Cecil the lion

As many of you no doubt noticed, the Internet lost its shit the other day.

This took place over the killing of Cecil the lion. This particular animal, one of the most famous and iconic in Africa, was lured out of the animal sanctuary in which he lived by a hunting party that had tied a dead animal to a car, and later shot with a crossbow by an American dentist (Walter Palmer), and then after two days of bleeding and being tracked, was shot and killed by the same dentist with a high-powered gun, and then left, beheaded and skinned.

It was a big story, and it completely dominated all of my social media streams. People were heartbroken (Jimmy Kimmel wept on his late night talk show while talking about it) and generally, the public was mad enough to club the dentist to death. Threatened from all quarters and publicly shamed, Palmer closed down his practice and went into hiding.

In the midst of this raging solidarity of hate, many people took the time to point out that other atrocities, many unimaginable, were taking place in the world, too, and maybe we could pay the same attention that we do to an animal being killed, to a person being killed? I mean, in terms of popular outrage, Sandra Bland, a black woman who mysteriously died in police custody after committing a traffic violation, was running a distant second to Cecil the lion.

It’s a meaningful observation, that, but I don’t think we should jump to the conclusion that the public values the life of Cecil over Bland.

Every single person on the planet can be angry and disgusted at the thought of a rich, white American, a dentist of all things– a person who makes fake smiles for a living– going over to a poor continent, and then killing, for his pleasure alone, an awe-inspiring creature that’s both a beautiful national symbol and resource.

The horror is plain for all to see. It’s a simple story upon which everybody can agree, and it isn’t as politically toxic or geopolitically complex as racism, police brutality and entitlement, or Boko Haram. You don’t need to be informed to have an opinion on Cecil’s demise—what happened was awful and wrong. There was unanimity on this issue and it wasn’t politicized. For a moment, there was a debate-free zone on the Internet, which I think was a huge relief. For once, people could feel that they were right without having to engage in a long, complex debate, without actually having to defend their position.

We process what we’re capable of, and this was an uncomplicated story that was easily digested and then agreeably shared amongst peers. It’s not the most important story of the day, but it has great symbolic weight, and like an emoji, is breezily transmitted without the necessity of much background context or rumination.

The outpouring on Facebook isn’t evidence of a preference for the superficial over the substantive, or of some political polarity, but of people finding agreement, even celebrating it, and existing in a cease fire for a moment. And in this place where right and wrong are universally agreed upon, they find that their voice– which doesn’t carry very far in the humdrum prose of their daily lives– is now amplified, becoming powerful and vivid, strong enough to go places their bodies will never travel.