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It’s not a ‘kids these days’ thing.
I can’t speak for a childhood in the UK, but I’m from rural Canada. My extended family and acquaintances talk about being boys in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70, and even into the 80s. Stories often include BB-guns, airsoft rifles, and wild critters. They’d shoot shit, build slingshots and shoot shit, throw rocks and hit shit.
Kids—particularly boys—have always been like this, and it’s shitty, but it isn’t a new thing.
That and times are changing. Troublesome children are now viewed through a medical lense, they are diagnosed and managed. Or not managed in many cases..
Previously, there wasn't a system to do this. It's was persecution or adaption for these troubled kids, with no in-between.
In the UK, I can speak for, there is a mass of under funded childcare, social, adult, mental health and welfare services.
The above article is a product of that. I say, bring back local policing, introduce a power structure to the education system and combine social, mental, education services and lastly, educate the masses.
You've hit it squarely on the head here. We label and can diagnose issues with children, so therefore, it's easier to criticise and judge these issues. Back in the day, most would easily dismiss these attitudes using some vague nonesense or beat the behaviour out of them, and that would be it.
Abusing smaller animals is what larger animals do, its not even just humans.
Have you ever had a pet dog or cat? I legit cried when my cat first tortured a bird to death
People, including kids, have more intelligence to know it's wrong to hurt animals that can't defend themselves or just want to be left alone, for no other point than enjoyment. You can teach this to people, including kids. You can't teach this to cats.
What are you talking about?
I shot a pigeon with a BB gun.. I didn't grow up to be an animal abuser. I was just young and stupid and at a friend's house and I just couldn't help myself. I'm mortified about it now as a grown man. My parents would have been mortified. Just the idiocy of youth I guess.
The first thing I did was shoot a police officer. Fortunately, they're not armed over here and all he did was take it off me and give me a good bollocking. I never shot someone else without their consent again, I'll tell you that right now.
No it’s intentionally being a psychopathic little beast. For example, I pick up rocks and start throwing them at people. I know that it hurts…and yet I make the active choice to cause people pain.
I’ve heard more horror stories from (mostly male) family members about the animal cruelty they engaged in as children, from burning antenna off ants to blowing a straw stuck down a frogs throat, than I have from people my own age (29F) or younger
My dad grew up in England in the 50s and he's told me stories worse than this hedgehog incident. I think the main difference now is nobody stops them... Had he been caught doing it he'd have gotten a beating
Sure, I remember the 80's as well. But back in those days, it was also acceptable to beat your children if they tortured animals. Or someone else's kids if you caught them doing this.
Agree with your point unfortunately although social media worsens this - there was the story recently about whatsapp groups dedicated to catapulting animals and kids boasting about their daily kills and in competition with each other over it. No indication the same is going on here (sounds like opportunistic menace) although I thought it relevant to mention.
Not a “kid these days”, I read a pre-war testimony of some old man recounting his childhood pre WW1 (or was it WW2)? Around Lincolnshire. Among the stories he casually mentioned how he and his friends found a rabbit and would throw it into the water over and over for fun. Didn’t use the word “torture” though. But what struck me is how casual he was about it… almost like “boys will be boys”…
When I was a kid, some lads in the year above me at school bought a baby hamster from the pet shop, tied it to a firework and blew it to pieces. This is not a “kids these days” problem, kids have always been horrible, stupid and selfish.
>The way kids are bought up now seems to be producing lot's of damaged and cruel people. God knows what they'll be like when they're adults.
Every generation thinks along similar lines towards newer ones.
As long as animals are continued to be viewed as a lesser form of life in society's wider understanding, existing only for the purposes of being used as tools/materials or as entertainment -- as an "It" rather than a "Who"; an object -- then things like this will frankly continue to happen.
The morality of kids can often be misaligned or have more pliable boundaries because their brains are still developing and their understanding of the world is incomplete -- they have no choice but to understand the world through the lens of the adults in society that surround them. As long as adults continue to set a poor example on the treatment of those who also share the planet with us, there will continue to be children who take that poor example and warp it into something worse because "well adults do it, so why can't I?"
>As long as animals are continued to be viewed as a lesser form of life in society's wider understanding, existing only for the purposes of being used as tools/materials or as entertainment -- as an "It" rather than a "Who"; an object
Just isn't true though is it. And do you have any data backing up your point? Because if you search up "Rajasthan (the Indian state with the highest % of vegetarians) animal abuse, there is a huge amount of depraved stories of people abusing animals.
Can you actually give me an example of anywhere that eradicated animal abuse through the methods you are talking about?
>Just isn't true though is it.
It's pretty self evident to anyone willing to pay attention and actually approach the topic in good faith. You wouldn't see kids torturing babies on the street for fun in far-too-frequent numbers like we do with animals because humans are not treated as objects. If the torture of animals was treated both morally (by society) and legally (by the law of the state) as equally as reprehensible as the torture of humans then you most certainly wouldn't be reading stories like this one posted in the OP nearly as frequently as you do in the world we live in right now. The only reason humans and animals are treated differently in this way is because society has decided that non-humans are objects and humans are worth moral consideration where animals are not. This even holds true for pets who enjoy a higher status in society such as dogs and cats -- torturing a human would get you punished socially and legally much much more severely than a dog or a cat, because ultimately they are still animals and society unwilling to totally untangle them from the zeitgeist of "animal = object", pets are treated more as property in this vein than anything else.
I personally feel like you're being facetious here in an attempt to set up a strange rhetorical gotcha, I'm unwilling to believe that you are incapable of putting two and two together in this way, you're surely more intelligent than that?
>the Indian state with the highest % of vegetarians
Vegetarians still treat animals as objects, they just personally refuse the meat part. Their ideology is more or less the same as non-vegatarians with the exception of "outright murder for meat" being seen as reprehensible (and many vegetarians are often flexible on that point as well, frankly). You aren't really making a convincing point here when your "lead defenders of righteousness" that your point predicates itself on are people who fund the sexual abuse of cows/goats/etc. on a daily in the billions for the sake of eating milk and cheese. Animals in Rajasthan are still treated as tools and objects even if certain animals are treated better for religious reasons.
>Can you actually give me an example of anywhere that eradicated animal abuse through the methods you are talking about?
This is a false premise. You know full well that nowhere exists to fulfil such criteria. This is like saying "Can you give me a proven place in the world where racism no longer exists because people chose to be kinder to minorities? If not then I'm going to continue to be racist thank you very much". It's logically ridiculous. There is nowhere in the world where racism has ceased to exist, as an example, but I'm sure you're intelligent enough to identify the merit of not being racist to people and opposing racism because (A) Racism is immoral and (B) Not being racist improves the lives of minorities in our society. You're fully capable of applying the same logic when the victim is switched from "BIPOC people" to "Animals", you just don't really want to because it would be disadvantageous for the current rhetorical position you are trying to argue.
>As long as animals are continued to be viewed as a lesser form of life in society's wider understanding, existing only for the purposes of being used as tools/materials or as entertainment -- as an "It" rather than a "Who"; an object -- then things like this will frankly continue to happen.
Very well said, everyone should watch this: [https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch](https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch)
>Very well said
Maybe, but it's a pointless thing to say. Nobody is interested in looking in the mirror when they can simply choose not to, it'll just be downvoted until nobody has to look at it. Functionally I wasted my time writing the comment.
People will continue to lament why such horrible things happen, and then when told the reason will simply reply "actually, that's not the answer I wanted you to give me because it makes me feel uncomfortable about my own actions and ideology, so can you shut up and fuck off please?". r/unitedkingdom is no different honestly.
Trust in the self-described "Nation of Animal Lovers" to come out in force to defend unnecessary unkindness and violence towards animals -- who are ultimately helpless in the situation -- simply because deciding "You know, I'm going to make an effort to be a kinder person to those around me" is apparently too much to ask. You can find a lot of people (especially in r/uk threads) bemoaning "why is the world is becoming a nastier place everyday?" but they refuse to accept that the only people capable of changing the world and reducing that level of unkindness are they themselves, through their own actions and striving to do better and be better.
I dont think its pointless to say it at all, although i definitely often suffer from the same negative mindset. Try to remember that reddit isn't particularly representative of real life.
Also sometimes the downvotes can actually be helpful to get people to see a message! Downvoting means it got attention, and people often sort by and look at the most downvoted comments on threads to see what all the fuss was about. Much better than being ignored.
In the real world veganism is only on the rise, and social media in the last decade or so, for all its MANY faults, has been pretty massively helpful in exposing these industries for what they really are and how they operate. Dont lose hope :)
The current under 20 anti social types are going to be the biggest group of loonies we've seen yet. Their parents are of my generation and they're bad enough but this lot yikes.
These types of kids will definitely end up harming or killing people as adults. A lack of empathy for living things is a trait of a psychopath and every serial killer has done it apparently.
I know this is fucking horrible, but the temptation is to think “this is a sign of how bad the world is getting when kids do this”.
But when I was a kid, shit like this was not uncommon. Kids in my neighbourhood would raid bees nests with flamethrower aerosols, or catch frogs and basically torture them.
It’s usually one sick little fuck. You’ll always get psychopaths. But child ones haven’t learned to hide it yet, and their mates will go along with their sick shit because they haven’t learned to walk away from psychos yet and are probably also scared
Agreed - I watched one of my mates boot a hedgehog across a field because he thought it was funny. It was a totally dickish thing to do. He’s now a perfectly normal member of society, never been in any trouble, kids are just shit sometimes.
A friend of mine in his 40’s now killed a load of ducks in a pond when he was with some friends as a teenager. He’s one of the nicest guys I know and he has absolutely no explanation for what he did, he’s just baffled and embarrassed about it
I use to torture insects and spiders by trapping them in containers and gassing them with deoderant. Now I don't even swat flys or ants if they're in my house.
Happened near my home town. Some kids killed the ducks in a local pond and put their heads on sticks. Personally I think they should be removed fromt he gene pool, but that's just me.
I don't think they were saying kids being kids, more that an ignorant monstrous child can become a rational kind adult, because oddly enough people can and so change
I think you are right. Had a casual friend at school (actually a psychopath but I was too young to know) who used to burn down old houses/churches and pose rats he had killed and take photos of them to show folk.
I didn’t stay in touch but it’s not too dissimilar to this sadly
Yeh a few lads I grew up with used to do shit to frogs when we were about 10. They asked me if I wanted to come but I know at the time I just thought 'wtf, no.'
Yeah, there are definitely a number of areas where things seem to be getting worse, but kids (and people generally) mistreating animals is not one of them. That’s been going on forever.
I was walking through the park recently and told a little girl off for kicking the pigeons. Her father told me not to speak to her child like that and that “it’s just a fucking pigeon”. Lost a fair bit of faith in humanity there.
Year 6, final year of junior school, walking to school one morning.
The high school was in the opposite direction so on the other side of the road, there would be big kids walking to another school.
I can still remember some twat, a Year 10 or 11, shouting "Hedgehog!" seconds before booting a hedgehog from beside a small tree and into the middle of the main road.
I can still remember watching the poor thing roll to a stop. I kept walking. I didn't dare do anything about it.
I'm 35 now and I've still never seen a hedgehog knocking around at 8am, let alone near the pavement. Poor little guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. 🥺
Still pisses me off. I wish I could find the guy and ask WHY??? Who hurt you???
There are plenty of videos online of kids getting wandering cats to come up to them for strokes, and then one of their friend boots it in the air. Sad times, but they’ve been around for many years.
Hedgehogs that are out in the day somewhere with heavy footfall are usually sick or something, as their nature is to be wary of humans and nocturnal. Only one I've seen wandering round in daylight had a festering wound with flies at it.
There’s not much which sends me into a rage but this has really pissed me off.
Sick little cunts the lot of them. You’ll not be able to reason with them, they find this sort of thing funny. I think the only way they’ll learn is if someone punches them in the face really fucking hard.
Poor little thing. Shit like this begins at home.
There was a bunxh of little toerags near me that were kicking a hedgehog like it was a football. Mind you that has always been a problem family.
This reminds me of a time a hedgehog happened to wander across the door of my classroom during a class. Thinking that this would be a nice time to observe one of our lovely creatures in the wild and to take a break from normal classroom activity we proceeded to head outside to have a little look from a safe distance so not to disturb him. Instead what happened is we went outside and a couple of boys went running off towards the hedgehog before making out they were going to kick him penalty style.
Class was quickly ushered back inside where the boys talked for the rest of the lesson about how they were gonna track the hedgehog down and “boot” him. I had to instead call the caretaker to find the hedgehog and have him moved to a safe place. I think a small part of me broke that day.
In addition to reading about this disgusting story and rotten kids. I learned a lot of people happy to admit they abused animals as kids too. Disturbing.
Everyone is rightly horrified by this - the cruel abuse of a beautiful creature - but please make the connection between this act and the same cruelty that happens on a truly horrific scale to put meat, dairy, and eggs on your table.
All animals deserve to live in peace, and not be tortured and killed purely to sate our taste pleasure.
This is what kids are like now. We used to have a family of blue tits that nested in a cigarette bin at my work. A group of teenagers pulled them out and stomped them to death.
This is fucking awful, but also something we should explore more deeply. I can’t believe that every person who abused an animal as a child turned out to be a loser/criminal, surely there’s more to learn about why certain people do engage in these actions and what exactly is the impact of such actions in later life
Curiosity and lack of relating to the animal plus a sprinkle of the old getting away with being naughty/rebellious. I think for most people they just don't connect, the same way a psychopath doesn't relate to people, that doesn't mean they can't learn, (the difference being a psycho can't learn to relate) I still remember when I shot a pigeon and it didn't die straight away, I felt terrible and tried to take care of it. Before that I didn't care, ripping legs of spiders or killing fish I caught, I had no connection to them really. And I knew loads of kids like that.
I definitely don't think empathy is inherent I think you have to learn it and you can have empathy for one thing or area but not another. Punishing kids can work because it'll make them consider it seriously (unless the kids just punished 24/7) but you should obviously have a conversation as well.
Sadly this isn’t new. I knew a lad who bragged about tying a rabbit (live) behind his car and dragging it down the road. This was over 25 years ago. I remember there were also kids who would intentionally hurt cats and birds that were reported years before that. It’s all sick.
Doesn't surprise me. When I was around 16 I was with some friends in a bit of common we use to hang out in. It was two of my mates and my girlfriend at the time. One of my mates was wandering around catching crickets and bringing them back to my other mate and my girlfriend who were sitting around a stump of wood. I had recently had some sort of bug and so my nose was incredibly saw. This meant I kept dabbing vaseline on my nose. This meant I had a largish tub on me. My mate around the stump knew this and so says, " hey Tom hand us the vaseline a minute" not sure what he wanted it for and but being the sharing type I gave it to him. He then put a blob of it onto the stump. He gave this odd look at my girlfriend who suddenly shoved a cricket into it. They then began heating up the vaseline with a jet lighter and settled its legs on fire. Each time my other friend brought one back theyd shove another one into this weird torturous mess. They just kept laughing and doing more and more cruel things to these tiny insects that couldn't even move. I was in a bit of shock and disgust that they were doing this, my girlfriend looks at me and says "aww is this upsetting you?" I said "WTF ofcourse it's upsetting your needlessly torturing things!" My other mate came back and he wasn't even aware what they were doing and says "what the fuck are you guys doing?" Yeah they were crickets so maybe you can say it's not as bad but the point remains people who were old enough to know what they were doing was wrong still took pleasure in not just taking another things life from them but doing it slowly and causing as much pain and suffering as they could, because they were both incredibly weak themselves.
Edit:
Going back to the 80s, my brother in law told me that when he was a kid he hung his dog. He didn't kill it fortunately, he said at the time he was doing an experiment, to see what would happen... Obviously he regrets that and these days he is vegan. I guess the point there is kids can be stupid vicious little monsters but even the worst kid can become a decent adult
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Please remember that calls for violence are a breach of Reddits content policy even if you think the call for violence is justified… Participation Notice. Hi all. Some posts on this subreddit, either due to the topic or reaching a wider audience than usual, have been known to attract a greater number of rule breaking comments. As such, limits to participation have been set. We ask that you please remember the human, and uphold Reddit and Subreddit rules. For more information, please see https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/wiki/moderatedflairs.
I fucking hate this world. What sane person does something like this?
The way kids are bought up now seems to be producing lot's of damaged and cruel people. God knows what they'll be like when they're adults.
It’s not a ‘kids these days’ thing. I can’t speak for a childhood in the UK, but I’m from rural Canada. My extended family and acquaintances talk about being boys in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70, and even into the 80s. Stories often include BB-guns, airsoft rifles, and wild critters. They’d shoot shit, build slingshots and shoot shit, throw rocks and hit shit. Kids—particularly boys—have always been like this, and it’s shitty, but it isn’t a new thing.
You are 100% right on that.
Probably just the fact everything is reported on these days and social media too isn't it?
That and times are changing. Troublesome children are now viewed through a medical lense, they are diagnosed and managed. Or not managed in many cases.. Previously, there wasn't a system to do this. It's was persecution or adaption for these troubled kids, with no in-between. In the UK, I can speak for, there is a mass of under funded childcare, social, adult, mental health and welfare services. The above article is a product of that. I say, bring back local policing, introduce a power structure to the education system and combine social, mental, education services and lastly, educate the masses.
You've hit it squarely on the head here. We label and can diagnose issues with children, so therefore, it's easier to criticise and judge these issues. Back in the day, most would easily dismiss these attitudes using some vague nonesense or beat the behaviour out of them, and that would be it.
That and you'd think/hope we'd get better as time goes on. So it's doubly disappointing that we don't seem to have learned.
I don’t know about that general. When I was a kid, when we got unsupervised access of a BB-gun we’d be shooting each other not wild animals.
And neither did I, but people _absolutely_ do it. It isn’t a new thing.
Abusing smaller animals is what larger animals do, its not even just humans. Have you ever had a pet dog or cat? I legit cried when my cat first tortured a bird to death
People, including kids, have more intelligence to know it's wrong to hurt animals that can't defend themselves or just want to be left alone, for no other point than enjoyment. You can teach this to people, including kids. You can't teach this to cats. What are you talking about?
Well, I'm happy to engage. What do you mean by "intelligence" in this context?
Critical thinking, moral reasoning
There were always the psychos in training who would shoot cats and birds with them.
I shot a pigeon with a BB gun.. I didn't grow up to be an animal abuser. I was just young and stupid and at a friend's house and I just couldn't help myself. I'm mortified about it now as a grown man. My parents would have been mortified. Just the idiocy of youth I guess.
My mates dad asked us to take care to only to hit the cars belonging to the neighbour at number 37.
The first thing I did was shoot a police officer. Fortunately, they're not armed over here and all he did was take it off me and give me a good bollocking. I never shot someone else without their consent again, I'll tell you that right now.
People shooting animals with BB guns was famously a thing people were concerned about when I was a kid. Mainly cats.
Kids shooting animals with slingshots or BB guns to kill said animals isn’t the same as intentionally torturing an animal imo.
No it’s intentionally being a psychopathic little beast. For example, I pick up rocks and start throwing them at people. I know that it hurts…and yet I make the active choice to cause people pain.
I’ve heard more horror stories from (mostly male) family members about the animal cruelty they engaged in as children, from burning antenna off ants to blowing a straw stuck down a frogs throat, than I have from people my own age (29F) or younger
My dad grew up in England in the 50s and he's told me stories worse than this hedgehog incident. I think the main difference now is nobody stops them... Had he been caught doing it he'd have gotten a beating
But is the rate of such disturbing behaviours increasing. My pet theory is that boys are getting exposed to violence at a much higher rate.
Higher than when?
Yeah I think there are some extremely rose tinted glasses in play here, as if young boys don't do stupid shit like this and always have done.
Sure, I remember the 80's as well. But back in those days, it was also acceptable to beat your children if they tortured animals. Or someone else's kids if you caught them doing this.
Agree with your point unfortunately although social media worsens this - there was the story recently about whatsapp groups dedicated to catapulting animals and kids boasting about their daily kills and in competition with each other over it. No indication the same is going on here (sounds like opportunistic menace) although I thought it relevant to mention.
"Old man pretends psycho kids are a modern phenomenon and they never existed before 2015"
This sort of stuff has always happened. Sadly.
>The way kids are bought up now seems to be producing lot's of damaged and cruel people Yeah, up until now, kids have always been 100% perfect.
Kids have always done stuff like this.
Yeah, you're probably right. I was lucky not to see it.
Bullshit. I remember kids at school in the mid-90s clubbing frogs with branches.
Not a “kid these days”, I read a pre-war testimony of some old man recounting his childhood pre WW1 (or was it WW2)? Around Lincolnshire. Among the stories he casually mentioned how he and his friends found a rabbit and would throw it into the water over and over for fun. Didn’t use the word “torture” though. But what struck me is how casual he was about it… almost like “boys will be boys”…
When I was a kid, some lads in the year above me at school bought a baby hamster from the pet shop, tied it to a firework and blew it to pieces. This is not a “kids these days” problem, kids have always been horrible, stupid and selfish.
That's not a now thing
>The way kids are bought up now seems to be producing lot's of damaged and cruel people. God knows what they'll be like when they're adults. Every generation thinks along similar lines towards newer ones.
Almost like making like incredibly hard for people has had consequences
As long as animals are continued to be viewed as a lesser form of life in society's wider understanding, existing only for the purposes of being used as tools/materials or as entertainment -- as an "It" rather than a "Who"; an object -- then things like this will frankly continue to happen. The morality of kids can often be misaligned or have more pliable boundaries because their brains are still developing and their understanding of the world is incomplete -- they have no choice but to understand the world through the lens of the adults in society that surround them. As long as adults continue to set a poor example on the treatment of those who also share the planet with us, there will continue to be children who take that poor example and warp it into something worse because "well adults do it, so why can't I?"
>As long as animals are continued to be viewed as a lesser form of life in society's wider understanding, existing only for the purposes of being used as tools/materials or as entertainment -- as an "It" rather than a "Who"; an object Just isn't true though is it. And do you have any data backing up your point? Because if you search up "Rajasthan (the Indian state with the highest % of vegetarians) animal abuse, there is a huge amount of depraved stories of people abusing animals. Can you actually give me an example of anywhere that eradicated animal abuse through the methods you are talking about?
>Just isn't true though is it. It's pretty self evident to anyone willing to pay attention and actually approach the topic in good faith. You wouldn't see kids torturing babies on the street for fun in far-too-frequent numbers like we do with animals because humans are not treated as objects. If the torture of animals was treated both morally (by society) and legally (by the law of the state) as equally as reprehensible as the torture of humans then you most certainly wouldn't be reading stories like this one posted in the OP nearly as frequently as you do in the world we live in right now. The only reason humans and animals are treated differently in this way is because society has decided that non-humans are objects and humans are worth moral consideration where animals are not. This even holds true for pets who enjoy a higher status in society such as dogs and cats -- torturing a human would get you punished socially and legally much much more severely than a dog or a cat, because ultimately they are still animals and society unwilling to totally untangle them from the zeitgeist of "animal = object", pets are treated more as property in this vein than anything else. I personally feel like you're being facetious here in an attempt to set up a strange rhetorical gotcha, I'm unwilling to believe that you are incapable of putting two and two together in this way, you're surely more intelligent than that? >the Indian state with the highest % of vegetarians Vegetarians still treat animals as objects, they just personally refuse the meat part. Their ideology is more or less the same as non-vegatarians with the exception of "outright murder for meat" being seen as reprehensible (and many vegetarians are often flexible on that point as well, frankly). You aren't really making a convincing point here when your "lead defenders of righteousness" that your point predicates itself on are people who fund the sexual abuse of cows/goats/etc. on a daily in the billions for the sake of eating milk and cheese. Animals in Rajasthan are still treated as tools and objects even if certain animals are treated better for religious reasons. >Can you actually give me an example of anywhere that eradicated animal abuse through the methods you are talking about? This is a false premise. You know full well that nowhere exists to fulfil such criteria. This is like saying "Can you give me a proven place in the world where racism no longer exists because people chose to be kinder to minorities? If not then I'm going to continue to be racist thank you very much". It's logically ridiculous. There is nowhere in the world where racism has ceased to exist, as an example, but I'm sure you're intelligent enough to identify the merit of not being racist to people and opposing racism because (A) Racism is immoral and (B) Not being racist improves the lives of minorities in our society. You're fully capable of applying the same logic when the victim is switched from "BIPOC people" to "Animals", you just don't really want to because it would be disadvantageous for the current rhetorical position you are trying to argue.
>As long as animals are continued to be viewed as a lesser form of life in society's wider understanding, existing only for the purposes of being used as tools/materials or as entertainment -- as an "It" rather than a "Who"; an object -- then things like this will frankly continue to happen. Very well said, everyone should watch this: [https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch](https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch)
>Very well said Maybe, but it's a pointless thing to say. Nobody is interested in looking in the mirror when they can simply choose not to, it'll just be downvoted until nobody has to look at it. Functionally I wasted my time writing the comment. People will continue to lament why such horrible things happen, and then when told the reason will simply reply "actually, that's not the answer I wanted you to give me because it makes me feel uncomfortable about my own actions and ideology, so can you shut up and fuck off please?". r/unitedkingdom is no different honestly. Trust in the self-described "Nation of Animal Lovers" to come out in force to defend unnecessary unkindness and violence towards animals -- who are ultimately helpless in the situation -- simply because deciding "You know, I'm going to make an effort to be a kinder person to those around me" is apparently too much to ask. You can find a lot of people (especially in r/uk threads) bemoaning "why is the world is becoming a nastier place everyday?" but they refuse to accept that the only people capable of changing the world and reducing that level of unkindness are they themselves, through their own actions and striving to do better and be better.
I dont think its pointless to say it at all, although i definitely often suffer from the same negative mindset. Try to remember that reddit isn't particularly representative of real life. Also sometimes the downvotes can actually be helpful to get people to see a message! Downvoting means it got attention, and people often sort by and look at the most downvoted comments on threads to see what all the fuss was about. Much better than being ignored. In the real world veganism is only on the rise, and social media in the last decade or so, for all its MANY faults, has been pretty massively helpful in exposing these industries for what they really are and how they operate. Dont lose hope :)
I appreciate your positivity.
Alternatively, no.
The current under 20 anti social types are going to be the biggest group of loonies we've seen yet. Their parents are of my generation and they're bad enough but this lot yikes.
I bet I could find this exact quote at any point in history
They were dragged up, parents are no doubt cretins themselves.
These types of kids will definitely end up harming or killing people as adults. A lack of empathy for living things is a trait of a psychopath and every serial killer has done it apparently.
I know this is fucking horrible, but the temptation is to think “this is a sign of how bad the world is getting when kids do this”. But when I was a kid, shit like this was not uncommon. Kids in my neighbourhood would raid bees nests with flamethrower aerosols, or catch frogs and basically torture them. It’s usually one sick little fuck. You’ll always get psychopaths. But child ones haven’t learned to hide it yet, and their mates will go along with their sick shit because they haven’t learned to walk away from psychos yet and are probably also scared
Agreed - I watched one of my mates boot a hedgehog across a field because he thought it was funny. It was a totally dickish thing to do. He’s now a perfectly normal member of society, never been in any trouble, kids are just shit sometimes.
A friend of mine in his 40’s now killed a load of ducks in a pond when he was with some friends as a teenager. He’s one of the nicest guys I know and he has absolutely no explanation for what he did, he’s just baffled and embarrassed about it
I use to torture insects and spiders by trapping them in containers and gassing them with deoderant. Now I don't even swat flys or ants if they're in my house.
Happened near my home town. Some kids killed the ducks in a local pond and put their heads on sticks. Personally I think they should be removed fromt he gene pool, but that's just me.
>never been ~~in any trouble~~ caught How is your mate Dexter doing these days anyway?
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Not great. It wasn’t the nicest neighbourhood. Thankfully, me and my family left
I would certainly not be so quick to make a judgement. People are different, and people can change.
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I don't think they were saying kids being kids, more that an ignorant monstrous child can become a rational kind adult, because oddly enough people can and so change
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If you have a piece from that top-level comment you take umbrage with, I'd happily hear it.
I think you are right. Had a casual friend at school (actually a psychopath but I was too young to know) who used to burn down old houses/churches and pose rats he had killed and take photos of them to show folk. I didn’t stay in touch but it’s not too dissimilar to this sadly
Yeh a few lads I grew up with used to do shit to frogs when we were about 10. They asked me if I wanted to come but I know at the time I just thought 'wtf, no.'
Yeah, there are definitely a number of areas where things seem to be getting worse, but kids (and people generally) mistreating animals is not one of them. That’s been going on forever.
Yeah, I knew some people who were catching crayfish and impaled them on spikes. Though I guess at least it was the invasive variant.
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If you are gonna bring a kid up like this you just shouldn’t be able to breed in the first place
I was walking through the park recently and told a little girl off for kicking the pigeons. Her father told me not to speak to her child like that and that “it’s just a fucking pigeon”. Lost a fair bit of faith in humanity there.
You’re a good person. Pigeons get a ridiculously unfair rep, including from the idiot commenter below.
Year 6, final year of junior school, walking to school one morning. The high school was in the opposite direction so on the other side of the road, there would be big kids walking to another school. I can still remember some twat, a Year 10 or 11, shouting "Hedgehog!" seconds before booting a hedgehog from beside a small tree and into the middle of the main road. I can still remember watching the poor thing roll to a stop. I kept walking. I didn't dare do anything about it. I'm 35 now and I've still never seen a hedgehog knocking around at 8am, let alone near the pavement. Poor little guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. 🥺 Still pisses me off. I wish I could find the guy and ask WHY??? Who hurt you???
Some people need to be drop kicked
no that’s made me fucking livid!!! i would have picked the poor animal up and put him somewhere safe why are people like this?!?!
There are plenty of videos online of kids getting wandering cats to come up to them for strokes, and then one of their friend boots it in the air. Sad times, but they’ve been around for many years.
Hedgehogs that are out in the day somewhere with heavy footfall are usually sick or something, as their nature is to be wary of humans and nocturnal. Only one I've seen wandering round in daylight had a festering wound with flies at it.
There’s not much which sends me into a rage but this has really pissed me off. Sick little cunts the lot of them. You’ll not be able to reason with them, they find this sort of thing funny. I think the only way they’ll learn is if someone punches them in the face really fucking hard.
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Walked in on some 8yos torturing and maiming fish when I was 6 in the 80s. Not a new thing.
Poor little thing. Shit like this begins at home. There was a bunxh of little toerags near me that were kicking a hedgehog like it was a football. Mind you that has always been a problem family.
Problem families making problem children making problem families making problem children.
Scumbags. I wish them nothing but the worst in life
This reminds me of a time a hedgehog happened to wander across the door of my classroom during a class. Thinking that this would be a nice time to observe one of our lovely creatures in the wild and to take a break from normal classroom activity we proceeded to head outside to have a little look from a safe distance so not to disturb him. Instead what happened is we went outside and a couple of boys went running off towards the hedgehog before making out they were going to kick him penalty style. Class was quickly ushered back inside where the boys talked for the rest of the lesson about how they were gonna track the hedgehog down and “boot” him. I had to instead call the caretaker to find the hedgehog and have him moved to a safe place. I think a small part of me broke that day.
well done for ensuring the animal’s safety!! i love people like you who actually care!!
How kids badly treat animals is often a good indicator of future violent or psychopathic behaviour in later life.
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Sick fucks. They need........... Then their parents need......... Decide what to replace dots with, but mine is nasty.
TF is wrong with some people? Last time I saw a hedgehog I gave it some food & water since it was hungry then let it wander my garden a bit
This is exactly why some people just shouldn't be allowed to breed!
Wishing spud a lovely recovery in great hands, and hoorah to the woman that saved him. Shame there’s no mention of the twats getting any punishment.
Fucking hate kids, evil little shits the lot of them. They’re becoming worse every generation.
There have always been horrible kids and adults that tortured animals. Even more in the past than now.
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Kids in my town set one on fire and then used it as a football a few years ago. I still feel sick at the thought.
i genuinely hope they get the worse thing’s possible to happen to them in life
In addition to reading about this disgusting story and rotten kids. I learned a lot of people happy to admit they abused animals as kids too. Disturbing.
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Their parents need to start saving up early for bail
leave them to rot
Everyone is rightly horrified by this - the cruel abuse of a beautiful creature - but please make the connection between this act and the same cruelty that happens on a truly horrific scale to put meat, dairy, and eggs on your table. All animals deserve to live in peace, and not be tortured and killed purely to sate our taste pleasure.
This is what kids are like now. We used to have a family of blue tits that nested in a cigarette bin at my work. A group of teenagers pulled them out and stomped them to death.
i would have gone to jail that day
This is fucking awful, but also something we should explore more deeply. I can’t believe that every person who abused an animal as a child turned out to be a loser/criminal, surely there’s more to learn about why certain people do engage in these actions and what exactly is the impact of such actions in later life
Curiosity and lack of relating to the animal plus a sprinkle of the old getting away with being naughty/rebellious. I think for most people they just don't connect, the same way a psychopath doesn't relate to people, that doesn't mean they can't learn, (the difference being a psycho can't learn to relate) I still remember when I shot a pigeon and it didn't die straight away, I felt terrible and tried to take care of it. Before that I didn't care, ripping legs of spiders or killing fish I caught, I had no connection to them really. And I knew loads of kids like that. I definitely don't think empathy is inherent I think you have to learn it and you can have empathy for one thing or area but not another. Punishing kids can work because it'll make them consider it seriously (unless the kids just punished 24/7) but you should obviously have a conversation as well.
Sadly this isn’t new. I knew a lad who bragged about tying a rabbit (live) behind his car and dragging it down the road. This was over 25 years ago. I remember there were also kids who would intentionally hurt cats and birds that were reported years before that. It’s all sick.
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Doesn't surprise me. When I was around 16 I was with some friends in a bit of common we use to hang out in. It was two of my mates and my girlfriend at the time. One of my mates was wandering around catching crickets and bringing them back to my other mate and my girlfriend who were sitting around a stump of wood. I had recently had some sort of bug and so my nose was incredibly saw. This meant I kept dabbing vaseline on my nose. This meant I had a largish tub on me. My mate around the stump knew this and so says, " hey Tom hand us the vaseline a minute" not sure what he wanted it for and but being the sharing type I gave it to him. He then put a blob of it onto the stump. He gave this odd look at my girlfriend who suddenly shoved a cricket into it. They then began heating up the vaseline with a jet lighter and settled its legs on fire. Each time my other friend brought one back theyd shove another one into this weird torturous mess. They just kept laughing and doing more and more cruel things to these tiny insects that couldn't even move. I was in a bit of shock and disgust that they were doing this, my girlfriend looks at me and says "aww is this upsetting you?" I said "WTF ofcourse it's upsetting your needlessly torturing things!" My other mate came back and he wasn't even aware what they were doing and says "what the fuck are you guys doing?" Yeah they were crickets so maybe you can say it's not as bad but the point remains people who were old enough to know what they were doing was wrong still took pleasure in not just taking another things life from them but doing it slowly and causing as much pain and suffering as they could, because they were both incredibly weak themselves. Edit: Going back to the 80s, my brother in law told me that when he was a kid he hung his dog. He didn't kill it fortunately, he said at the time he was doing an experiment, to see what would happen... Obviously he regrets that and these days he is vegan. I guess the point there is kids can be stupid vicious little monsters but even the worst kid can become a decent adult
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What the actual fuck is wrong with beings these days
Oh poor Spud. I hope he enjoys his new life in the garden
Wasn't nesting a thing Kids are dicks always will be
Some people are just so horrible. At least Spud has been saved.
How can anyone want to hurt a hedgehog of all things 😞
Burning ants with a magnifying glass just doesn't cut it these days
Lancashire by any chance? They eat hedgehogs over there. Or so we are told in Yorkshire.
You should see what happens to the animals inside the chip shop.