“We received quite a few complaints about this and a call from the Sheriff’s Office, so we had an officer go out last night. Everybody is pretty much sickened by it and can’t believe someone would do that to an innocent animal.”Greg Seals is a former social media producer and contributing writer for the Daily Dot. He specializes in creating and covering viral content on platforms that include Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.In posting the videos online, however, the girls only assisted in the Internet’s attempts at serving up vigilante justice for the gopher tortoise, who was listed as a threatend species in Florida in 2007. Earlier this week, 4chan’s /b/ board commenced with a doxing effort—doxing refers to the public release of private, identifying information—dubbed “Operation Shell Shock.”The teens, as catalogued in graphic and disturbing videos they posted to YouTube and Facebook, attempted to burn the turtle multiple times. Unsatisfied, they threw it against the hard pavement multiple times, taunted it, and ultimately stomped it to death, all the while laughing and delighting in its suffering. Despite its notorious reputation, 4chan’s attempts at serving up justice for defensless turtle is just one of the group’s acts of animal goodwill. Previously, the /b/ board members have come to the aid of a French cat brutally abused on video and a dog who had a gun held to its head by a high schooler. In August, /b/ also got a teenager arrested for kicking a kitten on Vine. After being alerted to the videos by a Las Vegas Animal Control officer, Nevada Voters for Animals President Gina Greisen joined in the quest for the girls to face justice. Campaiging on Facebook, the animal right’s group posted both original videos with pleas for its members to report the actions of the teens to the Clay County sheriff’s office.
After receiving multiple complaints about the torture and killing of the tortoise, the girls are currently under investigation. Karen Parker, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is working with the State Attorney’s Office to determine the charges that the girls could face. Parker told The Florida Times-Union:
The group’s Facebook page applauds a teen named Ash for bringing the videos to their attention. According to a GoFundMe.com page set up by the teen to raise money for the Wildlife Foundation of Florida, he claims he was friends with one of the girls in the videos and downloaded the videos off her profile before they were deleted. According to Ash’s fundraising site, the girls had taken the tortoise in as a pet after finding the endangered animal but “got bored, (and) they took it outside and tortured it.”
The girls could face multiple felony charges. One for aggrevated animal cruelty, and an additional felony charge for the death of an endagered species. With the girls delighting in the animals abuse, yelling “Burn baby, burn baby,” as the animal tries to escape the flames, many are hoping to see them tried as adults.
Meanwhile, internet vigilantes at 4chan have started their own investigation of the incident, the Daily Dot reports. They’ve doxed the girls and sent their names to their high school, local authorities, and news outlets in an effort they’re calling “Operation Shell Shock” (of course).”We received quite a few complaints about this and a call from the Sheriff’s Office, so we had an officer go out last night,” a Florida Fish and Wildlife officer told the paper, “Everybody is pretty much sickened by it and can’t believe someone would do that to an innocent animal.”
When a Times-Union reporter went to one of the suspects’ houses Wednesday, a girl who appeared to be one of the two in the video answered the door, but closed it without saying anything.Two Florida teens are under investigation for repeatedly lighting an endangered gopher tortoise on fire, fatally stomping it to death as it cowered inside its shell, and then posting videos of the torture on Facebook.The videos are no longer online, but First Coast news aired this clip of the girls pouring flammable chemicals on the tortoise and torching it with a lighter:Although the girls haven’t officially been arrested yet, they could be charged with aggravated animal cruelty, with additional felony charges because the gopher tortoise is on the state’s threatened species list.
A concerned classmate brought the videos to the attention of an animal rights group in Nevada, and they’ve since been forwarded to Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The Florida Times-Union reports the State’s Attorney’s office is determining appropriate charges for the two Orange Park girls, ages 15 and 18.Today is Wednesday the 16th, 2014, and I have been made aware of some inane cruelty inflicted upon an innocent creature, which was a gopher tortoise and has been dubbed Grga by an online thread on a site called 4chan. I was made aware of these acts via the internet, Facebook chat, and the aforementioned 4chan thread, in which a hoard of people are fighting for justice for the innocent tortoise that was anonymous and has now been christened; Grga. The two girls made Grga their pet and took him home. The two then appeared to have gotten bored with their pet and decided to murder it, thus filming it and putting it on youtube and their Facebook pages for all to see.According to sources, Grga was found in a nearby area, in the woods, by Danielle Susan Ruger and her friend, Jennifer Greene, Facebook name; Faith Hope.
As for myself, I don’t know how the prison system works for juvenile delinquents such as these two, but I hope they experience a taste of their own medicine and learn the errors of their ways.
I am of the faint hearted, especially when it comes to such vile acts like these, and I wonder to myself; how could a human being do something as sick as that, to such an innocent creature?
With few replies and The age of the two girls is unknown to me, though they have been referred to as minors, as a lot of people are worried they aren’t going to receive the justice that Grga deserves.
Thankfully for future gopher tortoises within the area, this 4chan thread has made quite the fuss and have been in touch with county officials and local conservancies to find out what can be done about the brutal acts inflicted upon Grga by these two girls.Hello. It looks like you�re using an ad blocker that may prevent our website from working properly. To receive the best Tortoise experience possible, please make sure any blockers are switched off and refresh the page. What happened with GameStop: a community of personal finance enthusiasts on the Reddit forum WallStreetBets collectively decided to invest in an ailing bricks-and-mortar video game chain. They drove up its stock price, which was trading at $7.65 on 1 September 2020, to $483 on 28 January 2021. They did this for three reasons. Firstly, because they felt the company was undervalued: there were rumours that executive Ryan Cohen, who turned around the struggling pet chain Chewy, was primed for a hostile takeover. Secondly, to screw over the Wall Street hedge funds that were shorting GameStop’s stock, effectively hoping for it to fail. And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, for the lols. Both 2channel and 4chan emerged out of conditions of economic malaise, and both came to reflect a nihilistic worldview born out of a profound dissatisfaction with a society that did not seem to be working for most people. 4chan would go on to achieve global notoriety in 2016 after claiming credit for shitposting Donald Trump into the US presidency.Inevitably, the very act of buying GameStop stock at a sky-high price and watching it crash – losing all your money – became a meme. What better way to express your commitment to the act of shitposting Wall Street than by losing all your money on worthless stock, and breezily posting about it? “That humour and subcultural play is a big part of what holds this community together,” says Hagen. He traces it back to 4chan’s efforts to subvert the election of Democratic nominee and establishment politician Hillary Clinton in 2016. “This was about participating in a historical moment,” Hagen says, “and showing big hedge funds that they don’t hold the keys to power, in the same way that 4chan attempted to topple the liberal hegemony with the election of Donald Trump. It takes the form of a playful ironic culture, but there’s a very real sense of momentum being expressed and experienced by participants online.”
The best way to understand the GameStop frenzy is to see it as a shitposting troll brigade’s revenge on Wall Street. That these Redditors managed to move global financial markets armed, at least in some cases, with little more than a slingshot full of memes and modest personal savings accounts makes for a rollicking tale. But we shouldn’t see the GameStop story as an isolated incident. It marked the beginning of a broader trend, namely, the memeficiation of the stock market. The internet has discovered personal finance, and there’s no going back.“They’ve been abusing the system for so long,” says Thomas*, a 30-year-old web developer from Birmingham who bought £190 worth of GameStop stock on 27 January this year. (The stock is worth around £50 now; Thomas is sanguine about his loss.) “It felt like a moment in history when people were taking a stance.” Thomas attended the counter-culture festival Burning Man in the Nevada desert in 2019, where he learned about the principle of “decommodification”: effectively finding a way to exist as a person outside of market forces, without having to sell your labour. “It’s like sticking a big middle finger to ‘the man,’” he says. “Letting everything go. I suppose that’s built in me a little bit now.” Or as a WallStreetBets user RubberRaptor put it charmingly on Reddit: “FUCK WALL STREET AND THEIR BS. GME IS LEAVING THE GALAXY, FUELED BY OUR SPITE.” It is impossible to predict the swinging animal brain of the internet; who knows where this nascent troll army will lurch next? It’s likely that meme stocks are here to stay. “There will definitely be more meme stocks,” says Beran. “Whether it’s alt-right trolls pushing QAnon, or people finding the funniest stock they can pump, if a collective prank is funny enough, the internet does it.” And whether or not it really hurts the “big guy” is beside the point. At the time of writing, Dogecoin – in itself a joke cryptocurrency – is currently being rocketed sky-high, fuelled by Elon Musk’s half-joking, half-serious tweets about buying some for his infant son. Musk, the richest man in the world, somehow finds the time to also be the chief-troll of the meme stock market. After his tweets, Dogecoin increased in value by 15 per cent in 20 minutes. AMC, a beleaguered cinema chain, is also being hyped. Whatever the next meme stock is, it’s certain to be a ride. Thomas, the web-developer from Birmingham, invested in GameStop stock for this exact reason: because he got caught up in the thrill of it online. “There was just this whole build up and buzz,” he tells me, sounding vaguely dazed. “And we were going against the man. And there was this community online. I just… went for it.” (It is worth noting that not all WallStreetBet users or GameStop shareholders were amateurs in it for the thrill and the memes, like Thomas – some very shrewd people made a lot of money on the GameStop pump-and-dump.)Enter WallStreetBets: the latest rebellion of the disaffected online, a new iteration of a story that we have seen repeatedly in the four-decade lifespan of the internet thus far, and will likely replay many more times in our lifetime. 2channel, 4chan, WallStreetBets: communities of people shut out by an increasingly globalised economy, determined to exact their revenge. “Why do we have all these angry, idle men on the internet?” asks Beran. “It’s really just economics. Rising inequality in the US; this post-industrial economy. It’s a generation that’s worse off than their parents, and they’re on their laptops all day, watching giant corporations make money.”
The meme stock carnival frightens me, but I cannot say that I don’t welcome it. As a product of the 2008 crash, I say: burn it all down. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice, by way of meme. You’ll find me sitting behind my laptop, stuffing popcorn into my mouth, watching the meme stock revolution. (Gif: Michael Jackson in the Thriller video.)
A sense of hopeless and deep fatigue with powerful elites is the prevalent worldview of WallStreetBets. When the game seems rigged, why not turn the stock market into a real-life, multiplayer video game for bored users stuck at home during a pandemic with nothing else to play? “There’s this sense,” says Beran, “that you’re in a place where you’re willing to play chicken and let the cars crash. You’ll gamble it all because you have nothing. And that to me is the really delightful part of the WallStreetBets thing. They were willing to break the game, by losing all their money. Normally you brag about doing the opposite. But if you have nothing to lose, you can play the game by playing it in a way that’s more aggressive than anything else – by playing to break the game. That’s how trolls work.”This gleeful anomie in watching Wall Street momentarily burn collided with the insidery in-culture of message-board communities. WallStreetBets has a vernacular that is impenetrable to outsiders: users talk about tendies, which is slang for investment returns (a reference to an old 4chan meme about man-babies living in their moms’ basements), or diamond hands (having the fortitude to hold onto investments through market swings). “By memifying the ‘out’ group,” says Sal Hagen of the University of Amsterdam, “basically the hedge funds themselves, as well as the ‘paper hand’ people who sell too quickly, this works to create a sense of closeness, which is required when you have a group of strangers online. People don’t know each other or have a personal connection in the real world. So instead of those networks of friends and followers you have on Facebook, this memetic collectivism stands in its place.”Before there was WallStreetBets, there were the message boards 4chan and 2channel. WallStreetBets describes itself as “Like 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal”: it intentionally evokes these internet forebears. The Japanese messageboard 2channel came first, emerging out of the disaffection of the “lost decade” financial crash of the 1990s. Although 2channel was originally a space to discuss anime and video games, the anonymous message board quickly devolved into toxic hate speech, birthing some of the internet’s earliest trolling campaigns.It is on this third imperative – the lol imperative – that I will focus. The GameStop story was filed under the finance pages of many broadsheet newspapers, when really it was an internet culture story. Much-laurelled economics writers scratched their heads and struggled to make sense of this rag-tag team of amateur investors, which led to bizarre and very bad takes, including a New York Times article featuring sombre-looking short-sellers insisting they were actually the good guys. (Suggested meme response: the Kim Kardashian cry face.)
This is a piece about internet culture, so we should talk in memes. How to explain the GameStop frenzy in memes? It is the Disaster Girl meme (the Redditors are the girl; the hedge funds are the burning house). It is the Confused Anime Guy meme (the butterfly is the Redditors crushing Wall Street, Katori is the little guy screwed over by the 2008 financial crisis, and the caption reads, “Is this… justice?”). It is the Spider-Man Pointing at Spider-Man meme (Spider-Man one is Wall Street bankers manipulating financial markets for personal gain; Spider-Man two is small private investors manipulating financial markets for personal gain).
Just like with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the destructive collective animus of the WallStreetBets fightback may yet come to bite ordinary consumers. Financial education by meme is no substitute for a Harvard MBA, access to hedge fund algorithms, and the luxury of playing with other people’s money, not your own. Generally, the house win
s. “There are real dangers here,” says Dr. Thomas D. Shohfi, a professor of finance at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “There’s a lot of froth in the market. If young people are investing in GameStop or Dogecoin speculatively in a concentrated way and it doesn’t work out for them it can do long-term damage to their life. They may not be able to buy a home or retire. It could ruin their credit rating.” But he understands the impulse to string up the nearest hedge fund short-seller a la lanterne, French Revolution-style. “Their motivation is not about making money on a trade as it is about hurting people who have continued to profit since the financial crisis,” Shohfi says. “Hedge funds just had their best year in a decade. Many think they don’t pay their fair share of taxes. It intersects with that sense of frustration that very little has changed since the financial crisis.”
After 2channel came 4chan, which replicated the site for an American audience. “When 4chan started it was just nerds on the internet wanting to celebrate Japanese video games,” says Dale Beran, author of It Came from Something Awful: How A Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office. But the site also began to reflect a growing disenchantment with American capitalism post 2008-crash. The mostly male community that coalesced around 4chan in the 2000s felt locked out of the economy. They traded currencies or stocks because it was a better option than taking one of the shitty, low-paid jobs on offer to them. Beran himself was one of these men. “Getting a 9-5 job wouldn’t have made me as much money as trading the digital assets,” he says, “because jobs only paid $8 an hour.”
Out of this alienation, came the meme stock run. The WallStreetBets/GameStop story was the third act in a Jacobean revenge tragedy: avenge WallStreet, for the ruinous harm it inflicted on the global economy with the 2008 crash. (Even if the short sellers weren’t ever actually bailed out – that’s an unnecessary detail.)”Animal abuse is a key indicator of future violence towards human beings. These acts of cruelty typically escalate to future abuse of animals and people. It is vital that anyone who learns of violence towards animals contact the police immediately. We commend the young people who saw this animal abuse online and alerted the Clay County Sheriff’s Office to help prevent future crimes like this one.”
ORANGE PARK, Fla. – Two Orange Park teenage girls posted a video online of them abusing and killing a gopher tortoise, which the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says is a threatened species.
“We certainly don’t want anybody hurting any animal, but they’re a threatened species, and it’s against the law to kill harass or destroy gopher tortoises, their eggs or their burrows,” FWC spokeswoman Karen Parker said.
Anyone with tips that can help investigators with other incidents is asked to call the Wildlife Alert Hotline at 888-404-FWCC (3922) or text [email protected]. Ponte Vedra beach mental health expert Dr. Lynn Wadelton told News4Jax Wednesday that the girls’ actions show they have a lack of empathy and that teens that brutalize animals could likely spend the better part of their adult lives in jail. The father, who did not want to be identified, said he didn’t raise his daughter to do something like this, and he said he was outraged by the acts against the small tortoise.The cellphone video shows the tortoise being lit on fire, thrown on the concrete and being stomped on until it dies. Some of the video is too graphic to show and contains vulgar language. The girls are heard laughing and talking about killing the turtle.”That’s sick to do what they did,” he said. “I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it on TV, and I don’t care. I was there when they found the turtle. I was there when wildlife (came to the house and) talked for an hour. And they know that there’s gonna be a court date coming up, and it’s all going to be handled.”
“They’re very remorseful for what they did,” he said. “They’re gonna go through the court system and get it all figured out OK. Whatever the court system hands down, that’s what they’re gonna do.””They’re gonna catch the wrath of what happened,” he said. “The court’s gonna handle it. I don’t think all this damn threats that I’m getting on Facebook and all that, I’m not getting ’em. There’s no more Facebook in this house. There’s no more smartphones.”
“Abuse of other people, other criminal acts. For example, they did a research study which is worst-case scenario with serial killers and all of them had a history of injuring animals when they were teens,” said Wadelton.
Ridgeview High School confirmed the two girls attend school there, but because the incident didn’t happen on school property or during school hours, the school can only say they’re aware and the incident is being handled by proper authorities.
After multiple complaints into FWC Tuesday night, officials started an investigation and are working with the State Attorney’s Office to determine what charges will be filed.”It’s incredibly upsetting,” Padgett said. “I have two pet turtles inside my house, and as I was watching the video, all I can think about is, ‘Oh my God, what if someone was doing that to my turtles?’ Those are my babies. They’re my favorite animal.””Certainly the bad seed theory, which would imply some genetic lack of empathy that occurs,” said Wadelton. “Certainly for some kids the pattern starts young and we want to intervene early.”The State Attorney’s Office will determine if the teens will be charged as juveniles or adults. A local attorney not affiliated with the case said the teens could face a felony charge for aggravated animal cruelty and an additional felony charge under a statute that protects endangered species.
Scott is a multi-Emmy Award Winning Anchor and Reporter, who also hosts the “Going Ringside With The Local Station” Podcast. Scott has been a journalist for 25 years, covering stories including six presidential elections, multiple space shuttle launches and dozens of high-profile murder trials.WJXT-TV reports the cellphone video shows the tortoise being lit on fire, thrown on the concrete and being stomped on until it dies. Some of the video is too graphic to show and contains vulgar language. The girls are heard laughing and talking about killing the turtle.
“We certainly don’t want anybody hurting any animal, but they’re a threatened species and it’s against the law to kill harass or destroy gopher tortoises, their eggs or their burrows,” FWC spokeswoman Karen Parker said.
“It’s incredibly upsetting,” Padgett said. “I have two pet turtles inside my house, and as I watching the video, all I can think about is, ‘Oh my God, what if someone was doing that to my turtles? Those are my babies. They’re my favorite animal.'”ORANGE PARK, Fla. – Two Florida teenage girls posted a video online of them abusing and killing a gopher tortoise, which the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says is a threatened species.
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In July 2014, a video was posted to Facebook by two Florida teenage girls in which they attempt to set a rare gopher tortoise on fire several times before thrashing the animal against the pavement and stomping it to death.On July 16th, the Nevada Voters for Animals Facebook page reposted the original videos and called for viewers to help bring the two teenagers to justice. The same day, Tumblr user Felinecrusader posted about the video, urging readers to report the two girls to PETA, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation, the ASPCA and the police. In the first 48 hours, the post gained over 360 notes. Also on July 16th, the “Justice for the Tortoise” Tumblr blog was launched. On the following day, Redditor kungpowgoat posted an article about the incident to the /r/news subreddit, where it gathered more than 650 votes (91% upvoted) in the following 24 hours.
On July 16th, The Florida Times Union published an article reporting that local law enforcement officials confirmed that the girls were 15 and 18 years of age and attended the Ridgeview High School in Orange Park, Florida. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the video and 4chan’s retaliation, including The Daily Dot, The Huffington Post, New York Daily News, NBC Miami and the Miami Herald.Operation Shell Shock is an online vigilante campaign orchestrated by 4chan users against two North Florida teenage girls who shared video footage of themselves torturing an endangered gopher tortoise in July 2014.
In threads on the /b/ (random) board, users were able to locate the address the video was taken at by comparing stills with Google Street View images (shown below, left). Additionally, the suspected identities, phone numbers and social media accounts of the two girls were posted on /b/ (shown below, right).
The younger girl will be prosecuted in the juvenile system. The other faces up to five years in prison on the felony cruelty charge and up to 60 days in jail for the second charge.
ORANGE PARK, Fla. (AP) — Northeast Florida authorities say they’ve arrested two teenage girls seen in videos posted online lighting a threatened gopher tortoise on fire and stomping it to death.
Videos posted on the Facebook page of Nevada Voters for Animals showed the Orange Park girls dousing the tortoise with a flammable fluid and one of them stomping on the animal until its shell broke.The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the teens, ages 15 and 18, were arrested Friday on charges of felony cruelty to animals and taking, harassing, harming or killing a gopher tortoise.
Though the girls took the videos down, the footage is still available online, including on the Nevada Voters for Animals Facebook page in an aim to “get justice.” A more digestible, shorter cut of it appears in this news clip about the incident:
In the first of two videos, posted initially by the girls to Facebook and YouTube, the girls light the gopher tortoise on fire after pouring alcohol on it. In the video, the girls can be heard rooting for the tortoise’s demise, reports the Florida Times-Union:A 16-year-old who goes to high school with the girls and is friends with them on Facebook saw the videos, saved them to his computer, and left comments airing his disgust on the social network. As the videos went viral, an animal abuse organization in Nevada alerted authorities in Florida. Nevada Voters for Animals president Gina Greisen told the Times-Union she wants the girls charged with a felony.
