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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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:
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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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.
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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).
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