[OrsusMetal]

EVEN IF the dog was better off with this guy for a week (which I really don't think he was. If he's cruel enough to do this to an animal then I doubt he's going to feed the dog as much as he had said), the guy could have brought him back up to health, or done SOMETHING to redeem himself by keeping the dog. But instead, he let the dog go to starve again. If he wanted to prove this message to the people, he could have done something else rather than to publicly display himself as someone that will starve another living thing for 'art'.

This was not right in any way.

[shadowgenesis]

I think the reality is that everybody made this guy into a demon and a monster, and when he pulled a fast one and turned the tables around, the response is to rationalize that he's STILL an asshole and divert the attention from our own wrongs.

dude. seriously. How are you gonna judge the guy for letting it go? The whole point of this stunt was to draw attention to the misgivings of all the people who acted like they give a damn when signing a petition is all the effort they had to put in. I don't necessarily condone what he did (i don't know the details or trust the media to present them to me accurately), but i don't think that's what's really relevant.
Forget the fucking guy who was behind all this - people are only grilling him to divert from the fact that his point was still completely truthful and revealed something that we as an affluent nation would rather keep hidden.

fuck that. It's just a bunch of self-righteous bull from a collective people who can't admit they're not perfect. If you'd rather make the issue about one man's actions rather than the lack of action by the rest of the world, then I think you fail miserably.

[JBroll]

Originally Posted by OrsusMetal

EVEN IF the dog was better off with this guy for a week (which I really don't think he was. If he's cruel enough to do this to an animal then I doubt he's going to feed the dog as much as he had said), the guy could have brought him back up to health, or done SOMETHING to redeem himself by keeping the dog. But instead, he let the dog go to starve again. If he wanted to prove this message to the people, he could have done something else rather than to publicly display himself as someone that will starve another living thing for 'art'.

This was not right in any way.

Okay, you're assuming cruelty to prove cruelty. "If he's cruel enough to do this to an animal"... tying it up is no worse than what most well-off dog lovers do, and people put their dogs in kennels when they go out of town and the dog gets even less room to move around (for days straight!) than this dog did for the time it was chained up.

"Done something to redeem himself"... I don't know, like make a statement about how people are completely indifferent about the world around them until they can get some sense of outrage from a faraway place they can blame without consequences? If he kept the dog you'd be slamming him for continuing to be cruel to it.

So he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Great. And because of a bunch of misleading propaganda and sensationalist bullshit. So rather than campaigning to help feed strays (if nothing else then so he won't have any more work down that line), we're just going to attack the guy who's showing our problems rather than fixing them.

And again, I'll be the bad guy for taking a step back and looking at all the sources in addition to the ones by the groups that would bomb an orphanage to save a kitten. Oops, I'm sorry, I should have said 'carrying on with my bullshit politically charged crusading', like he 'let the dog escape' instead of 'releasing' it and 'fed a stray in a week more than it would have gotten in a month on the streets' instead of 'starving it brutally to satisfy his own sick, twisted desires for attention and masochism'... because I'm an asshole if I don't use the kind of double-speak that the White House creams over to make everyone but the holier-than-thou liars look like Satan.

If it wasn't for shit like this, I'd be spending time with the animal-rights groups and shelters, but thanks to people who would rather sign petitions than face their own condemnation I can't trust a bloody one of them.

Jeff

[OrsusMetal]

I personally think he pulled this 'I did it to send a message' shit out of his ass just to save his own image.

Yes, I understand the message that he's trying to send now. But boo-fucking-hoo. He still tortured a living thing that didn't deserve it. And while the message sent is an eye-opener, there are still other ways this guy could have sent it.

Just because a bunch of people signed a petition and felt that's all they had to do, doesn't mean that everyone that did sign it is just going to sit back and hope it gets better. It raises awareness of the situation. And petitions help people to get on the boat to do something.

He can say whatever he wants, you can say whatever you want. This kind of act isn't making the world a better place. It will only make others feel it's alright to send their own fucked up messages. And you fail for agreeing that this kind of thing is okay.

Originally Posted by JBroll

"Done something to redeem himself"... I don't know, like make a statement about how people are completely indifferent about the world around them until they can get some sense of outrage from a faraway place they can blame without consequences? If he kept the dog you'd be slamming him for continuing to be cruel to it.

Done something to redeem himself by, you know, keeping the dog and ACTUALLY feeding it, taking care of it, bringing it to health, just like I said. If he wanted to send this kind of message, he should have set the example and gave the dog a better life, rather than to send it back to the streets.

[JBroll]

Save his own image? The guy also had an exhibit where he burned rocks of crack cocaine and played the Sandinista anthem backwards.

You're assuming cruelty, thanks to a misleading first impression, and not owning up to it. You're assuming that he tortured it, and not explaining how. All you have is first impressions and gut reactions. And while you defend the petitions, you neglect that things like this also get people on the boat to do something - the petition is just a feel-good trinket with no real legal power.

You'd rather keep slamming the guy, though, just because it's easier to rest on those assumptions, and making a slippery-slope argument that's just absurd - "Well, that guy chained a dog up and made people think it was starving to death... that makes anything I can do all right!" - anyone who would go with that logic is fucked already.

I'm not saying it's okay, I'm saying it's a wake-up call and a very important event. I honestly think this will be read about in textbooks years down the road, so long as people actually get the real message and not the lies spread by people who had no objection to make unqualified statements and sticking to them to save face. The director of the show said that the dog was unchained for all but the three hours of the exhibit, and he's torturing it. He feeds it, but he's a bastard for not adopting a pet he (as an artist who obviously goes around) wouldn't be able to take care of anyway.

You fail for making unsubstantiated claims and holding inconsistent standards. How many bloody times does one goddamned faulty assumption have to be contested before people stop believing everything they read in chain letters?

Jeff

[OrsusMetal]

Originally Posted by JBroll

Save his own image? The guy also had an exhibit where he burned rocks of crack cocaine and played the Sandinista anthem backwards.

You're assuming cruelty, thanks to a misleading first impression, and not owning up to it. You're assuming that he tortured it, and not explaining how. All you have is first impressions and gut reactions. And while you defend the petitions, you neglect that things like this also get people on the boat to do something - the petition is just a feel-good trinket with no real legal power.

You'd rather keep slamming the guy, though, just because it's easier to rest on those assumptions, and making a slippery-slope argument that's just absurd - "Well, that guy chained a dog up and made people think it was starving to death... that makes anything I can do all right!" - anyone who would go with that logic is fucked already.

I'm not saying it's okay, I'm saying it's a wake-up call and a very important event. I honestly think this will be read about in textbooks years down the road, so long as people actually get the real message and not the lies spread by people who had no objection to make unqualified statements and sticking to them to save face. The director of the show said that the dog was unchained for all but the three hours of the exhibit, and he's torturing it. He feeds it, but he's a bastard for not adopting a pet he (as an artist who obviously goes around) wouldn't be able to take care of anyway.

You fail for making unsubstantiated claims and holding inconsistent standards. How many bloody times does one goddamned faulty assumption have to be contested before people stop believing everything they read in chain letters?

Jeff

We live in a society where somethings are just not right to do. This was one of them, no matter what the message was or how he went about doing it. You justifying his actions in this matter is completely ridiculous. You admit you don't think it's okay, but you defend him.

You can say what you'd like about him. Praise him for sending this so called message all you'd like. But it still will not change my, or many others opinion of him.

I have not made any sort of claim in my statements of disgust with him. I have only put across my point that his message was sent in the wrong way and that what he did was cruel, no matter how little cruelty you say was involved.

[DelfinoPie]

Originally Posted by OrsusMetal

Done something to redeem himself by, you know, keeping the dog and ACTUALLY feeding it, taking care of it, bringing it to health, just like I said. If he wanted to send this kind of message, he should have set the example and gave the dog a better life, rather than to send it back to the streets.

Originally Posted by Chris

They took that dog, already emaciated, then chained it to a wall for a week to "make a statement", and when they were done with it, they discarded it back to the streets for it to continue starving to death.

I agree with both of these points because if his overall aim was to show the hypocrisy of people then as a by-product of that wouldn't he be implying that there be some kind of change as a result of their realisation? He stated that he wanted people to have a better attitude towards strays, to feed them and to generally stop ignoring them or mistreating them and tackle the problem head on. IMO I think the best way to make his point resound a little clearer would have been to adopt the dog or attempt to rehome the dog with someone who could care for it and give it a better quality of life permanently.

Originally Posted by shadowgenesis

I think the reality is that everybody made this guy into a demon and a monster, and when he pulled a fast one and turned the tables around, the response is to rationalize that he's STILL an asshole and divert the attention from our own wrongs.

I think a lot of people will have bad feelings towards him because he made them feel like fools because they fell into the category of people he was trying to provoke with his 'art'. Others will still see it as the cruel exploitation of an obviously unhealthy animal with no long-term consideration for what will become of it after he has finished using it for his purpose. Either way I think he could have got his point across through a different method.

Originally Posted by OrsusMetal

Just because a bunch of people signed a petition and felt that's all they had to do, doesn't mean that everyone that did sign it is just going to sit back and hope it gets better. It raises awareness of the situation. And petitions help people to get on the boat to do something.

On the same note, there shouldn't be the assumption that the people who signed the petition don't donate to animal related charities or give up their time to help out at animal shelters and just sit back feeling fulfilled and that they have done their bit. I expect there are a a number of people who signed the petition and do one or both of the aforementioned things.

[JBroll]

You still aren't saying WHAT HE DID WRONG explicitly. According to the people who were THERE, he fed the thing and it was only tied up for a matter of hours. Any dog owner has done the same.

Also, this has clearly gotten a reaction out of you and many others. What I'm trying to do is turn the force of this reaction in the direction it SHOULD go - improving the world, not just attacking some guy based on faulty information. As cynical and pessimistic as I'm known to be, this can be a very useful move if people actually care to find out what actually happen.

As far as 'not saying it's okay'... you have me wrong. I went FURTHER than saying I think it's okay, I think it can be very effective at changing things and displaying how fucked up people can be when it comes to separating how people vote and speak and how they act. You don't seem to be reading my posts very well if you've missed that - "a wake-up call and a very important event" tends to be a step up from "okay", and if you'd like I'll rephrase it as "I don't think it's JUST okay, I think it's a wake-up call and a very important event" just to get rid of whatever ambiguity you may have lost before.

Again... what is cruel here? I'm discussing this with a LOT of people (college towns, that whole sort of thing) and answers to that seem to be lacking...

EDIT: Because people LOVE misquotations and already-refuted claims, here's a Wikipedia article that links some better-informed sources and articles from people actually involved.

Guillermo Vargas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chained up for a week, starved to death, tortured in a Satanic empowerment ritual... not the case. This is why people fail.

END EDIT

Jeff

[OrsusMetal]

Everything cruel about the situation has been posted already. If you re-read what I have said you will see that. You can go ahead and re-read what all the others have posted before me as well.

No matter how light hearted you take this, it's still wrong, and almost everyone will agree with me here. Just like I said before, it may raise awareness, but it's being raised in a fucked up way. And just like I said before, he could have done it in a better way. Even you (no matter how pessimistic you are) have to agree on that.

My part in this discussion maynot be done, but I'm done with this discussion with you. I don't understand why anyone would defend such an act.

[JBroll]

Okay, but a lot of the 'cruel' things were misconstrued or outright false. Again, the dog was fed and only tied for three hours (fucking DOG SHOWS are more straining than that) before released.

You're forgetting that people DO this in the 'better' ways and get MUCH less attention. People are always holding demonstrations and trying to get people interested in helping animals... and it isn't working quickly enough. This guy went steps further, and got blasted for it by lies and gullibility. He didn't hurt the dog, but you would all rather believe inaccurate and often outright false reports than look at what actually happened.

So we've gone from attacking me to citing atrocities that didn't happen to taking our ball and going home. Lovely. With sheep like this, who needs wolves?

Jeff