The Forgotten Man in “Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer”

Cut from the documentary: the first trigger

The documentary “Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer” is about a group of tech-savvy animal lovers who started a Facebook group to hunt down Luka Magnotta. He is a notorious animal abuser who gained fame through uploading a video of him suffocating kittens with a vacuum bag. Nevertheless, I would like to shift the lens a little bit and talk about someone who was barely mentioned in the documentary.

Cut from the documentary: the threats

While the online activists were tracking down Magnotta by analyzing the clues in his video, a guy named Jamsey was also posting similar content and even falsely admitted that he was the Kitten Killer. That’s when people started leaving threatening comments on his Facebook page. 

Violent comments left on Jamsey's FB

It didn't take long for people to discover Jamsey's true identity. He was in Internet troll who needed attention to distract himself from his mental problems. His real name was Edward Jordan, and people later learned that Jordan had taken his own life. Did he deserve this?

What happened between the online activists and Jamsey demonstrates the idea that virtual communities can promote radical self-interest instead of promoting genuine equality (Adam, 2010). While the group members were advocating for people to be more humane, they were also torturing someone they knew little about with threatening comments. The arrival of the Internet has allowed stalking practices to occur in cyberspace, and the ease of electronic stalking has aggravated moral issues regarding privacy (Tavani, 2002).

Tracking? Stalking?

We live in an age where we are only a few clicks away from other people's private details. Releasing personal information can result in ‘antisocial networking’ (Griffiths and Light, 2008) which involves scamming, stealing and bullying that often happens on social media platforms. This online environment enabled both Jordan and the group members to act online in ways that they wouldn't in reality. 

The human power of these activists had a very deadly impact. However, the process of seeking justice comes with consequences. Apart from personal information leakages, these hunters can find false information and end up accusing the wrong people.

Reflections from an activist 

I often think to myself whether the activists should be considered entirely innocent for Jordan’s death just because they had good intentions. There is a thin line between hunting and stalking online. The same tool that helps police identify and track down criminals also allows individuals to harass each other to the point where they are destroying people’s lives. 

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Adam, Alison. “Personal Values and Computer Ethics.” The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics, edited by Luciano Floridi, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010, pp. 149–162. 

Don't F**k With Cats: Hunting An Internet Killer. Directed by Mark Lewis. United States: Raw TV, 2019.

Griffiths, Marie., Light, Ben. Social networking and digital gaming media convergence: Classification and its consequences for appropriation. Inf Syst Front 10, 447–459 (2008). 

Tavani, Herman T., 2002. “The Uniqueness Debate in Computer Ethics: What Exactly Is at Issue, and Why Does It Matter?” Ethics and Information Technology 4 (1): 37-54. [18 pages]