US breaks up online "monkey crush" video groups.

TRIGGER FUCKING WARNING! Animal abuse.

The name actually makes these videos sound more innocuous than they are. While crushing a monkey to death would be terrible enough, the “clients” in this private online group wanted to watch monkeys tortured for hours. They complained when the monkeys died too quickly. They suggested dressing baby monkeys in diapers and yellow outfits, then feeding them with bottles in front of their parents—before brutally breaking bones, severing limbs, inflicting pain with fishhooks and pliers and skewers, burning wounds with lighters, gluing various bodily orifices closed, attacking them with snakes, and sexually abusing them.

What in the actual fuck. This is some of the most depraved shit I can imagine. Partway through the article, I just started skimming and then just noped out. These people suck.

  • nifty@lemmy.world
    796·
    2 months ago

    I was pretty sickened by reading this, till I reached the part where the writer brought up the Telegram founder arrest, then it read like a manufacturing consent type piece.

    It’s exactly this kind of stuff, which makes normal people feel sick and question the sanity of others, that was used to push things like the Patriot Act, the internet used to be filled with videos of ISIS etc. beheading people. Now I am wondering if the clients weren’t three letter agency operatives, but many real people are sickos too.

    I don’t trust any writer who says, directly or indirectly, that we can trust the government unequivocally. People need encryption tools. The U.S. would not have been allowed to form if the British empire had mass surveillance like we do now.

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      281·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, the immediate spam of anti-telegram news really rubs me the wrong way. Like, it’s a tool. It’s not corporate generated content, it’s user created content. The users are just gonna go somewhere else for their fucked up shit.

    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
      54·
      2 months ago

      the internet used to be filled with videos of ISIS etc. beheading people

      I have literally never come across such a video. I am sure there are such videos somewhere online, and have been in the past too, but equally I am sure that no ordinary web user is likely to accidentally come across them.

      • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
        24·
        2 months ago

        I am old enough to remember when a “Hosted on LiveLeak” was a genuine content warning

      • Grimy@lemmy.world
        14·
        2 months ago

        There were numerous gore subreddits and I remember seeing some seriously heavy videos on Facebook, albeit rarely. Even today, Reddit has a lot of war gore (Ukraine mostly), as well as crazyfuckingvideos with shooting videos and what have you.

        I remember I think two months ago, here on Lemmy, I was reading an article that was shared. The OP had stated there were hard images to look at, the first few were nothing bad and the warning was mild, so I continued but midway, it turned into headless corpses and things. This was an account of stuff that happened in China a few decades ago, so it’s not like I was purposely looking for monkey gore or anything.

        And not to mention all the stuff that was shown to me in highschool from friends which is actually the first time I saw a beheading video. The latest was a Tiktok video that was made to look like something else and switched to a beheading after a few seconds.

        I think you just got lucky tbh. This stuff isn’t just on the deep web, sometimes you don’t even have to look for it.

      • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        6·
        2 months ago

        I have had a fellow student randomly show me a cartel execution on YouTube before the automatic filters got better. It’s out there, and it’s possible to encounter it by accident.

  • breakingcups@lemmy.world
    55·
    2 months ago

    I genuinely wonder what kind of fucking damage you have to have to seek out this shit, wtf…

    Seriously, if you’re reading this and this appeals to you, I implore you to not feed this machine money and instead confide in a therapist. I’m not judging you for the way you were molded but I will commend you for taking a first step to break out of that mold of your own accord.

    • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 months ago

      In my youth I’d seek out the worst of the worst, back when the Internet was still mostly the wild west. One day I just stopped. Now it makes me sick.

      I’m not sure what switch flipped in me. 3 guys, 1 hammer used to bother me a bit, that video of the kid being crushed by the elevator got to me, and there were a few others. But most things just didn’t register. Now I don’t have any desire to see anything worse than a Saw movie and that’s because I know no one was actually hurt.

      I will say that in my very young life I was in a terrible situation, and even after that I lived in a less than ideal situation (my adoptive parents are great people, just uneducated and didn’t have the time or resources to get me the help I needed). I was very much a product of my environment for many years. I was angry and just wanted to see people hurt because I was hurt. That was probably a huge part of it. One day that just stopped.

      So I’ll second this call for therapy. You don’t have to be this way. I can only speak for myself but I hated being that way. I’m glad I’m not coming up through puberty or my 20s now because there’s no telling what the hell I would have gotten up to.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
    111·
    2 months ago

    I avoided this article on Ars today for a reason…

  • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    2 months ago

    The world would be far nicer if the sadists could follow an inverse golden rule and do unto themselves what they want done to others

  • satanmat@lemmy.world
    4·
    2 months ago

    I want to be a better person… but if you said; “do unto others “ … I’d accept that it would done unto him as punishment

  • aiccount@monyet.cc
    913·
    2 months ago

    If this was a factory farm and people were maybe going to eat the animals after the torture, it would still be just as deprived. Remember this next time your order your burger or chicken strips. If you are disgusted by this, as you absolutely should be, then pay the extra 30% for fairly treated animals. If you don’t know where your food is coming from then it is probably from torturous factory farms.

    You can do better and the animals deserve better. This isn’t even a call for veganism, just a call for making sure that the animals you eat at least get to live without being tortured like they are at nearly all factory farms. There is plenty of factory farm footage out there for anyone who wants to bury their heads in the sand and pretend like torture isn’t routine for most of the animals raised for meat.

    The fact that it’s common doesn’t make it morally justified.

    If my comment upsets you, then it is almost certainly your own actions that are actually upsetting you.

    • 🦄🦄🦄@feddit.orgDeutsch
      3·
      2 months ago

      Downvoting this just means you aren’t as not ok with the monkey torture as you thought you were.

    • Sanguine@lemmy.world
      44·
      2 months ago

      You’re 100% correct but it causes people to look inward and most can’t wrestle with that dissonance.

      Female animals are repeatedly raped, have their children taken, are forced to produce milk, etc. Males are culled yeaaaars earlier than average life expectancy or turned into meat pulp instantly in the case of chicken farms. Rinse repeat forever. All in disgusting conditions, but hey at least we can eat meat 🙄.

      Go against the grain and order plant based alternatives and attempt to eat vegetarian / vegan as often as possible. Try it for 6 months, the meat isn’t going anywhere.

  • FreshLight@sh.itjust.works
    418·
    2 months ago

    An LLM summary. I don’t know if it is correct:

    The article discusses the case of Philip Colt Moss, a lawyer from Des Moines, Iowa, who faced legal issues related to drug charges in 2017 after a raid on his home uncovered various illegal substances. Moss’s lawyer argued that he needed help rather than punishment, leading to Moss entering an inpatient treatment facility. He eventually pled guilty to misdemeanors and received probation.

    However, years later, Moss became embroiled in a serious federal investigation concerning his involvement in a disturbing online community that shared and created “monkey crush” videos, which depicted the torture of monkeys. The investigation revealed that Moss communicated with the ringleader of this group via encrypted messaging apps, discussing drug use and the community’s activities. He was arrested on August 8, 2024, and now faces the possibility of significant prison time as the Department of Justice has unsealed an indictment against him. The article highlights the dark side of internet communities and the severe consequences of Moss’s actions.