Remember when that dentist killed Cecil the lion in 2015?
I’d almost forgotten about it. The killing of Harambe sort of became the go-to unnecessary animal death that we all thought about instead.
But the killing of Cecil was different. When Cecil was shot, people went NUTS. Not just because an animal died, but because we had a human to blame. In the Harambe case, the zookeeper was just doing their duty – we might not agree with their decision, but Harambe wasn’t killed out of selfishness. Not so with Cecil.
Cecil was killed by dentist Walter Palmer as part of a recreational (and subsequently deemed illegal by Zimbabwean authorities) big-game hunt. Basically he flew out and killed a lion – who turned out to actually be a famous lion in the conservation world. Uh-oh.
The internet went ballistic, with everyone suddenly remembering that big-game hunting is still a thing that happens in the world today. It didn’t die out with Ernest Hemingway.
The backlash against Walter Palmer followed the usual lines of the Twitter outrage machine. He was publicly shamed, his privacy invaded, and his workplace picketed.
I have no idea if the dentist’s practice – River Bluff Dental – is still operating. Google does list its opening hours still, but I can’t find a functioning website or social media page for it. I’d wager it’s just keeping a low profile. What I can find are reviews people have left for it on Google.
It’s a form of protest I haven’t seen before. Not just slating the person online, or holding up signs outside their workplace, but leaving them bad reviews online. But since there are also genuine dental patients there leaving reviews, it ends up reading like the most insane dental practice ever. Observe –
From a 5* review of one of the doctors there, to a 1* calling the owner a murderer. Quite the mixed bag.
If you were trying to pick a new dentist, what would you make of the above? Well, some people are saying he’s a murderer. But on the other hand, he gets some good reviews. It’s like reading reviews for an Italian place that reads “Best lasagne in town! Also the owner denies the Holocaust. 3.5 stars.”
Let’s read some more.
These two are interesting. Polly seems to be giving a genuine bad review of the place. But this is in the midst of all the hate-reviews coming in. Is she possibly a fraud? Greg seems to think so! His comment is a meta-review of the other comments, suggesting that they’re not all legitimate. But then he himself gives the place two stars for no obvious reason. Why did you do that, Greg? WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Deub EEBRAB making the chilling claim that Palmer actively murders animals in his workplace. This goes beyond the established facts. He killed a lion in Zimbabwe. Still, huge if true.
Who exactly is Erika meant to be quoting here? This reads like they should be quotes from his website or something. But they’re not. You can’t just put criticism of someone in quotes. That doesn’t “mean anything.”
There’s a couple of these too. Clearly angry protest reviews that still give the place more than one star. Like Rutofni here. He clearly disagrees with Walter on the value of animal lives. And yet he can’t find it in himself to give River Bluff Dental the full 1*. I wonder what earned the second star?
And this one just gets it entirely wrong. If you’re calling for someone’s arrest, DON’T GIVE THEM FIVE STARS. It only encourages them.
So many of these are sarcastic you forget there are some genuine bad reviews in the mix too.
To be honest, I’m pretty impressed people are still doing this, so long removed from when it all went down. What reminded Salvador and Greer here to go and leave a review? I’d love to know.
As businesses rely more and more on good Yelp/TripAdvisor reviews, it’ll be interesting to see how this form of protest develops. It has hints of online slacktivism in that you don’t have to do anything beyond pressing a button and writing some nasty words. But it has an additional layer of malice about it, in that you’re also trying to destroy someone’s livelihood. We should probably remember that other completely innocent dentists worked at River Bluff Dental too.
And of course, we should remember the lion who had to die for one man’s sick pleasure.