WHEN THE ULTIMATE TROLL GETS TROLLED. Mary Katharine Ham: Do You Think PETA’s Mad Everyone’s A Troll Now?

This week, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals offered a custom anti-hunting frame for Facebook profile photos. “Shoot Selfies, Not Animals,” it read, with a majestic buck silhouette and a PETA logo. A friend of mine immediately used it to frame a profile photo of her holding two giant ducks she’d shot.

She was not the only one to delight in trolling the animal rights organization, as hunter after hunter added snapshots of their conquests framed by an anti-hunting message. Because in America, you don’t have to choose between shooting selfies and animals.

But watching this widespread publicity campaign go awry, it occurred to me I was watching one of the original trolls get trolled…by the general public. My, what a role reversal.

As MKH writes, “Did PETA make us more troll-y or did PETA’s game work so well because we were always trolls? What I do know is we’ve come a long way on the PETA outrage gauge, and that is not a good thing for society. This is probably a chicken-and-egg situation we’ll never fully resolve. And that expression is probably animal cruelty, right, PETA?”

Heh.™