but inflicted on a child for no real reason with no reasonable end goal, it's simply abuse. A man shocking a dog or hitting a child for not instantly complying with his pointless whims is a sinister individual.

The animal did something wrong though, it strayed from the desired position necessary for the stream. I don’t see why “actor” is a less valid vocation for a dog than any of the other myriad tasks we have forced them to do through the years. Being forced to stay in a given location for a stream seems quite similar to dogs assigned to guard a certain area, which are often chained for the purpose, and this seems like a much more luxurious assignment than a junkyard.

The animal did something wrong though, it strayed from the desired position necessary for the stream

You have to be fucking joking. Hasan Piker is the worst sort of vapid "fake" political commentator, he's using a dog as a prop for his stupid stream? The dog is just sitting in the corner and when it decides to stretch and move he shocks the damned thing. Fuck that guy. This is what the uncanny valley was randomly selected for in our evolution, to warn us of inhuman entities pretending to be human.

which are often chained for the purpose

I actually think this is significantly more humane. I am not very bothered by dogs being confined to a given area, but not even being able to shift around if sore, bored, or simply wanting a change is fucked up.

We turn hospital patients who can't move because they get bed sores, etc. A chained up dog can still get up, stretch its legs and move a bit, and settle into a new, more comfortable posture or location.

Given the amount of time he has had this dog, and the delay in his response, the dog has no real understanding that it has a job or occupation, unlike properly trained occupational dogs, which, it is important to note, we fail out most potential candidates for even to this day. That means, most dogs are not capable of being occupational dogs, unless the occupation is something like ratting or foxhunting for the appropriate breeds. Sitting still for a several hour podcast is not an occupation any dog breed has been bred for.

There is no real defense of this video I saw other than dogs having zero moral valence or some bizarre long running joke on this program that needs to be explained.

I don’t see why “actor” is a less valid vocation for a dog than any of the other myriad tasks we have forced them to do through the years.

It is legitimately impossible for me to believe that this is a sincerely held belief. The dog has no capacity to understand the role of an "actor", this is merely being subject to pointless misery for its entire life. It really seems like you're just trying too hard to lean into how lame it is that people care about dogs.

The dog has no capacity to understand the role of an "actor"

You think the dogs running on treadmills to turn spits in Victorian England “understood” how their motive power was being transferred through cogs and widgets to procure a homogeneous meat temperature so the Earl of Chelmsford could entertain his dinner guests with delicious roast? Come on, requiring that a dog understand its role in order for its work to be morally permissable is ludicrous.

I think most dogs that are bred to run believe that their role is to run and basically enjoy the activity. I'm sure many dogs were subject to abject cruelty in prior eras for reasons that I would personally find abhorrent and I don't think this is much of a defense of Piker. If the absolute best someone can say is that people were also cruel to dogs in the past, this does not move me one iota from the position that this is degenerate, third-world behavior unbecoming of a decent modern dog owner.

I dont know this specific story, but dogs, as part of their nature, love running. If their running was naturally transformed into human worth they dont give a crap.

Dogs dont naturally love being shocked.

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I'm not going to write paens to Hassan's treatment of his dog. But its littermates are probably underfed in a junkyard.

Of course the dog has no understanding of acting, but that’s irrelevant. The misery is not pointless, presumably it increases the entertainment of his stream (I have no idea, I’m just assuming this is his motivation). The dog is presumably disinclined to sit still for hours at a time, but so what? I’m disinclined to sit at my computer coding for hours but tough shit, that’s what my employer wants. A blind guide dog accompanying a student to class has to sit still for the duration of the class, tough shit. Dogs having jobs is perfectly normal and in the grand scheme of things neither this job nor his training method seem inordinately cruel. Historically perhaps a dog might be gored by a boar while forced to participate in hunts.

Historically perhaps a dog might be gored by a boar while forced to participate in hunts.

That's kind of the point, though. Dogs weren't forced to participate in hunts. They do it themselves, they love it. Depending on the breed, they were bred to do it almost compulsively. Stopping a dog chasing things is hard, that's why you have to keep them on a leash in the park.

Whereas any dog breeds that are not lapdogs have immense difficulty staying still. According to https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/mastiff/ a mastiff has middling energy levels i.e. is not a lap dog, and almost certainly finds it very difficult to stay still for lengthy periods.

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View the dog as a working animal, its job is essentially to perform as an actor contributing to his streams. In exchange it receives food, shelter and so forth. It seems like a fair deal for the dog, I see nothing wrong with this.

A person's character is revealed in how they treat those below them - particularly those who are obligated to serve them. It's wrong to whip a UPS delivery driver for stopping his route for a coffee; it's wrong to abuse a draft or pack animal, and it's similarly a mark of low character to electroshock a dog for the "infraction" of taking a few steps inside your home.

You don't need to be deranged or toxic to look down on that. There's a world of difference between "don't cause your animal unnecessary pain for your convenience" and "deliver your animal 'lavish accommodations' in exchange for nothing."

I legit cannot tell if the spirited defense of "its just a dog bro make it suffer" are honestly held opinions about directional cruelty or just hasan stans desperately trying to downplay an obvious act of on air abuse.

Its not even like "dont abuse animals" is some niche position, the whole point of the leftist omnicause is to assign reputational damage to those who abuse those on the oppression scale. If Hasan beat up a white skinhead he'd have been ok, but he shock collared an animal that existed for reddit updoots. Thats haram no matter how you cut it.

TBH, I'm ecstatic, can't wait for this fake meathead to get properly canceled.

It is wrong to abuse a pack animal, but all physical punishment is not abuse and the same applies to humans. The relationship of owner to pet is closer to parent-child than me-UPS driver, and it is certainly widely (but not universally) accepted that spanking a child is acceptable.

I wanted to challenge you on the spanking opinion thing but holy shit, North Americans have 50%-60% approval towards statements like "parents should be allowed to physically discipline children" or "it's sometimes necessary to spank your child"

Western Europe is more like 20-30% acceptance.

I had no idea it was that high.

This topic is difficult to break down because people will use "spanking" to refer to both "fifty lashes with a switch to a 12 year old for sass" and "quick swat on the bottom to tell a toddler to stop being suicidal".

And the HBDers here will be very aware of the demographic breakdowns between those two positions (and it's not usually a switch these days but more likely an electrical cord).

It's wild how many commenters seem to react to the idea of any negative feedback whatsoever to a working animal as if it was unthinkable. Dogs were bred to be conditioned to do the jobs that humans assigned them. Laying down on a comfortable bed for hours on end is very much a job that a dog can do, and that a dog can find satisfaction in when it knows it is doing its job well. A tiny stimulus from an e-collar as an occasional reminder is an incredibly normal dog training behavior, despite the efforts of radical positive-feedback-only advocates to dramatically shift the Overton window over the past two decades.

It is not a working dog, and "lay around to be a prop for a stream" isn't a job a dog is bred for, nor is it one we should be training them for, it completely absurd.

A large part of the disconnect you are seeing is that clearly this dog is not properly trained. Its fully grown. If it knew its job was to lay there he wouldn't have a shock mechanism to keep it there. Perhaps from time to time he would have to remind the dog to get back to its position. Dogs that are well trained are very obedient.

Instead he chose a different path with physical pain that still appears to be ineffective due to his own negligent training.

“Not being a great dog trainer” is hardly grounds for vituperative opprobrium though, is it? Many people are not great dog trainers.

I personally have contempt for people that are too lazy or incompetent to train their dogs and just engage in pointless acts of cruelty directed at an animal that clearly has no idea why they're being hurt. This isn't some Piker-specific position.

If you're not a good trainer you shouldn't use a shock collar because you're inflicting pain without the corresponding training utility.

And you could be a good dog trainer if you just googled it, so you're essentially inflicting pain on something you have a duty of care to because you are lazy or stupid, which is why everyone is mad.

I use "you" to refer to Hassan/a hypothetical dog owner, not you personally.

...a dog can find satisfaction in when it knows it is doing its job well.

Some dogs can, but this is highly dependent on the breed. I don't know enough about this breed to comment on the plausibility of it accepting such a role, but this would be cruel for any active breed with high drive. An Australian Shepherd is simply not going to understand the idea that it's tasked with sitting still, it will be frustrated by this life. Piker aside, people should put more thought into what they hope to get from animals that have had selective breeding that has engrained behavior so deeply that it borders on neuroses.

Fair point. We just really don't like Hasan, so we need to find more reasons not to like him.

It's wild how you seem to think negative feedback has to include physical pain. Dogs are social animals that are easily trained without pain.

Punishment is not generally as powerful a motivator as reward, but if you are training a dog to specifically not do a certain action (leaving his position) then punishment is a necessary part of that training to indicate the boundary conditions he can't break.

How else do you recommend to punish the dog? The most important part is that the negative stimulus must be temporally as close as possible to the infraction. Was yelling the correct response? What if the yelling is not getting the point across? Are you going to, what, ignore the dog so he feels bad?

Honestly I'm really interested by the large number of commentors who really think that shock collars are beyond the pale. They are a normal and often necessary part of training a dog.

At the risk of being pedantic, we were training dogs for millennia before the shock collar was invented, and also in many countries the shock collar is banned, so it cannot be necessary even if sometimes useful.

I make no comment on the morality, I think that depends on how it’s used.

I would assume that before the shock collar was invented, the go-to immediate negative reinforcement was beating the dog or yanking on the prong collar.

My aunt just used a rolled up newspaper applied to the nose for a mild negative reinforcement, equivalent to the dope slap. But dogs are social animals, they’re as motivated by disapproval as much or more than pain. “BAD DOG” in the right tone of voice is usually all you need, I think.

Why is physically negative feedback taboo but other negative sensations are not? They are all just dolors, negative hedons, whatever you want to call them. I’m fairly confident that dogs might choose a small shock over, I don’t know, being refused access to a particular treat. In my mind if a dog would prefer it I struggle in understanding what makes it wrong other than the squeamishness and moral purity of the pet owner

In theory sure, in practice it's a reliable signal that you're abusive. Furthermore, i don't want to give abusive people the social go ahead for using that tool and plausible deniability for going over the line.

I don't have a principle against physical negative feedback, I would support corporal punishment where there is a neutral third party evaluating and administrating said punishment, like Singapore style caning.

Ah yes, withholding a bonus to an employee is the same negative hedons as whipping him. Clearly.

Yes. I would rather be whipped a few times than deprived a $10 million dollar bonus. Hedons ARE fungible. Maybe not perfectly fungible, but if you tell me there is no amount of money that would convince you to take one stroke of the lash then… I just won’t believe you.

Well humans have all sorts of cultural taboos around physical violence that clearly dogs have no comprehension of. In the absence of cultural taboos and laws I think for a big enough bonus many employees would prefer a short electric shock over missing out on a 50k bonus. I know I would.

There is a culture war angle here about how some people like animals way more than humans.

Considering all the things Hasan has previously done and said (things that break the Twitch TOS like doxing other people and arguably inciting violence with inflammatory rhetoric), if this alleged mistreatment of the dog is what gets him cancelled, it's pretty revealing what certain people's priorities actually are.

This story was brought up on some discord servers I'm in with people that lean mostly left/center and the consensus is that's "subhuman" behavior from Hasan. So it's not something that's just circulating around his haters.

That being said, I highly doubt this is what gets Hasan cancelled, or that this will be a major blow to his reputation. Anyone who isn't a fan of Hasan probably already greatly dislike him, and many people on the left aren't huge fans of Hasan. The worst this can do is get some of his existing fans to stop watching his content.

Considering all the things Hasan has previously done and said (things that break the Twitch TOS like doxing other people and arguably inciting violence with inflammatory rhetoric), if this alleged mistreatment of the dog is what gets him cancelled, it's pretty revealing what certain people's priorities actually are.

It's revealing of the fact that in your face things are easier to rally around, you don't have to pay attention to a word he says to see what's happening to the dog.

if this alleged mistreatment of the dog is what gets him cancelled, it's pretty revealing what certain people's priorities actually are

I don't think it's so much a question of priorities. The people that Hassan mistreats, he would argue (and his audience would agree) are evil people that deserve it. And for that matter, he could be right; I don't know enough about it to say for those people, but I do believe some people are evil and do deserve bad treatment.

Dogs though, I'm not convinced at all are capable of evil. They either act according to their natural instincts, or they act how they've been trained. Thus I find mistreating a dog is a worse act of villainy against an innocent than mistreating a person that you believe is evil.

Dogs though, I'm not convinced at all are capable of evil. They either act according to their natural instincts, or they act how they've been trained.

I am intrigued - what do you think is the difference between humans and dogs, that you believe the “He’s a good boy he was just raised wrong” argument above doesn’t also apply to humans?

Humans have much more meta-cognition to be able to learn independent from their initial nurturing. They can also think about the cause and effect of their actions, which dogs cannot. They can also learn much more easily, and generalize that learning (dogs are so so so bad at generalizing).

But I personally am actually somewhat a fan of that argument when applied to humans who came from anti-social or otherwise extremely sub-optimal backgrounds.

The other side of that though is much like a shitty dog, I think shitty humans should be shipped off to a farm (compassionate gulag?) to be re-trained, and if they are incapable of this, be removed from regular society so they don't bite anyone.

I care less about the shock collar than I do what it is used for, which is apparently to ensure that his dog remain in a 2' x 4' space for hours on end. That doesn't seem good. I also don't need anything else to convince me of Hasan's character or what he represents. This could be a deep fake AI video, and my dislike of Hasan will remain same.

which is apparently to ensure that his dog remain in a 2' x 4' space for hours on end.

Ben Shapiro voice: Okay, this is epic.

Your link goes to a removed Reddit post.

Somehow this reminds of one of Kulak's posts on his blog about how different cultures treat animals differently. This is much more frowned upon in Western culture but maybe in other cultures this is not such a big deal.

That claim holds only if Hasan expressed acceptability if heterogenous morality. His own stated moral framings are uncompromising and totalizing, morality as he defines it being foundationally right with no room for alternative moral heuristics. That he expresses sympathy for islamists and lgbt rights simultaneously is internal incoherence, not heterodoxy tolerance. Some conflicts do test this incoherence more, and livestreaming animal abuse is one of them. If he had a white skinhead paid to be whipped in the cuck chair that'd be fine for his morality, but reddit aww updooters are part of his moral universe and that is why this is breaking his world.

Yes, many cultures are inferior to Western culture in ways that seem obvious to me. I'm glad we're Western and I want Piker held to Western standards. If he wants to be held to third-world standards, there are many options for him.

It is obviously a shock collar that is being used. No amount of denial or snarky comments can get anyone to believe that their lying eyes can see any differently.

I have no love for Hasan Piker - I don't follow him on any social media, so my exposure to him is all second-hand, and what I've seen of him indicates to me that he's a very careless thinker and impenetrable ideologue that has actively made political discourse worse in America. But I do think there's reasonable doubt here. Based on the behavior, the timing, his personality, the way he seems to treat his dog, and the way he has talked about potentially using shock collars on his dog in the past, I would absolutely guess that the odds are over 50% that that clip was of him using a shock collar on the dog. But without seeing the remote or a close-up of the collar to verify that it's indeed a shock collar, I wouldn't vote to convict in a court of law.

And though he won't be judged in a court of law, he will be judged in the court of public opinion, by people who will be more than happy to hold the "prosecution" to a far higher standard than "beyond a reasonable doubt." As well as by people who will use a far lower standard of, "I don't like him, therefore he's guilty." I believe that there will be more than enough people of the former sort such that Piker has absolutely nothing to be concerned about with respect to "cancelation" or whatever.

Personally, as someone who has had dogs and cats for most of his life, I find shock collars for pets to be pretty much evil, and this has lowered my opinion of Piker as a person even more. But my opinion of him doesn't matter.

If the collar was an "air tag" as Hasan is claiming, his response is still pretty bad - his dog got up, he began yelling at her, she injured herself and yelped, and instead of checking on her/making sure she was okay, he continued to yell/complain about her. The response to a dog yelping in pain is not to yell at it, especially if the pain was not anticipated to occur.

From a culture war perspective, the defense of "I didn't do X bad thing, I only did Y bad thing! Take that!!!" is wild to parse as a strategy in real time - a shock collar is horrible, but so is what Hasan is claiming he actually did in the moment, and no one seems willing to comment on the behavior of the latter just because that type of abusive behavior is less bad than the shock collar.

The response to a dog yelping in pain is not to yell at it, especially if the pain was not anticipated to occur.

Agreed. Presuming that my 50%+ guess is incorrect and it is either a vibration collar or just a regular collar, his response to what appears to be a moment of distress by his dog is still absolutely horrid behavior. However, I wouldn't condemn him for just one clip of him losing his cool like that; even someone with stupid and vile opinions who has actively harmed US society like him deserves grace for one momentary lapse of that sort. Given how he likely has hundreds (thousands?) of hours of video of him and his dog, finding a single instance of something like this shouldn't be enough to condemn him as a piece of shit.

a shock collar is horrible, but so is what Hasan is claiming he actually did in the moment, and no one seems willing to comment on the behavior of the latter just because that type of abusive behavior is less bad than the shock collar.

I think you're mistaken. No one seems willing to comment on the behavior of the latter because the people who want to remain skeptical given the lack of damning evidence are mostly people who are motivated not to condemn Hasan for anything in the first place, no matter what he does; he could film himself ordering a shock collar from Amazon, unwrapping it, putting it on his dog, and zapping it indiscriminately, and a significant number of these people would figure out why the dog deserved it. And the people who would condemn him for the lesser type of abusive behavior are mostly people who are motivated to jump to conclusions to condemn Hasan with the flimsiest of evidence, so they've already decided that he's guilty of shocking his dog. The exceptions in either group are likely vanishingly small.

I don't know personally what he did, but I know that I've never seen a dog yelp in response to anything except pain or the expectation of incoming pain if it has been conditioned into them, neither is a good look for Hasan.

Sure he might be a dickhead but this is a nothingburger. It might be less popular than before to use a shock collar these days but it's definitely still something that's mainstream for pet owners. And a lot of streamers use their pets as props in the video.

Shock collars are used to keep your dog from running into the street by underground fencing your yard.

It's completely mainstream to use e-collars for pets, but not like this.

The typical use for an e-collar is for recall, and there are multiple levels to it.

  1. Noise (it beeps)
  2. Vibe (it vibrates)
  3. Shock

You use these when you issue the recall command (usually: "come!") but the dog is too fixated on something to respond. You start by doing the beeps, then the vibe, and then only if the dog is totally locked into something would you use the shock. The shock isn't a punishment, it's just there to get the dogs attention.

There are people who use the shock as punishment, but they're the minority.

It is? I have literally never encountered anyone in real life that uses one or even talked of using one outside of joking about doing something cartoonishly evil.

It’s a common tool for things like snake training your dog. A dog’s prey instinct and natural curiosity can get it killed or maimed in a number of ways, so it CAN be useful as a training tool to help stop dangerous behavior.

I have very nice neighbors who trained or tried to train a dog to stop barking inside with one. I live in a very normy, probably even slightly upper middle class, burb.

Everyone I knew growing up with a dog used a shock collar.

Have you not encountered invisible fences? They are extremely common and widespread in my experiences and use shocks based on proximity to the fence

I am confident most invisible fences have an allowable area greater than 3 feet by 2 feet.

Invisible fences exist and are common. They also are easy for the dog to understand. They are clearly defined boundaries with geographic markers at all times. You train the dog on them at what we think is mild discomfort levels of pain so they stay in the yard and dont get hit by a dump truck. But also they get to be in the freaking yard! Which toddlers (who are smarter than said dogs) dont get to do unsupervised.

I've not encountered their use. I've encountered conversations about them not working very well and essentially amounting to lazy owners abusing their dogs. This is from Americans exclusively, seeing as they're illegal or heavily restricted in much of Europe.

Anecdotal evidence, of course, but in my neighborhood multiple houses have them and they work quite well. Maybe this is one of those situations where you really need to teach the dog about the invisi-fence rather than just installing it and assuming the dog will react the way you want, so it'll work well for the conscientious owner and poorly for the lazy owner.

so it'll work well for the conscientious owner and poorly for the lazy owner.

That may well be true, but its also true that the conscientious owner doesn't need an invisi-fence, so what effect does their availablity really have?

I do believe there's some space in between, "dog is trained enough to respect the invisi-fence" and "dog is trained so well it can be trusted to stay in an open yard regardless of how many squirrels, kids, etc may come running by".

My father got a shock collar for one of our dogs when I was a kid in the 90s-00s, to let her out in our yard without having to worry about her running away. It didn't work for keeping her "fenced in," as she would respond to the shock by just running even faster until she left the area. I didn't think much of it at the time, both as a kid and as a Korean immigrant who grew up with dogs being little more than props to put in your yard to keep thieves out.

It’s pretty normal for big dog owners around here. But I also live in a bubble where everyone spanks their kids, so acceptability of corporal punishment is just higher.

E-collars are extremely common for people with dogs and land, especially people with hunting dogs.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/outdoor-recreation/sporting-dog-tracking-training-devices/

When we got a dog, and had it professionally trained, they used a shock collar. They also gave use the shock collar, and instructed us on it's use. It was really helpful training the dog to stop jumping on people, because it scared our daughter so badly she was hesitant to come out of her room if the dog was around. Later on, when we got a geofenced collar, it's also a shock collar. Basically an invisible fence collar, except it uses a GPS instead of a buried wire.

Now that I think about, everyone I knew with well trained dogs has them on shock collars. But maybe that's regional or social bubble related.

When we got a dog, and had it professionally trained, they used a shock collar. They also gave use the shock collar, and instructed us on it's use.

This is when shock collars are good. Professional people who actually knew what the fuck they were doing trained your dog, and then further trained you on how to be a good trainer to your dog.

Hassan seems like... 0 of those things are true?

Now that I think about, everyone I knew with well trained dogs has them on shock collars. But maybe that's regional or social bubble related.

I would assume so. As I said, I know literally no-one that uses them and that includes Trump voting Americans with land (California, Nevada and Colorado).

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