Vick, Dogs, Dairy, Cows, Pigs, Twitter, and the Rape Rack, Part 1

Above: much less graphic than the widely available photos online showing smiling, laughing women (and men) posing with their arms--often all the way up to the shoulder, actually, rather than just up to the elbow--inside the cow's rectum during forced artificial insemination.

That's quite a list in the title, isn't it? You're probably wondering what ties all these things and terms together: the tie-in is none other than this often-fascinating and still-evolving frontier of advocacy, the Internet. Over the weekend, I found myself marveling at the possibilities animal advocates now have for getting information to people; it started on Friday, when one single PETA remark picked up by media outlets sent hundreds of new visitors to this blog by chance, and continued through Sunday, with the Twitter #oink campaign.

First, the phenomenon that led a number of likely unsuspecting people to a post on dairy cruelties: In a stroke that I might have considered mildly genius had it actually been planned and had they known what the search results would yield, last Friday, PETA, in its official response to the signing of Michael Vick to the Philadelphia Eagles, mentioned the term "rape rack," in reference to the contraption used when dogs are forcibly bred by dogfighters: "At this point, all Eagles fans can do is cross their fingers and hope that they won't ever have to explain to their sons and daughters what a 'rape rack' is and why their favorite player was using one, as Falcons fans once had to."

News outlets picked up the quote, and suddenly, lots of people were asking themselves, "What is a rape rack?" And as it turns out, a Google search for the term takes you almost immediately (#2 result) to the post "From the Glossary: Dairy and the 'Rape Rack'" on this blog, to information on how we get dairy that most people searching for the term probably didn't have and certainly weren't expecting.

I was fascinated by the way this played out: PETA's public statements don't always end up being a force for good--it varies (e.g., I'm outright livid at PETA's latest newsmaking campaign, but that's another post entirely--see ecorazzi's take and easyVegan's brief take here). And Michael Vick certainly isn't someone I expect to be standing up for dairy cows anytime soon (frankly, I have my doubts regarding how sincere he is about standing up even for dogs--again, another post entirely, to come soon). But Friday, the combination of PETA's media presence and the awful things Michael Vick did--and the fact that months ago, I included that one very specific, ugly term in a post title--meant that in one day, at least several hundred people were exposed to information that likely very few of them had before. Incredible. Michael Vick helped spread the message about the cruelties of dairy.

So did any dog lovers who were horrified by what Vick did to dogs read through that post after finding it and start to reconsider what horrible things almost all of us do to other animals too? I don't know. But I certainly hope so. And it's encouraging to me that clearly this information is becoming increasingly easier to find--or stumble upon accidentally (and, frankly, it's encouraging to me too that at least 650 people clicked through to the post even though the title made clear that it was a post about dairy, not dogs).

Continue to part 2, on the Twitter #oink-ing, here.