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Notes -
Two screens, more literally than usual
There was a thread a few weeks back about Hasan Piker supposedly using a shock collar on his dog. I didn't think too much of it at the time, not knowing who Hasan Piker even was (I had heard the name, but couldn't tell you anything else). But a little later I ran across Taylor Lorenz's podcast episode on it "Hasan Piker and the Future No One Is Ready For" (link to YouTube and therefore auto-transcript, since I follow via podcast, I have not seen the video).
In the episode, she describes the shock collar claim as obvious nonsense that anyone watching the video can see for themselves, in addition to her having met Hasan and the dog in person and therefore she is sure the claim is false.
In comparison, in the Culture War thread post I linked above, /u/crushedoranages says
I have not gone down the rabbit hole of analysis of the video, so I'm not going to try to defend Taylor's interpretation. But I was struck by seeing a case where both sides are telling me to watch the exact same video clip since in it is plain to see the events transpired as they claim. The "two screens" concept comes up here a lot, but it's usually about seeing different subsets of a population, often whatever your social media algorithm surfaces, or different interpretations of the same utterance (see: taking Trump literally vs. seriously or, more recently, the Young Republicans group chat). This seems like a whole new level of disagreement about reality.
Taylor's thesis is mainly one of anti-surveillance (a major theme of her work), which is pretty well covered by this quote from the YouTube auto-transcript:
I know about this controversy much more than I should have, mostly by following Asmongold on this. At the end of it I think Hasan really used shock collar on his dog. I do not have "evidence" at this point as I really did not assemble all the clips, but I will throw it here:
There is much more than just one video here. In true 4Chan manner, a host of clips surfaced where Hasan moved the remote around, where his dog reacted strangely when she left the designed place while the stream was muted etc.
The dog really serves as a prop on his streams standing for hours in the same place.
Hasan changed his story many times to the point of it being completely incomprehensive. It produced memes on its own
He apparently had some bull breed in the past that he did not treat kindly. He used some sort of barbed collar and generally was not nice to it, e.g. pulling it by the tail etc.
At this point I do think that he used the shock collar and in general is probably not the most responsible dog owner. On its own it seems like a simple story, one I would not even comment on. But it has life of its own now, and is a stand-in for general information environment. Even with controversial Taylor Lorenz now being part of it. Of course it generated great number of memes and other content, including AI generated song and more.
Are all those videos from the same stream? It's easy to cherry-pick suspicious-looking things from thousands of videos.
Yes, I did not investigate it thoroughly. I just googled another instance where Piker moved remote from the shock collar on some other occasion. It is not the same stream, but his dog is in the background all the time for hours on end. She is almost like another decoration and permanent fixture. Also he changed his story. First, he said that when he reaches outside of camera it is for his Zyn. Then he changed the story that yes, there is a remote for collar but it is only for vibration function etc.
In a sense he fed the whole controversy by himself as he just dug deeper and deeper hole for himself. Adding Taylor Lorenz into this whole mess only expands it further. It is actually quite funny - as I said, a simple story now has life of its own way beyond the original thing as it spawned other substories like "why Hasan changed his explanation" etc.
The weight of evidence for 'child abusers' is the single instance of them hitting a child, with repeated proof furthering the original case. Followup apology vids of 'its just context bro' while the child actually has bruises visible don't help. When the case looks bad enough it requires the aggrieved party to outright state that there was no harm performed, and that is why children and pets - not animals as a whole specifically pets present within an asymmetric power dynamic - are given a level of public sympathy not available to other interaction scenarios.
It is necessary to highlight that this is a giant TOUCH GRASS RETARDS HOLY SHIT moment, but for the fact that Hasan occupies a hilariously stupid intersection of IRL to Internet thoughtspace: a terminally online retard agitating for real life changes. Asmongold wants his vidya to keep having big titty white girls and awesome dudes doing awesome stuff, and any IRL activism such as it exists is expeditionary raiding to push back invaders. Hasan wants to stream while talking about the necessity of the revolution, and never actually do anything in dirty meatspace where people can actually disagree with him. The digital world Hasan cocooned himself in is emblematic of leftist echo chamber circlejerking, but, unlike political podcasters that clone their IRL bubbles into online islands, Hasan operates in a visible manner that allows a surprising amount of bleedthrough not just from IRL falsifiability but also from adjacent digital cocoons like le epic redditor pupper protection brigades. He evades from all sides when he can, calling himself an online streamer irrelevant to real life influence but also a socialist whose voice must be raised as a totem for the youth to follow. Turns out animal abuse is something his slicked broccolihair can't deflect though.
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